This article is by Imogen Finnegan, Senior Consultant at Bellevue Law
In my previous column, I looked at the forthcoming unfair dismissal reforms and why employers need to rethink how they manage probation periods. The next significant employment law change arrives on 30 October 2026, when employers will be required to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment and will face new obligations in relation to harassment by third parties, including customers, clients and suppliers.
Most commentary on these changes has focused on compliance: updating policies, refreshing training and reviewing reporting procedures. All of those things matter. However, I suspect the organisations most affected by these reforms will not be those with outdated documents. They will be the organisations where there is a disconnect between the culture they describe and the culture their employees actually experience.
In that sense, the reforms are not really about policies at all. They are about leadership.
Moving from response to prevention
For many years, harassment law has focused largely on what happens after a complaint has been made. If concerns were raised, employers were expected to investigate, reach conclusions and take appropriate action.
The reforms coming into force in October shift the emphasis towards prevention. The question is no longer simply whether an employer responded appropriately once a problem emerged; increasingly, it is what steps the employer had taken to stop the problem arising in the first place.
That distinction may sound subtle, but it has significant practical implications. It requires employers to think beyond policies and procedures and consider whether the environment they have created genuinely reduces the risk of inappropriate behaviour occurring.
For founders and business leaders, that is a very different challenge.
Most problems start long before a grievance
When employers think about sexual harassment, they often think about formal complaints, investigations and Tribunal claims. By the time matters have reached that stage, however, the underlying issue has often existed for some time.
Concerns frequently begin much earlier. An inappropriate comment is dismissed as banter. A junior employee raises concerns informally and receives no meaningful response. A manager develops a reputation for pushing boundaries, but colleagues are reluctant to challenge them because of their seniority or commercial importance.
Very few organisations deliberately create those environments. More often, they drift into them. Standards become inconsistent, behaviours that would once have attracted challenge become normalised and concerns are tolerated rather than addressed.
That is why I suspect the employers most exposed by the new legislation will not necessarily be those with the weakest policies. Instead, they may be the organisations where there is the greatest difference between the standards written in the handbook and the standards employees see being applied in practice.
The real challenge? Clients, customers and commercial pressure
One of the most significant aspects of the reforms is the extension of employer responsibility to harassment by third parties. Employers will need to think not only about interactions between colleagues, but also about conduct involving customers, clients, contractors and suppliers.
For many SMEs, this is likely to be the most challenging aspect of the changes.
Most organisations know what they would do if an employee behaved inappropriately towards a colleague. The more difficult question is what happens when the conduct comes from somebody whose relationship with the business has commercial value. What happens if the complaint concerns a major client, a key supplier or someone responsible for a significant proportion of revenue?
These situations arise more frequently than many business leaders realise, particularly in founder-led organisations where commercial relationships are often closely intertwined with business success. The challenge is that there can be a tension between doing what is commercially expedient and doing what is right. The new legislation brings that tension into sharper focus.
Ultimately, whether managers feel empowered to challenge inappropriate behaviour when there is a commercial consequence attached to doing so is not really an HR issue. It is a leadership issue.
When culture becomes a legal risk
Many employers will respond to the reforms by updating policies and commissioning additional training. They should. However, it would be a mistake to assume that documents alone provide the answer. The organisations that tend to manage these issues most successfully are not necessarily those with the longest policies or the most sophisticated training programmes. More often, they are the organisations where expectations are clear, standards are applied consistently and employees trust that concerns will be taken seriously regardless of who is involved.
What the reforms are really testing is whether an employer’s stated values are reflected in day-to-day behaviour. A policy that promises “zero tolerance” carries little weight if employees believe certain individuals are effectively exempt from the rules. Equally, a business that talks about respect and inclusion but turns a blind eye to inappropriate behaviour from a key client may find it difficult to demonstrate that it has taken prevention seriously.
Rather than starting with a policy review, I would start by asking a different set of questions. Where are the highest-risk parts of the business? Which teams spend the most time dealing with clients and customers? Which managers would feel confident intervening if they witnessed inappropriate behaviour? Would employees genuinely trust the organisation to deal robustly with a complaint involving someone commercially important?
The answers to those questions are likely to tell employers far more about their preparedness than any training completion report ever will.
Bottom line
Harassment law is moving away from a model focused primarily on investigating complaints and towards one that expects employers to prevent problems from arising in the first place. For business leaders, the key question is therefore no longer whether the organisation has an anti-harassment policy.
It is whether the culture of the business genuinely reflects what that policy says. If those two things are aligned, the October reforms should be manageable. If they are not, the new legislation is far more likely to expose the gap.