Preventing harassment (England, Wales and Scotland)

Duty to prevent harassment in the workplace

Employers must protect a worker from all forms of harassment occurring in the course of their employment by taking all reasonable steps to prevent it.

This is a preventative duty that covers harassment based on a worker's protected characteristics and, as of 30 October 2026, sexual harassment. Before 30 October 2026, employers were only required to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment from happening.

They will be liable for any harassment committed by another member of staff and, from 30 October 2026, a third party.

Note: 'In the course of a worker's employment' means whilst you are at work or in a workplace-related environment, such as an office party or training event located outside the workplace.

Third party

A third party means a person other than the employer or one of its staff. This can include:

• Customers or clients
• Other people sharing the building where you work
• People working for suppliers
• Friends and family of staff
• Delegates at a conference
• Freelancers and self-employed contractors
• Members of the public.

What does 'preventative duty' mean?

It means your employer must take proactive steps to change any problematic workplace behaviour and eradicate harassment in the workplace.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has published a technical guidance on sexual harassment and harassment at work. Your employer will be expected to follow this when dealing with complaints about sexual harassment.

According to the guidance:

1. Your employer should not wait until an incident of harassment has taken place before taking any action - they'll need to anticipate scenarios when you may be subject to harassment and take all reasonable steps to prevent it.

2. If harassment has happened, your employer should take all reasonable steps to stop it from happening again.

Steps your employer can take

The EHRC guidance contains practical steps that your employer can take to prevent sexual harassment at work. The EHRC has also published an 8-point plan to help your employer comply with the rules.

The EHRC makes it clear that these steps are not an exhaustive list, and not every step in it may be reasonable for an employer to do.

Your employer will have to decide which steps are reasonable based on its size, business sector, resources and the risks it needs to address.

However, your employer should consider doing some or all of the following:

Carry out an anonymous staff survey

This can be useful to get as accurate a picture of harassment in the workplace as possible and help identify potential risk areas, both internally and from third parties.

It'll also help your employer to understand staff perceptions of workplace culture and help monitor the prevalence of harassment in the business.

Perform a risk assessment

This should assess workplace culture, identify the risk of workers experiencing harassment in the business and implement actions to prevent or minimise it. A risk assessment of the employer's leadership is also recommended.

Implement a harassment policy

An employer may choose to have separate policies for sexual harassment and harassment that's based on a worker's protected characteristics.

However they choose to do it, the policy should be clear, effective and followed. It should contain certain information such as:

• a statement about the preventative duty and expected behaviour of staff;
• a reporting system. This must be an effective way to report harassment (including harassment by third parties) that encourages staff to report it. If they can, they should offer multiple ways to report incidents of harassment (with 2 alternative methods being the minimum);
• an indication of timescales;
• steps that they'll take to prevent repeat incidents by third parties;
• how they will deal with incidents by staff, including how perpetrators of harassment could be held accountable; and
• what support will be available to those who made the complaint.

Communicate and evaluate the policy

Your employer should communicate it to you regularly (at least twice a year), for example via internal newsletters and physical or digital noticeboards (intranet). They should also remind you about it before key events with higher risks of harassment, such as an office party.

They should also regularly remind staff of their core values and details of what is, and is not, regarded as acceptable behaviour at work. This can be included in induction sessions and adherence to it can be part of any annual performance assessment.

You should be made aware of how to raise a complaint and the consequences of breaching the policy.

Your employer should evaluate the policy on an ongoing basis.

Provide regular training

The training should ensure staff know:

• what each type of harassment is (including third-party harassment);
• what victimisation involves;
• what to do if they experience it; and
• how managers will handle complaints of harassment.

Training should be mandatory and tailored towards the sector that you operate in.

Regularly monitor

There may be warning signs that harassment is taking place, beyond informal and formal complaints, such as:

• Regular sickness absences
• Changes in behaviour
• Comments in exit interviews
• Dips in performance
• Staff avoiding a certain colleague.

Your employer should create a secure and confidential reporting register for complaints about all forms of harassment.