Sexual Harassment legislation has changed Here's what it means for you
On Friday, two changes under the Employment Rights Act came into force that reach into almost every part of a working day in hospitality. Employers must now take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their teams, rather than simply reasonable steps. They can also be held legally responsible when a guest, supplier or anyone else from outside the business harasses one of their staff, whether that harassment is sexual, racist, homophobic or related to any other protected characteristic.
These changes arrive just as the industry braces for the busiest and most demanding weeks of the year. The festive period brings office parties, long lunches that drift into the evening and guests who have often been drinking before they arrive, and all this can mean a higher chance that somebody's behaviour towards the team crosses a line. It also brings the conditions that make those moments hardest to handle well: fuller books, longer shifts, seasonal staff who may not yet know the policy or who to tell, managers who are stretched across a frantic floor and less able to spot an incident, let alone deal with it properly.
That is exactly when a response worked out in advance matters most: the weeks before December are the time to get on top of this, rather than in the middle of the Christmas rush - or even, when it’s too late.
This piece builds on the sexual harassment section of our guide to the employment legislation changes, drawing on what hospitality HR leaders told us about putting it into practice. We’re covering what the law now says, what it means for employers and what it means for the people working for them.
The TL;DR
- Since 30 October, employers must take "all reasonable steps" to prevent sexual harassment, rather than "reasonable steps".
- Since the same date, employers can be held responsible when a guest, supplier or anyone else outside the business harasses a member of the team, and this covers every protected characteristic, not only sexual harassment.
- Since April, reporting sexual harassment can count as whistleblowing, and since 1 October, people have six months rather than three to bring a tribunal claim.
- Regulations defining "all reasonable steps", and new limits on confidentiality agreements, are expected in 2027.
Part 1: What has changed, and what it means
From reasonable steps to all reasonable steps
Since October 2024, employers have had a duty to take “reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment of their staff, whether it comes from a colleague, a manager or a guest, and since October 30th it is now “all reasonable steps”. Acas explains the difference plainly: where an employer might once have chosen some of the reasonable steps open to them, they are now expected to take every step that is reasonable for a business of its size and sector. The emphasis is on preventing harassment rather than reacting to it, across the whole business, and online as well as in person, which in an industry that runs on group chats matters more than it might first appear.
This duty does not create a claim on its own, but where somebody wins a sexual harassment claim and the tribunal finds the employer fell short of it, compensation, which has no upper limit in harassment cases, can be increased by up to a quarter.
Responsibility for guests and other third parties
The second change matters most to hospitality, because it covers anybody who is in the building, not just those on the payroll. Now, an employer can be held liable when a guest, supplier, contractor or delivery driver harasses one of its team, and unlike the preventative duty this is a claim in its own right. The only defence would be that the employer had already taken all reasonable steps to prevent it. This also covers harassment related to any characteristic the Equality Act protects, including race, disability, religion, sexual orientation and age, so a guest making racist remarks to a chef at the pass falls within it just as much as a guest making sexual comments to a server.
Much was made in Parliament of the worry that pubs and restaurants would have to police conversations at the bar, but the government's position is that a step which interfered disproportionately with a guest's freedom of expression would not be a reasonable one, and that a remark somebody finds upsetting is not, by itself, harassment. Nobody is being asked to monitor what guests discuss over dinner, but a business is expected to act when behaviour directed at its team clearly crosses a line.
In law, harassment is unwanted conduct, related to a protected characteristic or of a sexual nature, that violates somebody's dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them, and a single incident can be enough.
What sits alongside it, and what is still to come
Since April, telling your employer about sexual harassment can be a protected disclosure under whistleblowing law, so treating somebody worse for raising it can become a separate claim, and since 1 October anybody bringing a tribunal claim has six months from the incident to do so.
The regulations setting out exactly what "all reasonable steps" should include are not expected until 2027, so for now the best reference points are the guidance from Acas and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and a ban on contract clauses that stop people speaking about harassment is also expected in 2027.
Why our industry?
A survey by Unite found that 47% of hospitality workers had experienced sexual harassment and 69% had witnessed it, and research from Sheffield Hallam University found that people in our sector on zero hours and other insecure contracts are 60% more likely to report being harassed than the average UK worker. Late nights, alcohol, constant contact with the public, young teams and guests who expect to be indulged are, between them, a fairly precise description of why the law has been tightened where it has.
Part 2: What it means for employers
The question you will be asked has changed
Until now, an employer facing a harassment claim could point to what it had done, whether that was a policy, a training session or a complaint dealt with. Now, the question is whether there was anything else it could reasonably have done and did not. Answering that means being able to show that the team knows the policy exists, that managers know what to do with it, and that the business has thought honestly about where the risks sit in its own rooms and acted on what it found.
That starts with a written assessment of where harassment is likely to happen, which is the document most likely to be asked for and the one fewest businesses have. It might be the late close when one server is left with the last table, the private dining room where a group has been drinking since lunch, the early delivery when a chef is alone in the kitchen, or the regular whose behaviour everybody has quietly learned to work around. What really counts is recording what you changed as a result.
Decide your response before you need it
Here’s one of the most useful things hospitality HR leaders have told us: that the problem in most businesses is not the policy, but the fact that the response varies. One Head of People described how an incident on a Friday night might be handled beautifully and reach head office on Monday, while an identical one goes unmentioned until the person involved raises it the following week because they still feel awful about it. Her group had written down five levels of harassment as they actually occur in their restaurants, from repeated unwanted comments to criminal behaviour, and then agreed with operators exactly what happens at each level and who acts, from moving a team member to another section through to barring a guest from every site in the group.
HR advisers we spoke to added two cautions. The first was to show any written framework to a legal adviser before publishing it, because what you have classed as minor may not feel minor to the person it happened to. The second was that a framework is only as good as the manager on shift, who needs both the authority to act and the confidence that the business will back them if the table they ask to leave is one of its best customers.
What changes on the floor
Rotas may need to account for risk as well as covers, so that nobody is routinely left alone with a guest who has given cause for concern, and incidents need recording at the time, with a conversation afterwards with the person affected. A business that keeps seating a badly behaved regular in the same server's section will struggle to argue it took all reasonable steps. Equally, a member of staff who complains and then finds their shifts cut may now have a whistleblowing claim on top of the original one, so any change made after a complaint needs a clear reason written down. Staff parties and work group chats count as part of work for these purposes too.
The HR leaders we spoke to were clear that managers and head office should be trained every year and team members just as much, so that the person clearing table nine knows who to tell, and that a register of attendance is part of the evidence. A clause in supplier contracts, much like a modern slavery clause, can confirm that suppliers take responsibility for their own people. For most operators all of this will add up to a lot of administrative work.
What "all reasonable steps" does not mean
The word "all" has understandably made some operators nervous, but it does not mean every step imaginable, and it does not mean a business must guarantee that harassment will never happen. What counts as reasonable depends on the size and resources of the business, the risks it actually faces, and whether a step is likely to work. A single site with twelve staff is not expected to do what a group of twenty restaurants would, and nobody is expected to vet guests at the door, station security by every table or monitor what people talk about over dinner.
One example illustrates where the line sits. An HR leader at a high end restaurant group told us that her group was very reluctant to put up signs about guest behaviour, because a laminated notice in a dining room creates a poor impression for the great majority of guests who would never dream of behaving badly, and does little to deter the few who would. That seems a fair position, and the same message can be delivered just as effectively in booking confirmations, on the website and in terms and conditions, where guests might actually read it before they arrive. A tribunal is far more likely to ask whether the message reached guests and whether staff knew what would happen if it was ignored than whether there was a poster on the wall, and a business that can show it chose one effective route over another is in a much stronger position than one that simply did nothing.
What to do
- Write an honest risk assessment for each site and record what you changed as a result.
- Define harassment in your business at different levels of seriousness, agree what happens at each level and who acts, and show it to a legal adviser before publishing.
- Make sure everyone has more than one way to report, including a route that bypasses their line manager.
- Train managers, head office and team members every year, and keep a register.
- Give managers the authority to act on the night, record incidents at the time, and write down the reason for any change to somebody's shifts after a complaint.
- Set out expected guest behaviour in booking confirmations, on your website and in your terms, choosing the routes that suit your restaurant, and add a harassment clause to supplier contracts.
Part 3: What it means for employees
A shared responsibility
For employees, the change is less about new rules to follow than about a working environment that should feel settled and a little more predictable (as hard as that might be in hospitality!). The law now expects employers to think ahead about where harassment might happen and to put things in place before it does. That works best when the team is part of it, because the people on the floor are usually the first to notice when a regular's behaviour is starting to drift or a part of the room feels uncomfortable late in the evening.
What you can expect
In practice, that should mean being walked through the harassment policy when you start, being offered training that explains where the line sits and what happens next, and knowing that there is more than one person you can talk to, including someone other than your line manager. If a guest's behaviour crosses a line, whether the comments are sexual, racist, homophobic or about a disability or religion, you should see a manager stepping in sooner, a guest being asked to leave, or you being moved to another section, which should never leave you worse off for the rest of the shift. It is equally worth knowing that a view you disagree with or a conversation you overhear is not automatically harassment, and that nobody expects managers to police what guests talk about over dinner.
Your part in it
The same standards apply to how colleagues treat one another, on shift, at staff parties and in the team group chat, and training is there to give everybody the same understanding of where the line sits, so it is worth taking seriously rather than treating as a box to tick. If you look after others, even informally as a section leader, it also helps to know what to do when somebody tells you that something has happened, because you may well be the first person they tell. Managers can only act on what they know about, so passing on what you see, whether that is a table starting to get out of hand or a guest who has made a colleague uncomfortable before, is one of the most useful things anyone on the team can do.
If something happens
Tell someone in the business as soon as you feel able to. HR leaders tell us that people often wait days, unsure whether what happened was serious enough, and the earlier a manager knows, the more they can do about it, often while the guest is still in the room. It is never too late to raise something, though, and a good employer will want to hear about it whenever you are ready. It helps to jot down what happened while it is fresh, with the date, the time and who was there, simply so that the conversation is easier and nothing gets lost between shifts.
Raising a concern should never count against you, and the law protects you from being treated worse for doing so, which gives you and your employer a clear footing for dealing with it together. Most concerns are resolved quickly and quietly within the business when both sides approach them openly, and that is almost always the best outcome for everyone involved. If you are unsure where you stand or would like independent advice, Acas runs a free helpline that can talk you through your options, including how best to raise something with your employer.
What to do
- Get to know your employer's harassment policy and who you can talk to, including someone other than your line manager.
- Take the training seriously, because it gives the whole team the same understanding of where the line sits.
- Let a manager know when you see a situation building, so they can step in early.
- If something happens, raise it as soon as you feel able to, and jot down the details while they are fresh.
- If you would like independent advice, the Acas helpline is free and confidential.
The final word
It would be easy to read this as something done to employers on behalf of employees, but the HR leaders we spoke to described something more shared than that. They wanted their teams to feel safe, and were frustrated less by the law than by how hard it is to get the response right on every shift, whoever is in charge and however much the table is spending. What the new law asks for is that consistency, which is better for the person being harassed at table nine and better for the business too, because good people tend to stay where they know they will be looked after.
If you lead a team and will be making these calls, HR for Team Leaders runs on Monday 16 November in Central London. As ever, we would love to hear your questions and experiences, whichever side of the pass you are on.
