Recent updates from the EHRC explain what the new "all reasonable steps" standard means in practice, for both the duty to prevent sexual harassment and liability for harassment by customers, clients and other third parties.
The Employment Rights Act 2025 (the Act) amended the Equality Act 2010 from 30 October 2026. Employers must now take "all reasonable steps" to prevent sexual harassment of their employees in the course of their employment, rather than "reasonable steps". From the same date, employers can be liable for third-party harassment of their employees unless they show that they took all reasonable steps to prevent it.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has updated its non-statutory technical guidance on sexual harassment and harassment at work, as well as its eight-step guide for employers, to reflect these changes. The technical guidance was last updated in September 2024, around the time the original preventative duty came into force.
The guidance describes the sexual harassment preventative duty as anticipatory and continuing. Whether an employer has complied is an objective test. If an employer could have taken other reasonable steps but chose not to, it is likely to have breached the duty. A step may be reasonable even if it would not have prevented a particular act, for example because it reduced the risk. The EHRC considers that an employer is unlikely to comply without a risk assessment.
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