UK employment law has undergone a significant shift. Under the Worker Protection Act 2023 and the forthcoming Employment Rights Act 2025 (ERA 25), means that employers have a positive, proactive legal duty to prevent harassment. It is an “anticipatory” duty; meaning you must not wait for a complaint to occur before acting.
In this guide we explain:
- the different pillars of harassment
- the role of employer and crucially, that of a line manager
- explain the consequences of inaction
- Set out the minimum standards in working towards taking all reasonable steps
Understanding the three pillars of harassment
To fully meet your legal obligations as an employer, you must understand the different types of harassment, as each constitutes a distinct legal avenue for a claim.
- General harassment under the Equality Act 2010 and therefore, is brought only in connection on the grounds of one of the nine protected characteristics (10 if you operate in Northern Ireland). Harassment under this pillar is unwanted conduct that can be related to age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion/belief, sex, or sexual orientation that violates an individual’s dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment. This area of harassment law will not change under the ERA 25.
- Sexual harassment is specific unwanted conduct that is of a sexual nature and does not need to be connected to a protected characteristic. The Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 which came into force in 2024, places a positive proactive duty on employers to take reasonable steps to prevent it from occurring during the course of employment. However, the ERA 25 will broaden this duty by requiring employers to take “all” reasonable steps.
- Harassment by third parties is a new distinct legal avenue and comes into effect from October 2026. When in force, it will make employers liable for harassment carried out on their workers, by a third party. A third party, being someone such as a customer, client, patient, or contractor. It will mean all employers will have a new positive, proactive legal duty to prevent harassment by a third party and will be liable unless they can demonstrate that all reasonable steps have been taken to prevent it.
Legal duty of an employer
As a business owner or CEO, your role is distinct from that of a line manager. While managers handle day-to-day conduct, the employer holds the strategic and legal responsibility for the organisation’s safety and compliance framework (although individuals can also be held personally liable).
Under the Equality Act 2010, the Worker Protection Act 2023, and the Employment Rights Act 2025, your role has shifted from a reactive one, i.e., responding to complaints, to a proactive, anticipatory duty.
What does this mean?
Ultimate legal liability (vicarious liability)
The law is clear, anything done by an employee in the course of their employment is treated as having also been done by you, the employer. This applies regardless of whether you knew about the conduct or approval of it. To avoid this liability, you must be able to prove that you took all reasonable steps to prevent harassment from occurring.
Fulfilling the ‘preventative duty’
You have a positive legal duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of your workers, by ensuring systems are in place to prevent staff from harassing each other, and from October, third parties. A failure to address the risk of third-party harassment is a breach of your preventative duty.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)
In determining liability, an Employment Tribunal will consider to what extent an employer adopted the guidance set out in the Equality and Human Rights Commission technical guidance on sexual harassment and harassment at work, as well as their employer 8 step guide for preventing sexual harassment. The guidance sets out the minimum standards employers should be enforcing towards their legal duty of taking all reasonable steps to prevent workplace harassment.
Minimum standards in working towards taking all reasonable steps
- Anti-harassment policy
Developing a comprehensive, zero-tolerance anti-harassment policy, and communicating this expectation to the workforce as well as to third parties. A policy should provide tailored examples of prohibited behavior relevant to your business, to ensure employees can recognise and confidently report misconduct.
Crucially, the policy must be clearly communicated and accessible to everyone. It must also be regularly reviewed, updated as needed, and backed up by mandatory training.
- Engage your workers
Talking and engaging with your employees will help you to understand where any potential issues lie and whether the steps you have in place are working. Good employment practices that can support this include conducting regular 121s, staff surveys, exit interviews, and to proactively encourage open door policies.
- Assess and take steps to reduce risk in the workplace
Strategic oversight requires a formal assessment of harassment risks specific to your business. You must identify high-risk scenarios, such as lone working, public facing roles, late-night shifts, or power imbalances between senior and junior staff. To fulfill your legal ‘preventative duty,’ you must conduct, document, and continuously review a comprehensive risk assessment. Ultimately, if you have not evaluated your specific working environment, you cannot accurately determine what constitutes a ‘reasonable step’
- Reporting
It is critical that everyone knows how to report issues, and that there are multiple channels available in which to do so, including the ability to raise concerns anonymously. Additionally, having robust grievance and whistleblowing policies and procedures is imperative, as these provide the framework for how the business responds and acts on complaints.
- Training
Everyone should be trained in what harassment in the workplace looks like, what to do if they experience or witness it and how to raise and handle complaints. Investment in training is critical because training is a preventative step.
Training should be specific to your industry, business context and tailored accordingly to who you are training – manager, employee, investigators.
- Dealing with complaints
Act immediately taking into account how the employee wants it to be resolved, respect confidentiality, and put protections in place from ongoing harassment or acts of victimisation.
- Dealing with harassment by third parties
Adopting the same approach to harassment by third parties is vital, and complaints of this nature must be treated just as seriously. The legal obligation of taking all reasonable steps to prevent harassment extends to harassment by third parties. This requires you to introduce mechanisms that are specifically to prevent the harassment of your workers by a third party.
- Monitor and evaluate your actions
You cannot manage what you do not measure. You must oversee a centralised, confidential record of all harassment concerns (both formal and informal) to identify trends. As well as proactively detect hidden forms of harassment through systems such as anonymised staff surveys, exit interviews, and general annual reviews to evaluate the effectiveness of your preventative steps.
You should also review your policies, procedures and training regularly, seeking employee engagement through these processes.
The role of the line manager
As the first line of defense against workplace harassment, line managers are vital to fulfilling an employer’s legal obligations. If they fail to actively implement and support prevention mechanisms, they quickly become the business’s primary source of legal and cultural risk.
- Role models: Managers are expected to model respectful behavior and visibly promote a culture where harassment is never tolerated and consistently enforce company policies.
- Spotting early warning signs: Harassment usually escalates over time. A proactive manager must look for subtle shifts in team dynamics such as behavioural changes, drops in performance, or increased absenteeism. – these can all be warning signs of a toxic workplace situation.
- Immediate action: The moment an employee comes forward, or a manager witnesses an incident, the legal clock begins. That includes instances of banter that crosses the line or receives if they receive an informal report, the manager must act immediately to resolve the issue and protect the worker from further harm.
Important note about line managers: A manager can never promise total confidentiality to an employee who reports harassment. Once a manager is aware of potential harassment, they have a strict legal duty to report it up the chain so the company can act.
The consequences of inaction
If an employee is harassed, whether it is because of a protected characteristic, an incident of sexual harassment, or harassment carried out by a third party, if a tribunal finds the employer failed in their preventative duty, the tribunal has the power to increase the compensation awarded by up to 25%.
Furthermore, the Equality and Human Rights Commission can investigate your business and issue unlawful act notices, as was seen in the case of Hunter vs Lidl Great Britain.
