From 30 October 2026, employers will be required to take ALL reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment This is another change which is part of the Employment Rights Act 2025. There is already an obligation to take reasonable steps to stop sexual harassment, but this has been strengthened.
So what does taking ALL reasonable steps mean?
The law is changing from taking action once sexual harassment has happened to taking active steps to prevent it from happening in the first place.
There is no current guidance about what this actually means in practice – and it will differ for different types of workplace. The steps that a manufacturing facility need to consider are different from those who work in agriculture, which are different again from office workers and different again for the catering industry. The courts will decide, but you don’t want your business to be the testing ground for what All reasonable steps might mean.
Employers need to be thinking about this now and putting those “reasonable steps” in place.
And the size of business doesn’t matter. So small businesses and charities need to be thinking about how this affects them.
Third-Party Harassment
Additionally, there will also be a requirement that employers prevent harassment of employees by a third party. Harassment is unwanted, offensive behaviour that violates a person’s dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment. Unlawful workplace harassment is related to the protected characteristics (age, disability, gender, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, or sexual orientation).
A third party can be a supplier’s employee, or a client or customer.
How can we control what our customers or suppliers do and say? Of course you can’t, and you are not expected to prevent every incident. But you must take ALL reasonable steps now – risk audits of third party agreements, arrangements and relationships; training staff and managers; warnings to third parties about consequences if things do go wrong, requiring them to train their customer facing staff.
You also need to train your own staff where they are interacting as a third party with other employers.
What do we need to do?
This will involve reviewing policies and procedures as well as developing training and awareness for managers and employees.
The key is the word “prevent”, rather than just taking action after the harassment happened.
Some of the things to think about are:
- Ensure that senior managers are onboard and are leading by example
- Review policies and procedures for reporting and handling complaints
- Carry out risk assessments to identify where sexual harassment could occur and plan to prevent it (including lone working and remote working). This means putting in place things you can reasonably do and, where necessary, explaining why you can’t do things which might be considered reasonable.
- Run regular training to educate around everyone’s responsibility to prevent sexual harassment, and what that might look like
- Make it easy for people to report (as either victims or witnesses) and to know that they will be protected and treated with respect
- Audit third party relationships to understand which employees are in contact with third parties, and the nature of that contract.
- Consider steps that can be taken to prevent harassment by third parties (including things such as changing wording in third party agreements, notices to visitors)
- Avoid sending employees to high risk areas on their own. Where unavoidable have an action plan in place to ensure people know where they are, timescale anticipated and what to do if they do not return within that timescale. Consider equipment (mobile phone, walkie talkie, alarm, etc)
- Ensure appropriate policies in place to deal with anything that goes wrong (Grievance; Disciplinary; and, potentially, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion; Grievance; Whistleblowing;)
- Event Planning – make sure all possible actions put in place to avoid risks.
You probably have some of this in place already – but you do need to review where they need to be tightened up and improved and any gaps plugged – or justifying where they can’t be plugged.
When do we have to do this?
When you need to do it: now!
If you wait until after you have a complaint to put things right, then it is too late. You need to be proactive to avoid any complaints in the first place. The requirement is to take ALL reasonable steps to prevent issues, so doing it after the incident is too late – you need to take those steps now so you have it all in place before the end of October!
