Sidestream reads the government's implementation timeline, updated 14 October 2026, as the date that matters: from 30 October 2026 the duty under the Employment Rights Act 2025 rises from reasonable steps to all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment, and third-party harassment liability returns the same day. Acas helpline calls on harassment rose 39% in the first half of 2025. Rewriting the policy is not what a tribunal asks about.
In the first half of 2025, calls to the ACAS helpline asking for advice on workplace harassment rose to 5,583, up from 4,001 in the same window of 2024, a 39% increase. The figures came out under a Freedom of Information request by Nockolds and were reported by People Management. They cover the first full year of the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023, which has been in force since October 2024.
The legal bar moves again. From 30 October 2026, under the Employment Rights Act 2025, the duty escalates from taking reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment to taking all reasonable steps. The government's implementation timeline, updated on 14 October 2026, lists both duties under that date: "requiring employers to take 'all reasonable steps' to prevent sexual harassment of their employees" and "introducing an obligation on employers not to permit the harassment of their employees by third parties".
So liability for third-party harassment, by customers, clients, patients and contractors, returns on the same day. Tribunals can already increase compensation awards by up to 25% where an employer has failed the preventative duty. The EHRC's 8-step guide, published in September 2024, sets out the current reasonable-steps duty. The EHRC has consulted on a draft update of its technical guidance (the CIPD published its response in July 2026); until a final version appears, the September 2024 text is the reference.
Separately, section 22 of the Employment Rights Act 2025 provides a power for ministers to set evidence-based "reasonable steps" in regulations later, which the government says will complement, not replace, the duty to take all reasonable steps; the CIPD expects a further consultation first, currently anticipated for 2027. Check the EHRC's site before relying on the 2024 text.
Update, 28 September 2026. When this piece was first published the government had said only "October 2026". Its implementation timeline, updated on 25 September 2026, fixes 30 October 2026 for both the all-reasonable-steps duty and the third-party harassment obligation. The date has been amended throughout. The argument has not changed.
Why It Is Not A Policy Problem
Equality Act 2010, s.40A and s.124A, legislation.gov.uk; Employment Rights Act 2025, s.20 (not in force at Royal Assent); S.I. 2026/1065, reg. 3 (in force 30 October 2026); Government implementation timeline, updated 14 October 2026. General information, not legal advice.
The temptation, when the bar rises, is to rewrite the policy. New paragraph on third-party conduct, refreshed wording on the complaints route, updated training matrix in the LMS. None of it is wrong. None of it, on its own, is the thing the tribunal asks about. Why a rewritten policy is not enough is set out in harassment duty: behaviour, not policy.
What tribunals look for is evidence that the people in the room would actually behave differently in a real moment. A line manager who hears a remark in a client meeting and lets it pass, the senior leader who replies to a complaint by asking whether the complainant might be over-reading the situation, the colleague who decides not to escalate because nothing happened last time, all of these are behaviour failures, not policy failures. The policy was there. The training was logged. The behaviour was the default one.
This is the harder shape of the duty. "All reasonable steps" reads as an audit standard but lands as a behaviour standard. The ACAS call volume, 5,583 in six months, is the first sign that the gap between what organisations think their culture does and what employees actually experience is becoming visible in a way it was not five years ago.
Why The Default Training Will Not Carry It
The standard preventative-duty response, even now, is content-heavy and rehearsal-light. A 30-minute online module on the definition of harassment. A revised whistleblowing flowchart. A live webinar with a Q&A. Completion rates climb to 96%. Behaviour in real meetings does not change. Our harassment prevention training in London rehearses those moments instead, with a documented evidence trail for the duty.
The mechanism is well established. Roediger and Karpicke (2006), in Psychological Science, found that being tested on material lifts long-term retention by roughly 50% compared with re-reading. Most preventative-duty training is the re-reading kind. By the time the awkward moment arrives, at the offsite, in the client lunch, in the back of the team chat, very little of what was taught is accessible, and the bystander defaults to whatever the bystander defaulted to before.
Ericsson's Peak (2016) on deliberate practice makes the same point in a different vocabulary. The first-reaction behaviours that decide whether a moment is interrupted, naming what just happened, stepping in without escalating, supporting the person on the receiving end, only change with focused, feedback-rich repetition against a clear behavioural target. Awareness, on its own, does not move them.
What Actually Closes The Gap
In the 2020 UCL study behind our method (randomised, n = 57), those who rehearsed a communication skill with a role-play coach were rated significantly higher on observed behaviour, by two independent assessors working blind, than those taught the same content by video or slideshow. Self-reported confidence rose after every format, with no significant difference between them. We design the self-report out by measuring the behaviour. We explain why in confidence versus blind-rated delivery.
Applied to the October bar, the format is small group, professional actor playing the client whose comment crosses the line, the colleague who minimises, the manager who waits for it to blow over. Three or four full conversations, replayed against named behavioural anchors. By the third rehearsal, the bystander move that the policy assumes will happen is actually the first move in the room. That is the evidence a tribunal can read, and that the EHRC's eight-step guide is pointing at.
What We Do About It
Our immersive simulations and manager workshops are designed for exactly the moments the preventative duty will be tested in, the offsite, the client meeting, the team chat, the after-work drink. The work is short, intense and behaviourally measured. Read also our piece on the April 2026 speak-up rules for the whistleblowing layer, or our piece on the £28.5 billion ACAS conflict figure for the wider cost of unaddressed friction.
"All reasonable steps" is not a policy phrase. It is a rehearsal phrase, and the rehearsal has to happen before the moment, not after.
The organisations that pass the October bar without incident will not be the ones with the longest policy. They will be the ones whose people have practised the bystander move often enough that it is the first move, not the second thought. Book a call to look at what that rehearsal would look like for your teams.
Book a free 30-minute diagnostic call → or read about our research-backed approach.
The October 2026 Harassment Bar In Summary
From 30 October 2026 the preventative duty moves from "show that you tried" to "show that there was nothing else you could reasonably have done". A policy on a server, an annual e-learning module and an open-door promise will not pass that test. "All reasonable steps" reads as an audit standard but lands as a behaviour standard, and behaviour changes through rehearsal, not awareness.
- ACAS helpline harassment calls rose to 5,583 in the first half of 2025, up from 4,001 in the same window of 2024, a 39% increase.
- From 30 October 2026 the duty escalates from reasonable steps to all reasonable steps and third-party harassment liability returns on the same day; tribunals can already increase awards by up to 25% where the duty has been failed.
- The EHRC's eight-step guide describes the current reasonable-steps duty; the EHRC has consulted on a draft update of its technical guidance, and until a final version appears the September 2024 text is the reference.
- The 2020 UCL study behind our method found rehearsal with a role-play coach produced significantly better observed behaviour than an instructional video or slideshow.
Sources: Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, Plan to Make Work Pay and Employment Rights Act: timeline update (updated 14 October 2026) · Acas, Sexual harassment: harassment law changes under the Employment Rights Act 2025 · Acas, Third party harassment: harassment law changes under the Employment Rights Act 2025 · Equality Act 2010, section 124A (legislation.gov.uk)