UK employers prepare for new third party harassment duties ahead of October 2026

New third-party harassment duties are on the way - due to take effect in October 2026 under the Employment Rights Act 2025 - and employers are busy planning for the changes. A number of our clients’ HR Directors have been raising this at board-level, not just because of legal liability but because of accountability for how organisations manage risk in frontline roles. We’ll speak to a D&I expert who is advising on that issue.

The change will require employers to take reasonable steps to prevent harassment of their employees by third parties, including customers, contractors, and members of the public, and is prompting employers to take a closer look at where that exposure sits. What is becoming clear is that this is not simply about updating policies or responding when something goes wrong. For many firms, the risk sits in everyday interactions, particularly in frontline roles where employees are dealing directly with customers or the public, often in situations where behaviour can be difficult to challenge or escalate.

Those interactions do not always result in formal complaints. Many issues start off as low-level behaviour, but build over time and begin to affect wellbeing, confidence, and performance if they are not recognised early. That’s why the focus is shifting. Rather than reacting to incidents, employers are taking a more forward-looking view, identifying where risk is likely to arise, assessing its level, and managing it proportionately.

So let’s get a view on this. Kieron O’Reilly is a D&I consultant with Pinsent Masons’ consultancy Brook Graham and earlier he joined me by video-link to discuss it. So why are HR directors raising this at board level?”:

Kieron O’Reilly: “I think the main reason here is that this is more about accountability than it is liability. So having it raised at the board level allows people to have that knowledge and understanding of where the risk sits and to be able to deal with it proportionally and appropriately. So I think that's the key point here. It's accountability rather than liability that needs to be focused on and that's what allows HR directors to have that information that they can give around accountability and pass it through to the board for them to make decisions on.”

Joe Glavina: “Where does that risk tend to sit in an organisation, and why can it be difficult for employees to deal with it on the ground?”

Kieron O’Reilly: “So the risk in this situation tends to be frontline. So we're talking about where employees are dealing with contractors, or with customers, in public domain for example. So wherever there is a lot of public or third-party engagement that's where that risk sits and I think that is where the challenge can come from because, in many cases, there are situations that occur that are fairly low level and in that respect they don't tend to get reported, they don't tend to get escalated, because they are apparently low level, but as they build up over time, they start to have an impact and then the situation is that it goes from low level to quite serious, and that's when there is damage done, and HR has to step in, and sometimes the board has to take considerations around consequences where a situation of harassment has become quite serious. So I think the situation here is it's frontline staff, a lot of these situations are low level, and they build up without them being reported, without the risk being spotted, until it becomes a big problem.”

Joe Glavina: “What does a more proactive, risk-based approach look like in practice, and what are boards and HR leaders doing differently as a result?”

Kieron O’Reilly: “So I think what we're seeing now is that people are starting to have a good look at where risk actually sits. So where we're looking in a situation where in the past is a little bit reactive, so people were looking at where incidents occurred, dealing with those as is appropriate, and then looking at trends, that proactive response now isn't really sufficient for us to manage risk in the situation with liability. So what we're now looking at is predicting where risk is. So this is the idea of looking at risk assessments, where could risk occur and what actual level is that risk? Having that sort of proportional, forward looking, approach carried out by HR directors and teams around them presents a really solid set of information of where risk sits which they can provide to the board so people can make decisions around reducing the risk, but they're proportionate, reasonable and effective. Essentially doing what's needed where it's needed, rather than having a situation where you're doing the same thing across a whole organisation and potentially wasting time and, even worse, maybe missing some of those risks that needed focus on.”

So the key takeaway for HR is that while this is a change in the law, it doesn’t need to be as onerous as it might first appear. The shift is from reacting to incidents to understanding where risk sits and managing it proportionately. If you’d like help reviewing your approach or understanding where risk sits in your organisation, please do contact Kieron – his details are there on the screen for you.