Employment Rights Act 2025

From 30^th October 2026, the Employment Rights Act 2025 provides for stronger laws against sexual harassment.

Stronger anticipatory duty

Currently, employers are under a statutory duty to take reasonable steps to prevent the sexual harassment of employees and workers – see the Worker Protection (Amendment to the Equality Act 2010) Act 2023.

From 30^th October the Employment Rights Act 2025 goes further, and employers will have to take all reasonable steps to prevent workplace harassment - raising the bar from the current standard of ‘reasonable steps’.

The Act allows regulations to be made to specify steps that are to be regarded as ‘reasonable’ for the purpose of determining whether an employer has taken, or failed to take, all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of an employee. Such steps may include, specifically, the carrying out of risk assessments, publishing certain plans or policies, and taking steps relating to the reporting of sexual harassment and relating to the handling of complaints.

Third-party harassment

From 30^th October 2026, the Act makes employers explicitly liable for permitting a third party to harass an employee, if harassment happens in the course of employment and the employer did not take all reasonably practicable steps to prevent this. This applies to every type of harassment - not just sexual harassment.

The EHRC take the view that the sexual harassment preventative duty already covers third-party harassment, but this can only be enforced by the EHRC whereas the Act will give workers the right to claim compensation for third-party harassment.

Other measures

• Qualifying disclosures - disclosing sexual harassment has, from 6^th April 2026, been added to the list of what counts as a qualifying disclosure, making it more explicit that this can amount to whistleblowing – as long as it meets the test of reasonable belief that it is made in the public interest (and other tests needed for it to be a protected disclosure).

• NDAs - from a date in 2027 yet to be determined, any provision in an agreement preventing a worker from making allegations or disclosures about harassment or discrimination, including disclosures about the employer's response to such allegations, will be void. See further.