Employers face new harassment duty from 30 October as training soars

If you employ people, a single extra word in the law is about to change what’s expected of you. From Friday (30 October), “reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment at work becomes “all reasonable steps”, and it reaches beyond your own staff to the customers and suppliers they deal with.

Plenty of businesses appear to have seen it coming. Online training provider High Speed Training says average monthly demand for its Sexual Harassment Training for Managers and Supervisors course rose by 178% in the months leading up to the change. Its Bullying & Harassment course is up 211%.

What changes on 30 October

The Employment Rights Act 2025 became law in December 2025, with its changes rolling out across 2026 and 2027. Among a long list of additions and amendments, it strengthens the law on workplace harassment, and those specific changes take effect on 30 October 2026.

Under the current law, employers must take “reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment. From 30 October, that becomes “all reasonable steps”.

In practice that means three things:

• taking all the steps that are reasonable for your organisation, rather than just some of them
• focusing on preventing sexual harassment, rather than only reacting when something happens
• applying those steps across the whole organisation

Customers and suppliers now count too

The bigger shift for many workplaces is third-party harassment. Under the new duty, employers are liable for harassment of their staff by people such as customers and suppliers, unless they took all reasonable steps to prevent it.

So employers will need measures aimed at people outside the business as well. Examples given include:

• communicating anti-harassment policies to customers, clients and other third parties
• updating supplier codes of conduct
• referencing anti-harassment policies in third-party contracts
• providing training to managers and staff

What “all reasonable steps” could look like

One example would be an employer or manager sharing anti-harassment policies and codes of conduct with employees and third parties, making sure colleagues are signed up for mandatory sexual harassment training, and checking they know how to recognise and report sexual harassment.

And if there’s no dedicated policy in place yet, that’s the first gap to close.

Why training demand has jumped

Jamie Kemp, Director at High Speed Training, said: “To prepare for these changes, employers must take a proactive approach rather than relying on reactive policies. This includes reviewing and updating existing policies, or creating a standalone sexual harassment policy if one does not already exist.

“Delivering practical training across all levels of an organisation is vital to ensuring employees can recognise harassment, understand their rights, and know exactly how to report concerns safely and confidently.”

Jamie added: “The rise in training demand that we have seen shows that businesses recognise the need to act in order to create safe and effective workplace cultures.”

Free resources on the changes are on the High Speed Training Hub.