What is changing?
From October 2026, Sexual Harassment legislation changes from employers taking reasonable steps (introduced in October 2024) to all reasonable steps. Tribunals are likely to look beyond whether policies existed and ask whether they were actively implemented and monitored.
In 2027 a power will be introduced to enable regulations to specify steps that are to be regarded as “reasonable”, to determine whether an employer has taken all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment.
This means organisations should be able to demonstrate:
- regular review of harassment risks;
- meaningful training with evidence of attendance;
- prompt action when concerns are raised;
- monitoring of trends and repeat issues;
- visible leadership commitment; and
- continuous improvement where risks are identified.
Third-party harassment
From October 2026 there will be a new provision requiring employers to not permit harassment by a third party (such as a client or customer). Practical measures include:
- reviewing customer-facing environments;
- setting behavioural expectations for clients, contractors and visitors;
- empowering staff to refuse service or escalate inappropriate behaviour;
- training managers on handling third-party incidents; and
- recording and analysing incidents involving non-employees.
It is also worth bearing in mind that suppliers and other organisations may ask your own organisation to agree to take steps to prevent your own employees harassing their employees. You may need to update your disciplinary and other polices to include harassment of employees of third parties in the course of employment as an act of gross misconduct and educate your employees of the same.
Strengthen governance
Some organisations are establishing governance arrangements similar to those used for health and safety, including:
- a named senior sponsor for harassment prevention;
- regular reporting to the board or audit committee (if in place);
- KPIs such as training completion, reporting trends and investigation times;
- periodic independent policy reviews; and
- internal audits of compliance.