When The Harasser Is A Customer

Kate 0:38

Picture this it's a Friday night and your bar is three deep. One of your team, twenty years old, six months in the job, is collecting glasses. A customer puts a hand where it absolutely should not be. She freezes. A colleague sees it. The customer laughs, says something about it being a bit of fun, and turns back to his mates. And the cue is still there, and the music is still loud and nobody quite knows what they're allowed to do. So the shift carries on. Now hold that picture and change the setting. A care worker on a home visit, listening to the same comments from the same client every week, saying nothing because she assumes it's part of the role. An engineer who has started finding reasons not to be on site on the days a particular contractor is there because of the jokes. An account manager who dreads a standing Tuesday call with a client who belittles her. And everybody in the office knows he's difficult and everybody works around it. None of those four people work with someone who harassed them. They work for you, and they were harassed by somebody else. And from the 30th of October, that is squarely within your responsibility to try to prevent whatever the harassment was about. That's what today is about. What all reasonable steps actually means, what the new third-party duty asks of you, and why the cheapest tribunal insurance a small business can buy is a team that feels able to speak up. Kettle on. Let's get into it.

Why October Changes Everything

Kate 2:16

The welcome to the hive. Welcome back to Buzzing About HR, the podcast that makes sense of the world of work, one honeycomb of good advice at a time. I'm Kate, your HR Queen Bee. Hazel, our self-appointed well-being officer, is here and has already been briefed that today is a serious one, which she has interpreted as lying down with enormous dignity and then immediately snoring. Quick nod, before we start, it's National Payroll Week from the 7th to the 11th of September. So if you have a payroll person or you are the payroll person doing it at 9 o'clock on a Sunday night, consider yourself properly appreciated. Nothing in a business gets forgiven faster than a payroll run that goes right, and nothing gets noticed faster than one that doesn't. Right? Last week we walked the whole October runway, the two dates and the September audit.

Two Legal Changes To Know

Kate 3:14

Today we go deep on the biggest single thing in it, the harassment duty that steps up on the 30th of October. Two changes working together and they have different shapes, so I'll be precise about both. The existing preventative duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment becomes a duty to take all reasonable steps. And a broader third-party harassment liability arrives, covering harassment of your team by customers, clients, contractors, suppliers, and the public, related to any protected characteristic. Here's my promise for the next 20 minutes or so. No jargon, no doom, no fear. What the extra word really changes, what the third-party duty looks like in a real business on a real Friday night, how reporting harassment now interacts with whistleblowing law, and why a speak up culture is the best value protection you will ever buy. Let's go.

What All Reasonable Steps Means

Kate 4:18

The buzz. Let's start with the wording because one small word is doing an enormous amount of work here. Until the 30th of October, the preventative duty is to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment. From the 30th of October, it's all reasonable steps. Reasonable steps to all reasonable steps. And note where that upgrade sits because it matters. It's the sexual harassment duty that gets the extra word. Under the old wording, you could point at a policy and a bit of good intent and largely be fine. Under the new wording, the question changes. It stops being did you do something sensible? and becomes, did you do the things a sensible employer in your position would have done? And if you didn't do one of them, why not? A tribunal can now ask not just what you did, but what else you reasonably could have done and chose not to. That's the shift. It's from having a position to being able to show you're working. In practice, all reasonable steps means five active things. Risk assess, so know where harassment could actually happen in your business. Train so your people know what it is and your managers know what to do with a report. Communicate so your policy is a thing people have heard of rather than a file on a drive. Provide a reporting route people would genuinely use. And act when something comes in. Now the second change, and this is the genuinely new one.

Third Parties And Protected Characteristics

Kate 5:54

Third party harassment. From the 30th of October, you can be liable for harassment of your staff by people who don't work for you. The customer, the client, the contractor, the supplier, the member of the public. If your team faces this and you've done nothing to prevent it or deal with it, that's now your responsibility as the employer. And this one is wider than the first change, which is the bit that gets missed. The all reasonable steps upgrade is about sexual harassment. The third party liability covers harassment related to any protected characteristic. Race, disability, age, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, and gender reassignment, all in scope. So the contractor with the remarks about somebody's accent counts. The client who is snide about a colleague's hearing aid counts. The regular who has opinions about how old your bar manager is counts. It is not only about sexual harassment. Three things people get wrong here, so let me be precise. First, third party means anyone your staff encounter in the course of their work who isn't a colleague. That's a wide net and it deliberately includes the people who pay your invoices. Second, harassment is not only the extreme cases. It's unwanted conduct related to a protected characteristic that violates someone's dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment for them. Third, and please write this one down, the old three strikes rule has gone. There is no longer any requirement that it must have happened twice before, and no free pass for the first two. One incident, ignored, is enough. One more thing to know about the stakes. Where an employer hasn't followed a proper process, awards can be uplifted by up to 25%, and discrimination awards are uncapped. So the cost of getting this wrong isn't small and it isn't fixed. That's the buzz. A higher, more active bar and a whole new group of people whose behavior towards your team is now your business.

Effort Matters More Than Perfection

Kate 8:13

The hive check. Let's do a quick check on the thing that trips employers up, because it's the difference between this feeling frightening and this feeling completely doable. The muddle is this. People hear all reasonable steps to prevent harassment and hear guarantee that harassment never happens. And of course, you can't guarantee that. You cannot control what a customer says at 11 o'clock on a Friday night. You cannot control a contractor's sense of humour. So it lands as an impossible standard, and impossible standards make people freeze and do nothing at all. But that isn't what's being asked. The law is not asking you to promise nothing ever goes wrong. It's asking you to show you took sensible, active steps to prevent it. And the word that carries the whole thing is reasonable. Reasonable for a five-person salon looks nothing like reasonable for a 200-person firm, and the law knows that perfectly well. Nobody expects a small business to have a compliance department. They expect you to have thought honestly about where your risks are and done the obvious proportionate things about them. Here's the heart of it. This duty is judged on your effort, not on a perfect outcome. If something does go wrong, the question is, what had this employer actually done to try to prevent it? A business that risk assessed, trained its people, had a real policy, and a reporting route people trusted, and acted when something came up is in a completely different position to one that did nothing and hoped. Now, one honest wrinkle because you'll hear it from somebody else if you don't hear it from me. The regulations that will spell out what actually counts as reasonable steps are not out yet. They're expected in 2027 after a public consultation. So from the 30th of October, you're being asked to meet a higher standard before the detailed guidance defining it exists, which I know sounds like the wrong way round, because it is. Here's what I'd do about that, and it isn't wait. Waiting is the one response that definitely doesn't help, because the duty starts in October, whatever the regulations say later. Do the obvious, proportionate things now and write them down. We looked honestly at our risks. We did what a sensible employer our size would do. And here is the evidence is the defence either way, before those regulations and after them. Nothing in that list is going to be made wrong by a regulation in 2027. So the honest check. You can't promise harassment never happens. You can absolutely show that you saw the risk, told your team they were protected, gave them a route and would back them. All of that is in your control, and most of it can be done in September. The Sting.

How Small Warnings Become Claims

Kate 11:09

Here's the part worth sitting with, gently. Almost nobody's first harassment claim starts with a dramatic incident. That's the thing I most want to land today. It starts with something small that got brushed off. It starts with someone saying, He's a bit much, isn't he? In a corridor, and a manager saying, Oh, he's harmless, don't worry about it. It starts with a joke in a team meeting that a couple of people laughed at and one person didn't. It starts with a member of staff mentioning half as a joke that a client's messages have got a bit weird and nobody following up because it was said lightly and the week was busy. Every single time the small thing was a test. The person was checking what happens here when I say something. And when the answer comes back as nothing happens here, two things follow. The person stops telling you. And the behavior, whether it's a colleague or a customer, learns that this is a place where that goes unchallenged. By the time it reaches you formally, it's been going on for months, there's no record of the early mentions, and the first written note in the file is the grievance. Now here's what that gap costs beyond the legal risk, because that's the bit that actually keeps me up. Someone being harassed who feels they can't safely speak up is carrying it alone at work every day. They go quiet, they dread particular shifts, particular calls, particular days, they stop volunteering for things, and eventually they leave, and you never find out why, and you tell yourself she just wanted a change.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Which brings me to the claim I'll defend all day. A speak-up culture is the cheapest tribunal insurance a small business can buy, not because it makes claims impossible, but because it catches things while they're still small, cheap, and fixable. A concern raised in week one is a conversation. The same concern in month nine is a grievance, an investigation, a resignation, and possibly a claim with an uncapped award attached. Same facts. Wildly different

The Paying Client Who Belittles Staff

SPEAKER_01 14:19

price. And you don't buy it with a budget, you buy it by making it safe to say something and then visibly doing something when someone does. The growl.

Kate 14:30

Hazel says the quiet part. Right. Time for the segment. Hazel, my German short haired pointer, born January 2024, self-appointed well-being officer, cannot talk. What she has is a face, and I read you the subtitles. Then I give you the version you can put in an email. This week's subject, the client who is horrible to the account manager. Subtitles on.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Let me get this straight. There's a man who makes one of your team feel small every single Tuesday. And the reason he's still allowed to do it is that he pays his invoices on time. So he's a business expense now, isn't he? Lovely. You've put it on the recruitment page. Competitive salary, 25 days holiday, and one man gets to speak to you like that because of what he's worth to us. I have bitten precisely nobody, and I am somehow the badly behaved one in this house.

Kate 15:33

Subtitles off. And for the record, nobody in this house bites the clients. What I'd say properly is this. From the 30th of October, you can be liable for harassment of your staff by third parties, related to any protected characteristic, and he's a good client has never once appeared on the list of reasonable steps. Here's a test I'd offer. If that behavior came from someone on your payroll, it would be a disciplinary matter. The fact that it comes from a customer doesn't make it acceptable. It just makes it more awkward to deal with. And awkward is not the same as impossible. You can have the conversation, you can set an expectation. And if it carries on, you can decide that this contract costs more than it earns, because losing a good account manager isn't free either. Which is, I notice, precisely what was running under the dog. Minus the biting. Although knowing her, the biting was implied. The waggle dance. So what do you actually do? Six things, and none of them need a legal department. One, do a risk assessment.

Six Practical Steps For September

Kate 16:46

Half an hour, honestly done. Where could harassment happen here? Who deals with the public, works alone, does home visits, works late, deals with contractors on site? Which client does everybody quietly dread? Most businesses can name their flashpoints in about four minutes if they let themselves write it down. That written page is itself a reasonable step and it tells you where everything else should go. 2. Name third parties in your policy. Update your anti-harassment policy so it plainly says your staff have the right not to be harassed by customers, clients, contractors, or the public on any grounds, not just sexual ones, and that you will support them if it happens. Plain English, the kind a human would actually read. 3. Tell your team out loud that they're protected. This matters as much as the policy. An enormous number of people genuinely believe that abuse from a customer is just part of the job. Say, in a team meeting, in writing, in an induction, that it isn't and that you want to know. That sentence does more work than the document does. 4. Train your managers because they're the ones who receive this. Which brings me to a thing I've been promising. Cake, coffee, and compliance starts on Tuesday, the 13th of October, one hour, Tuesdays at 9.30. Here's why it matters this week. The person who has to act when a customer crosses the line is not you. It's your line manager. Live in the moment on a busy Friday. If they get that right, most of this never becomes formal. Details are at kateunderwoodhr.co.uk slash managers. 5. Put in a safe reporting route. Not just tell your manager, because sometimes the manager is the problem, or is lovely and simply doesn't know what to do, or is standing right next to the customer. People need somewhere that feels genuinely safe and confidential. That's what Safe Voice is for. It's an independent, confidential speakup route that gives your team a real way to raise something and gives you a proper record that you took it seriously. It's one of the clearest, all reasonable steps you can point at. Have a look at safevoice.co.uk. 6. Back your people when it counts. The first time you decline to serve an abusive customer or have a firm word with a client on an employee's behalf, you tell your entire team that you meant every word of the policy. That one moment is worth more than the document ever will be. And one more thing you need to know because it changes how you handle a report. Since the 6th of April 2026,

Harassment Reports And Whistleblowing Risk

Kate 19:44

reporting sexual harassment can qualify as a protected disclosure under whistleblowing law. In plain English, someone raising a concern about harassment, whether it happened to them or they witnessed it happening to someone else, can now carry whistleblowing protection as well. So if a person reports and is then treated badly for having spoken up, you are no longer only in harassment territory. You may be in whistleblowing territory too, with its own protections and its own claims. How you handle a report now matters twice over. Take everyone seriously, handle it fairly, and never let anyone be penalised for raising a genuine concern. The swarm. Myth one. I can't be responsible for what a customer says. From the 30th of October, in

Myths That Keep Employers Stuck

Kate 20:39

a real sense, you're responsible for taking reasonable steps to protect your team from it, and that covers harassment, related to any protected characteristic, not just sexual harassment. You can't control the customer. You can absolutely assess the risk, brief your staff, set expectations, back people up, and give them a way to report it. That's what's being asked, and it's doable. Myth 2. Nobody's ever complained, so we're fine. Subtitles from the well-being officer. She never said anything is not evidence that nothing happened. It's evidence that nobody made it safe to say anything. Those are two very different things, and only one of them is your fault. Right. That's enough out of the doorway. Although, if your reporting route has never been used, that isn't a clean bill of health. It's a smoke alarm you've never tested. Myth 3. Our harassment policy is in the handbook, so we're covered. A policy is the starting line, not the finish. All reasonable steps asks what you actively did. Risk assess, train, communicate, provide a route and act. A policy nobody has read or been trained on will not carry you on its own. Myth four. If I make a fuss about a client's behaviour, I'll lose the account. Possibly. Now price the other side of it. An uncapped discrimination award potentially uplifted by up to 25% for a poor process. Plus the time, plus recruiting and training a replacement for the person who left because nobody backed her. Weigh that properly and the difficult conversation with the client starts looking like the cheap option because it is. The honeycomb. Your quick action list? Six things to do this month in order. One, spend half

Your Quick Action List

Kate 22:38

an hour on a harassment risk assessment, including third parties. Which roles? Which shifts? Which clients? Write it down. Two, update your anti-harassment policy so it explicitly covers customers, clients, contractors, and the public on any protected characteristic in plain English. 3. Say out loud to your team that they don't have to absorb abuse from anyone, including a customer, and that you want to hear about it. 4. Brief your managers on how to receive a report calmly, confidentially, and properly and how to shut something down in the moment. Cake, coffee and compliance at kateunderwoodhr.co.uk slash managers is built for exactly that starting Tuesday, October 13th. 5. Put in a safe, independent, confidential reporting route so people can speak up even when they can't face telling their manager. Take a look at safevoice at safevoice.co.uk. 6. Remember that since April 6, 2026, a report of sexual harassment can be a protected disclosure. So handle every report fairly and never let anyone suffer for raising one. And to see where your harassment foundations actually stand before the 30th of October, take the free HR Health Check at KateunderwoodHr.co.uk slash HR-health-check. Five to seven minutes, instant red, amber and green, and a report in your inbox. Flying the hive, so that's the harassment duty. All reasonable steps on sexual harassment from the 30th of October. And a broader new responsibility to protect your team from harassment by customers, clients, contractors, and the public on any protected characteristic. Written down, it sounds heavy. In practice, it comes back to something simple and human. See the risk, tell your people they're protected, give them a safe way to say something and back them when they do. And remember the standard is your effort, not a perfect outcome. You can't promise harassment never happens. You can show you took it seriously and did the reasonable things in advance, and you can do that now, without waiting for the regulations that are expected in 2027. That's the legal test and the right thing to do in one. One last gentle thing. This episode goes out two days before World Suicide Prevention

The Human Cost And Final Notes

Kate 25:14

Day on Thursday, the 10th of September, and it feels right to mark it. The reason any of this matters isn't really the tribunal risk. It's that being worn down at work by anyone affects how people feel about getting up in the morning, and sometimes a great deal more than that. If someone around you seems to be struggling, a calm, kind conversation and a signpost to proper support is never wasted time. That's all. No pitch attached to that one. If you'd like a clear picture of where you stand before the 30th of October, start with the free HR Health Check at kateunderwoodhr.co.uk slash hr-health dash check. Or drop us a line at buzz at kateunderwoodhr.co.uk. No pressure, no jargon, just a proper conversation about keeping your people safe and your business sound. Until next time, keep buzzing and take care of your people. Kettle on standards up.