The workplace-law changes taking effect across the UK on 30 October require employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of employees. Protections also extend to harassment by third parties such as customers and clients. Strengthened trade-union access and representative rights take effect on the same date.
The new prevention duty places an obligation on employers to act against sexual harassment. Its focus is on preventing the conduct, making the steps employers take to prevent it central to the requirement, rather than framing their responsibility solely around a response after harassment has occurred.
The scope of the change also matters. Protection extends to harassment by third parties, bringing customers and clients within its reach. Harassment involving someone outside the employer’s own workforce is therefore part of the protection taking effect on 30 October.
The commencement brings together changes concerning harassment and workplace representation. Alongside the duty on employers and the extension of protection, trade-union access and representative rights are being strengthened. These are separate elements of the changes, but they share the same start date.
A duty focused on prevention
The requirement is to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of employees. Both parts of that formulation are important: the duty concerns reasonable steps, and employers are required to take all such steps, not merely an unspecified selection of them. How the requirement applies depends on the circumstances.
Prevention is the stated purpose of the obligation. That distinguishes the duty from one concerned only with how an employer handles harassment after it has happened. The change addresses what employers must do to prevent sexual harassment, with employees identified as those the duty protects.
The third-party extension addresses a different aspect of protection: who may be responsible for the harassment. Customers and clients are expressly included as examples. The protection is consequently not confined to harassment arising between employees or involving only members of an employer’s workforce.
Customers and clients are examples of third parties, rather than an exhaustive description of the category. The extension concerns harassment by people outside the employment relationship, while the prevention duty places the requirement to take all reasonable steps on the employer.
Read together, the changes concern both the action required of employers and the reach of protection for employees. The prevention requirement sets out what employers must do; the third-party provision makes clear that the protection extends beyond harassment by people within the workforce.
Union rights strengthen alongside protections
The same commencement also brings strengthened trade-union access and representative rights. The changes taking effect on 30 October therefore cover more than the prevention of harassment, with access for trade unions and rights relating to representation forming another part of the commencement.
Trade-union access and representative rights are distinct from the obligation to prevent sexual harassment. Their inclusion means the date marks changes to workplace representation as well as to employer responsibilities and employee protection. Neither strand has a separate commencement date in the confirmed changes.
For employers, the central harassment requirement remains the duty to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of employees. For employees, the scope of protection includes harassment by third parties such as customers and clients. The union provisions strengthen access and representative rights alongside those protections.
From 30 October, these changes take effect together: a prevention duty for employers, protection extending to third-party harassment, and strengthened trade-union access and representative rights. The shared commencement brings the harassment provisions and the representation provisions into effect on the same timetable.
