April 2026: A new culture test for how organisations handle sexual harassment

This is one of several employment law reforms arriving in April as part of the wider Employment Rights Act 2025. Sexual harassment was, of course, already unlawful and employees could bring claims under discrimination law if it occurred. What the legislation changes is how the law treats the act of reporting it.

From April, raising a concern about sexual harassment can count as whistleblowing. In practical terms, that means if someone speaks up and is later treated badly because they did so, the organisation could face a whistleblowing claim alongside a harassment claim.

For employers, the focus therefore shifts to what happens after someone raises a concern. The first conversation, the decision about whether to escalate it, and the way the issue is investigated may all come under closer scrutiny.

Where organisations get sexual harassment wrong

Tribunal decisions often reveal the same pattern: the issue is not simply whether harassment occurred, but how the organisation responded.

Two recurring problems appear:

1. Complaints are not taken seriously enough at the start

One employee received £350,000 after resigning following sexual harassment and victimisation linked to her complaint. The employer had initially rejected the grievance despite strong evidence. When the complaint was later upheld, the organisation failed to dismiss the perpetrator and took so long to complete the disciplinary process that he resigned first. The tribunal also criticised the company for not telling the employee what action had been taken.

2. Investigations undermine the person who raised the concern

Another case involved a senior manager who slapped a junior employee on the bottom with a ruler during a meeting while colleagues laughed. The grievance was upheld, but the outcome criticised the employee’s clothing and behaviour. The tribunal treated that as victim blaming and awarded around £90,000.

Cases like these already create liability under discrimination law. From April 2026, if the individual experiences negative treatment after raising the concern, employers could face an additional whistleblowing claim on top of the harassment claim, where compensation is uncapped.

Are managers set up for success?

In many organisations, the first person to hear about sexual harassment is not HR but a line manager.

That puts significant weight on how prepared managers are to respond. If someone raises a concern and the manager dismisses it as banter, hesitates to escalate it, or simply does not know what to do next, the situation can quickly deteriorate.

This is often not down to bad intent. More often it reflects a lack of confidence. Managers are frequently promoted for their technical skills or leadership potential, not because they have experience handling sensitive complaints.

Which raises a straightforward question for organisations: have managers actually been set up for success?

• Are they trained to recognise what sexual harassment can look like in practice? 
• Have they been trained to handle concerns that are raised informally? 
• Do they know when something needs to be escalated rather than handled informally?

ACAS guidance makes clear that harassment is judged largely by the impact on the person experiencing the behaviour, not simply the intention behind it. Behaviour that creates a humiliating or hostile environment can still amount to harassment even if the person responsible did not intend it that way.

Managers therefore need both the understanding and the confidence to respond appropriately. That means recognising when behaviour crosses a line, knowing when to escalate concerns, and crucially, being prepared to intervene rather than waiting for a complaint.

Taking an honest look at workplace culture and harassment risk

Manager capability is one part of the picture. The wider culture can either reduce or increase the risk.

Sexual harassment is often imagined as a single obvious incident. In practice, problems often begin with smaller behaviours that become normal over time: comments about appearance that make someone uncomfortable, jokes based on gender stereotypes, blurred boundaries at social events, or persistent personal messages outside working hours.

Individually, some of these moments may never reach a tribunal. But they shape the environment people are working in.

In healthier cultures, behaviour that crosses a line is addressed early. Sometimes by a manager, but often by colleagues who feel confident saying something when a comment lands badly or a situation becomes uncomfortable. In weaker cultures, people tend to look the other way, colleagues stay quiet, managers hesitate because the person involved is senior or commercially important.

Over time those informal signals shape what people believe is acceptable. 

New hires are often the clearest test. Organisations spend a lot of time shaping their employee value proposition, describing the kind of culture people can expect when they join. Someone arriving in the organisation will quickly notice whether the behaviour they see matches that promise.

For leaders, the more useful question is not simply whether the organisation could respond well to a complaint. It is whether the environment encourages people to speak up early, challenge behaviour that crosses the line, and reinforce the standards the organisation claims to value.

Changing culture takes time. Even organisations with strong values can find everyday behaviour drifting away from what was intended. With the pace of change most workplaces face, it is easy to postpone those deeper reflections. Legislative changes such as the Employment Rights Act create a natural opportunity to step back and ask some honest questions about the environment people are working in. If leaders already feel confident in their culture, these changes should reinforce that approach. For others, they may prompt a closer look at whether expectations, behaviours and accountability are as clear as they need to be.

For some organisations, that may mean treating this as a chance for a cultural reset.

What’s coming next in UK employment law

The whistleblowing change arrives in April 2026, but it sits alongside further reforms expected later this year.

From October 2026, two further changes are expected:

1. Employers will become liable for harassment by third parties, including customers or clients, unless they can show they took all reasonable steps to prevent it
2. The duty to prevent sexual harassment will move from taking “reasonable steps” to “all reasonable steps”

Separately, the government is expected to introduce reforms restricting the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) in harassment and discrimination cases. These changes are intended to prevent agreements that silence workers from speaking about workplace misconduct.

The direction of travel is clear: earlier reporting, stronger prevention, and greater transparency when concerns are raised.

A moment to pause and reflect

The legal change itself is relatively straightforward. What will be less straightforward is how prepared organisations feel when these situations arise in practice.

For some organisations, the answer will be reassuring. Their managers are well supported, expectations about respectful behaviour are clear, and those standards are visible in everyday decisions, from how people are hired and managed to what behaviour is recognised and rewarded.

For others, this may be the right moment to pause and take stock.

At NFP, we work with organisations of all sizes to support exactly that kind of reflection, whether through leadership development, cultural programmes or wider organisational transformation. The aim is not simply compliance with new legislation, but creating workplaces where respectful behaviour is clear, concerns are handled well, and people feel confident speaking up when something is not right.

The law can change the rules. What really protects organisations is the behaviour people see and experience every day.