New 'All Reasonable Steps' Harassment Duty Tightens in October — A Compliance Checklist for Small Employers

Small business owners have another Employment Rights Act deadline landing in the same month as the tribunal time limit change: from 1 October 2026, employers in Great Britain will be required to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment, a tightening of a duty first introduced in 2024, according to Shoosmiths.

From "reasonable" to "all reasonable"

The Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 came into force on 26 October 2024, introducing a proactive duty on employers to take reasonable steps to prevent workplace sexual harassment — shifting the legal expectation from reacting to complaints toward actively identifying and mitigating risk beforehand. From October 2026, the Employment Rights Act raises that bar further to "all" reasonable steps, and adds a significant new element: employers become directly liable if a worker is harassed by a third party — a customer, contractor, or client — where the employer hasn't taken all reasonable steps to prevent it.

That third-party liability point is the change most likely to catch small businesses off guard. A shop, pub, salon, or care provider whose staff interact with the public now carries direct legal exposure for how customers treat employees, not just how colleagues treat each other.

What counts as "all reasonable steps"

There's no fixed checklist in the legislation itself — what's reasonable depends on the size and resources of the employer, the nature of the working environment, the sector, and the specific risks present, according to the government's own factsheet on reasonable steps regulations. However, the government has indicated it expects "all reasonable steps" to include risk assessments, clear published policies, and robust reporting and complaints procedures.

Checklist: preparing before 1 October 2026

1. Carry out a workplace risk assessment. Identify situations where harassment risk is elevated — lone working, alcohol-serving environments, late-night shifts, customer-facing roles — and document your findings.
2. Write or update your anti-harassment policy so it explicitly covers harassment by third parties (customers, clients, contractors), not just colleague-on-colleague conduct.
3. Set up a clear, accessible reporting channel that staff can use without fear of reprisal, and communicate it during onboarding.
4. Train managers and supervisors on how to recognise, respond to, and escalate harassment complaints — including incidents involving customers or the public.
5. Review incident logs from the past 12 months for patterns that suggest where your risk actually sits, rather than guessing.
6. Document everything. Given the tribunal now assesses whether you took "all" reasonable steps, having no paper trail is itself a weakness — a risk assessment and policy that exist only informally are hard to evidence.
7. Check guidance from Acas for practical examples of steps appropriate to your size and sector.

Why this matters even for very small employers

The size and resources of the business is one factor tribunals will weigh, but it doesn't exempt small employers altogether — it adjusts what's considered "reasonable" for a business of that size, not whether the duty applies at all. A five-person café is still expected to have some form of policy and reporting route; it simply isn't expected to run the same training infrastructure as a 500-person retailer.

Key Numbers

• Original "reasonable steps" duty introduced: 26 October 2024
• Duty tightened to "all reasonable steps" plus third-party liability: 1 October 2026

Sources

• Shoosmiths — 2026: A new era for the duty to prevent sexual harassment
• Linklaters — Duty on employers to take reasonable steps
• gov.uk — Reasonable steps factsheet
• Acas — Steps for employers to prevent sexual harassment

Educational content only — not financial advice.