We finished yesterday’s webinar on third-party harassment with the chat full of questions and nearly 900 people having registered. That tells you something about where this topic sits right now.
The all reasonable steps duty arrives on 30th October – just weeks away. Most organisations have been focused on the internal picture. Training, reporting routes, investigation processes. All of which matter enormously, and all of which we have covered in previous sessions.
But yesterday we talked about the liability that sits outside that. Third-party harassment – clients, customers, contractors, visitors – extending to all protected characteristics under the Equality Act. And one theme ran through the entire conversation that I think deserves more than a replay link.
The question every organisation needs to answer
Do your employees genuinely believe they come first?
Not in policy, not in principle, but in practice – when the person who has harassed them is a client representing a significant commercial relationship. When reporting feels risky. When they are not sure what will happen if they speak up.
Emily Webberley, an experienced ethics and compliance leader at Vodafone, put it plainly during the session. The legislation is, at its core, fantastic from an employee perspective. But the harder question is not whether an organisation has the right policies. It is whether employees genuinely believe that their employer has their back – even when commercial stakes are high.
That belief does not come from a policy document. It comes from culture and consistency, and from what employees see happening when things go wrong.
Rulebooks are not enough
Emily described how Vodafone has moved towards a values-led, behaviours-led code of conduct – one built around high-level principles rather than an exhaustive list of rules. The reasoning is straightforward: you cannot anticipate every situation. But if your culture is clear – that employees are respected, that integrity matters, that people are protected – then the specific gap in policy coverage matters far less than whether those values are genuinely embedded.
The distinction between a rules-based and a values-based approach is not just philosophical. It has practical implications for how organisations respond when situations arise that nobody planned for. A values-led culture gives employees and managers a framework to act within even when the rulebook does not have the answer.
Kate Dodd, Partner and employment law specialist at Pinsent Masons, reinforced this from a legal perspective. You cannot mention every situation, and if policies are so comprehensive that nobody reads them, comprehensiveness becomes its own problem. What tribunals will look for is evidence of a culture that took this seriously – not a document that covered every eventuality.
Follow-through is everything
The most powerful moment in the session came when Emily talked about sharing stories – of deals walked away from, of customers exited because of how they treated employees. Employees need to see this follow-through, and they need to know, concretely, that the organisation means what it says.
Emily explained that, at Vodafone, if a customer is persistently disrespectful to employees, that customer relationship ends. The rule is clear, it is communicated, and it is applied. That consistency is what makes the culture real rather than aspirational.
Kate echoed this from her experience of tribunal work. Power is at the heart of third-party harassment – the customer who feels entitled, the client who assumes their commercial importance gives them latitude. Organisations that allow that power dynamic to go unchallenged are not just failing their employees. They are creating the conditions for the kind of incidents that end up in proceedings.
What happens after someone speaks up matters just as much
Emily was direct about the communication challenge that follows an incident. Employees are watching, and they notice when someone whose behaviour has resulted in disciplinary action still receives glowing internal communications. They notice when concerns seem to disappear without consequence. That inconsistency is corrosive and it undoes far more cultural work than most organisations realise.
Even where confidentiality limits what can be shared, employees need to know that something happened, that it was taken seriously, and that the organisation learned from it. The feedback loop is part of what makes speak-up culture real.
And the independence of the reporting channel matters enormously in this context. An employee worried about the commercial implications of raising a concern about a client needs to feel that their report goes somewhere genuinely independent – somewhere the account relationship cannot influence what happens next. Independence is not just good practice. It is part of what makes “employees come first” believable rather than just stated.
The legal dimension
None of this is just a cultural aspiration. From 30th October, employers will need to demonstrate they took all reasonable steps to prevent third-party harassment – and that demonstration begins with evidence.
Kate was clear: the risk assessment is the foundation. Everything else – policies, training, incident records, decision-making trails, commercial contracts – should flow from it. That includes scrutinising suppliers and commercial partners. What training do they provide? What does your contract say about expected standards of behaviour? Getting commercial teams involved in this work is not optional.
The risk assessment itself is a living document. It should be reviewed at least every six months and updated every time an incident occurs. What happened? What steps were taken? What do we do differently now? That continuous improvement loop is both good practice and good evidence.
One theme. One question.
Everything discussed in today’s session came back to the same place: Do your employees genuinely believe they come first?
If the answer is yes – and you can evidence it – you are in a strong position. If the answer is uncertain, the work is not just operational. It is cultural. And culture takes time.
Need help building a speak-up culture that employees actually trust?
Whether you are starting from scratch or looking to strengthen what you already have, we work with organisations across all sectors to build independent, trusted speak-up frameworks – the kind that make “employees come first” something people feel, not just something they read in a policy.
Get in touch to find out how we can help.