New Harassment Prevention Duties: What Employers Need to Know | Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP

Executive Summary

What’s new: New UK laws taking effect at the beginning and end of October 2026 will require employers to take a comprehensive, documented approach to prevent employee harassment, including by third parties, and will extend the period to file Employment Tribunal claims.
Why it matters: Employers will face increased liability, and the Employment Tribunal will shape the new duty through cases while regulations are further developed to specify the steps employers must take to meet the new obligation in 2027.
What to do next: Companies can consult the eight-step guide from the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission for a practical compliance framework. We present the key action measures and how to extend them to risks and policies involving third parties.

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Starting 30 October 2026, new laws in the UK will set a significantly higher bar for employers to protect employees from harassment, requiring employers to take “all” reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment and, with a new obligation, to take all reasonable steps to prevent employees being harassed by third parties such as customers, clients or contractors.

Separately, starting 1 October 2026, the time limit to bring most Employment Tribunal claims — including discrimination, harassment and unfair dismissal — will double from three to six months, extending the window during which employees can bring claims.

Enhanced Duty: From ‘Reasonable Steps’ to ‘All Reasonable Steps’

Since October 2024, UK employers have been under a positive duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their employees in the course of those individuals’ employment. Where a harassment claim succeeds and the employer has failed to comply with this duty, the Employment Tribunal may elevate compensation by up to 25%. Starting 30 October 2026, the Employment Rights Act 2025 (ERA) extends the employer’s duty to an obligation to take “all” reasonable steps.

The preventative duty is intended to improve workplace culture by requiring employers to anticipate how sexual harassment might occur in the workplace and take proactive steps to prevent it: The focus is on prevention rather than reaction. Responding robustly to an incident after the fact will not, on its own, be sufficient to protect an employer from liability.

The addition of “all” aligns the preventative duty with the existing statutory defence to vicarious liability under the Equality Act 2010, which uses the same “all reasonable steps” standard. For employers with robust policies and processes already in place, the update will not likely necessitate a significant policy shift. What is reasonable will continue to depend on the employer’s size, sector, resources and work environment.

The ERA provides for regulations specifying the steps employers must take to meet the new duty, but these are not expected until 2027-2028. Until then, the scope of the duty will be shaped by decisions of the Employment Tribunal in cases where the new duty is engaged. The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC’s) eight-step guide offers a practical framework for compliance in the meantime. The guide is currently being updated to reflect the strengthened duty, and the ERA regulations are expected to draw on that guide. According to the framework, employers should implement the following measures:

1.	Develop or strengthen policies on sexual harassment, defining sexual harassment with workplace-specific examples, including a complaints procedure and provisions addressing third-party harassment. Review the policies at regular intervals.
2.	Conduct a risk assessment covering factors such as power imbalances, lone working, customer-facing duties and alcohol at events, and identify steps to reduce risk.
3.	Engage staff through one-to-one meetings, surveys and exit interviews to identify issues and assess whether existing measures are working.
4.	Establish clear reporting channels, including anonymous options. Keep centralised, confidential records of all concerns raised in order to identify trends.
5.	Train all workers to recognise and respond to sexual harassment, including specific training for managers. Offer refresher sessions at regular intervals and keep attendance records.
6.	Act promptly to resolve complaints, protecting complainants and witnesses from victimisation. If a complaint may involve a criminal offence, speak to the individual about whether they want to report the matter to the police and support them if they do.
7.	Treat third-party harassment as seriously as harassment by a colleague. Assess high-risk settings where employees might be left alone with customers and put reporting mechanisms in place.
8.	Monitor and evaluate practices by reviewing complaints data, tracking incidents and “near-misses,” surveying staff and holding lessons-learned sessions to drive continuous improvement.

New Liability for Third-Party Harassment

Starting 30 October 2026, employers may also be liable for failure to prevent harassment of their employees by a third party unless the employer can show it took all reasonable steps to prevent the harassment. A third party is defined as anyone other than the employer or a fellow employee, and includes clients, customers, suppliers, contractors, service users and members of the public.

This duty extends beyond sexual harassment to cover harassment related to all protected characteristics, such as age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.

The practical steps set out above will also support compliance with the broader third-party duty. In addition, employers should consider the following steps directed specifically at third-party risks:

✓	Conduct a third-party harassment risk assessment identifying the roles, settings and interactions that carry the highest risk. This should include a review of the physical working environment for customer-facing roles, considering protective measures such as CCTV, lone-working protocols and personal alarms. Once risks are identified, produce an action plan documenting the preventative steps that will be taken to address them. In higher-risk environments, ensure appropriate staffing levels, including security personnel where necessary.
✓	Extend existing anti-harassment policies to address third-party harassment, including clear reporting routes and the consequences for the third party (such as a warning or exclusion from premises and events).
✓	Equip staff and managers with tailored training on staff safety, bystander intervention, de-escalation techniques and effective reporting.
✓	Communicate standards of conduct to clients, customers and suppliers, and embed behavioural expectations and third-party controls in engagement terms and contracts.
✓	Establish a clear, pre-agreed response protocol for when a client, customer, supplier or other third party behaves unacceptably towards an employee.
✓	Internally review and update investigation processes for third-party scenarios, including how to engage with third parties and their employers, manage overlapping investigations and protect confidentiality and personal data.
✓	Investigate incidents of third-party harassment thoroughly — not only to address the immediate allegation but also to test existing safeguards and identify any further steps needed to reduce the risk of recurrence.
✓	Ensure employees are aware of the support available to them and feel confident that complaints about third parties will be taken as seriously as complaints about colleagues.
✓	Designate a senior leader or committee with responsibility for overseeing the approach to preventing third-party harassment, treating the issue as a governance matter rather than solely an HR matter.

Extended Tribunal Time Limits

Additionally, starting 1 October 2026, the time limit to bring most Employment Tribunal claims (including sexual harassment and claims related to third-party harassment), increases from three months to six months (minus a day). This extension will not apply to breach-of-contract claims in the tribunal.

The practical exposure, however, is longer still. Early conciliation protocols set by the UK’s Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) now allows a pause to the limitation clock of up to 12 weeks, meaning claims arising from conduct in late 2026 could be presented well into 2027, with the overall effective deadline potentially nine months from the relevant date.

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