The New Harassment Duty on Employers from October

Among the changes taking effect in October 2026 under the Employment Rights Act 2025, the strengthened duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment is likely to have the widest practical reach.

It affects every employer regardless of size or sector, and it extends liability into situations employers have not previously had to manage.

Here is what changes.

The threshold moves from reasonable to all reasonable.

Employers are currently under a duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of employees and workers in the course of their employment.

From October 2026, that becomes a duty to take all reasonable steps.

The change of a single word alters the test substantially. Under the current duty, an employer can point to steps taken. Under the new duty, the question becomes whether there were further reasonable steps available that were not taken.

That effectively reverses the direction of the analysis, and it means doing something is no longer sufficient if more could reasonably have been done.

What counts as reasonable depends on the employer.

The Act does not prescribe a fixed list. What constitutes all reasonable steps will depend on the specific circumstances of the employer, including size, sector, resources and the nature of the work.

A large employer with an HR function will be expected to do more than a business with three staff. A hospitality venue with late-night trading faces different risks from an office.

Regulations may in future specify particular steps, but those are not expected until well after the duty commences, which leaves employers working from the statutory wording and existing guidance in the meantime.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has published guidance on the existing duty, and that remains the most authoritative starting point.

Third-party harassment is the bigger change for some sectors.

The Act introduces liability for harassment of employees by third parties, meaning people who are not employed by the business.

That covers customers, clients, patients, service users, contractors, suppliers and members of the public.

For hospitality, retail, healthcare, transport, leisure and any customer-facing sector, this is a substantial shift. Newcastle's large hospitality and night-time economy sector is squarely affected, as are retail employers across the city centre and the Metrocentre.

Employers will need to consider what steps are reasonable to protect staff from harassment by people the employer does not control, which is a genuinely difficult question and one on which practice is still developing.

Practical steps employers are taking.

Risk assessment is emerging as the foundation. Identifying where and when harassment is most likely to occur, and who is most exposed, is the basis for demonstrating that steps taken were proportionate to actual risk.

Policies need reviewing and, more importantly, communicating. A policy nobody has read is unlikely to count for much.

Training needs to be genuine rather than a tick-box exercise, delivered to managers as well as staff, refreshed periodically and recorded.

Reporting routes need to be accessible and to include an option that does not involve reporting to the person's own line manager, since that manager may be the problem.

For third-party harassment, measures being considered include signage setting expectations for customer behaviour, clear procedures for staff to remove themselves from a situation, manager escalation processes, refusal of service policies, and recording of incidents.

Recording matters enormously.

The likely practical test in any tribunal claim is what the employer can evidence.

Keeping records of risk assessments, training delivered and attended, policy communications, reports received and how they were handled, and any changes made in response to incidents, is what turns a claim of having taken all reasonable steps into a defensible position.

Employers who do the work but do not document it will struggle.

The consequences of getting it wrong.

Failure to comply with the preventative duty can result in an uplift to compensation in a successful harassment claim, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission has enforcement powers in relation to the duty itself.

Beyond the legal exposure, there are reputational and retention consequences, particularly in sectors already struggling to recruit.

The Fair Work Agency, which began operating in April 2026, adds a further enforcement dimension across employment rights generally.

This is not only about sexual harassment.

While the strengthened duty relates specifically to sexual harassment, the wider protections against harassment related to other protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 remain in force.

Employers reviewing their approach are generally sensible to address harassment as a whole rather than treating sexual harassment in isolation, since the practical measures overlap substantially.

Where to get help.

Acas provides free guidance and templates. The Equality and Human Rights Commission publishes technical guidance on the duty.

Employment law firms across Newcastle are running briefings on the October changes, and business bodies including the North East England Chamber of Commerce and the Federation of Small Businesses are providing member support.

For employers with no HR resource, this is an area where taking advice before October is considerably cheaper than after an incident.

Share your thoughts.

How should employers protect staff from harassment by colleagues and customers?