October 2026 will mark a fundamental shift in UK workplace harassment law, significantly raising the stakes for employers and reinforcing a broader move away from reactive complaint handling towards proactive prevention, governance, and risk management.

What is Changing?

Key legal developments in October 2026 under the Employment Rights Act 2025 (ERA 2025) are:

• Employers’ duty to prevent workplace sexual harassment will strengthen from taking “reasonable steps” to “all reasonable steps.” As a reminder, this includes taking steps to prevent such behaviour where there is sufficient connection to the employee’s work, so this can include where they are working offsite at social events. This duty also includes taking steps to prevent sexual harassment by third parties.
• Employers will be liable for the harassment of their workers by third parties (including, for example: clients, customers and members of the supply chain) where they fail to take all reasonable steps to prevent this. Note that this will relate to all forms of unlawful harassment related to protected characteristics and not solely sexual harassment.

See here for our previous article on this and further information on our hub.

Wider Context

These reforms sit within a wider legal and regulatory trend, which is requiring employers to take increasingly proactive steps to reduce the risk of harassment in the workplace. For example:

• Since April 2026, the law now makes it clear that sexual harassment disclosures can...

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