Read the Room Great Britain · law changed 30 Oct 2026

The law's got tougher. Ticking the box won't cut it any more.

Since 30 October 2026, every employer in Great Britain has to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment at work, including by clients and customers. Your policy's done. Your e-learning's done. What your board and the EHRC will ask is what changed, and how you know.

I help you answer that. Your people practise what to say when something's off, your managers learn to deal with it the same day, and I keep a dated record of every step. Happy staff. Better business.

A 12-month prevention programme for anywhere your people deal with clients and customers: the office, the client dinner, the shop floor and the stadium. One fixed fee, every member of staff included.

Book a 30-minute call Try four typical scenarios

Free Reasonable Steps Snapshot on the call.

Skip to the bit for you: I work in HR or I run the business

Who you'll work with

I'm Tasha Lawton, behaviour change specialist, qualified counsellor and sexologist. I've spent over a decade designing prevention programmes used in thousands of schools, and training the teachers who run them. Adults are harder. They've had longer to practise the excuses. You work with me, start to finish.

Meet Tasha

Running HR, or running the show?

What changed on 30 October 2026:

  • The duty to prevent sexual harassment went from reasonable steps to all reasonable steps, and the EHRC can investigate without anyone making a claim.
  • Your business is now liable if a customer, client or contractor harasses your staff and it didn't take all reasonable steps. That covers harassment related to sex, race, disability, age, religion or belief, sexual orientation and gender reassignment, as well as sexual harassment.
What does "all reasonable steps" look like? The Lidl example

The clearest picture so far is the EHRC's 2025 legal agreement with Lidl: a staff survey, tracking informal complaints, a risk assessment, and a review of policy and training. Read the Room is built around each of those. (I'm not connected to or endorsed by the EHRC.)

It's the same programme either way. Pick the one that sounds most like your week.

For HR teams · 250+ staff

You've got enough on. I'll take this one.

You're buried in Employment Rights Act changes. The law says all reasonable steps. The EHRC's guidance points to a survey, a risk assessment, policy that covers clients and customers, manager training and a record across every site. I run it with your team, not instead of it.

A client's hand lands on a colleague's back at dinner and stays there. What does the person next to her say in the next ten seconds?

  • Confidential staff survey (results only shown for groups big enough that nobody can be picked out), plus a review of formal and informal concern records.
  • A written risk assessment for sexual harassment: customers, late shifts, lone working, work events.
  • Policy, reporting routes, complaint process and a customer ban procedure, written for your business.
  • Eight short scenario videos, one a fortnight, each followed by a ten-minute huddle your team leaders run. Four new ones each year you renew.
  • Huddles logged per site or team, so you can see who's doing it. Pulse survey at six months, full re-survey and board report at twelve.
  • The option to train your own team to run it in-house.
How it maps to the EHRC's eight steps
1Anti-harassment policyPolicy rewritten for your business, covering customers and clients. A three-minute policy film for staff.
2Engaging with staffConfidential staff survey, team huddles all year, staff working out what to say in moments that could happen here, pulse survey at six months.
3Assessing and reducing riskSite visits, a half-day risk workshop with your leaders, and a written risk assessment.
4ReportingMore than one way to report, informal concerns recorded, and a "how to report here" film.
5TrainingLeadership workshop with me, eight scenario videos with huddles, a New Starter Pack for everyone who joins.
6Handling complaintsComplaint process, and what managers do in the first five minutes after someone tells them.
7Third-party harassmentWhat to say to customers and clients, signage, and a written ban procedure.
8Monitoring and evaluatingScorecard, dated Evidence Log, re-survey and a before-and-after report at twelve months.

The eight steps are the EHRC's guidance, not the law itself. Mapping to them lets you show your working.

Book a 30-minute call
For business owners · under 250 staff

The buck stops with you.

You might not have an HR team. If you do, it's probably outsourced and stretched. And the law firm emails keep coming: here's the problem, good luck.

You can't control what a client or customer says to your staff at a client lunch, on the till, on matchday or out on the road. The law still expects you to have taken all reasonable steps to prevent it. If a sexual harassment claim succeeds, there's no cap on compensation, and a tribunal can add up to 25% if you hadn't.

If a client or customer harasses one of your team tomorrow, what could you show you'd done to prevent it?

  • I do the legwork. You get the final say on everything.
  • A plain-English scorecard: where you're exposed and what to fix first.
  • Words your managers can say to a client or customer, and a way to ban one.
  • Eight short videos of moments your staff will recognise, each followed by a ten-minute team chat. Four new ones a year if you renew.
  • Templates written for your business: policy, risk assessment, complaint process and a log for informal concerns.
  • A record of every step, if a claim ever comes.
  • One fixed fee. Casual, seasonal and agency staff included.
Book a 30-minute call

How it works

Twelve months, mostly in normal working hours. A training day on its own doesn't change much. People forget it by Friday. So most of the year goes on managers who know what to do, and teams who've said the words out loud.

Weeks 1 to 6

Respect Check

I ask your staff what's going on.

What's included

A confidential staff survey, a look at your policies and concern records, site visits and a risk workshop with your leaders. You get a scorecard and a 90-day plan.

Weeks 4 to 10

Set-up

We fix what they tell me is broken.

What's included

A toolkit written for your business: policy, reporting routes, what to say to customers and clients, signage, and how to ban someone who crosses the line. Plus a briefing for your leaders.

From week 6

Running

Your team practises, ten minutes at a time.

What's included

Until about month five, a short video every fortnight, each followed by a ten-minute team huddle. Then a monthly huddle that comes back to the videos from a new angle. Twice in the year, your team brings a moment that could happen in your kind of workplace and works out together what to say. No names, no live complaints, and nobody has to tell their own story.

Months 6 and 12

Results

I show your board what changed.

What's included

A pulse survey at six months. At twelve, the full survey again, a new scorecard and a before-and-after report short enough for a board meeting.

Everyone is included from their first week: permanent, casual, seasonal and agency staff. New starters get a New Starter Pack in their first two shifts: three short videos and a five-minute chat with their team leader, logged. Every step goes into the Evidence Log, matched to the eight steps in the EHRC's guidance.

What a huddle looks like

Each video is a short animated comic, made for a phone, sound off if need be. The characters are animals, so nobody is cast as the villain by their face, age or skin. Then a team leader runs ten minutes from a card like this one. The first set:

  1. The client dinner
  2. The customer who won't stop
  3. Team banter nobody calls out
See all eight
  1. The manager's first five minutes, and after
  2. The message at 11pm
  3. The one everyone works around
  4. The new one
  5. The work do
Sample huddle card · 10 minutes · run by the team leader

The client dinner

Ellie, 24, is a junior account handler at a client dinner. Clive, the client, puts his hand on her back while he talks, and leaves it there. Her colleague across the table sees it.

  1. Watch up to the pause. Phones are fine. Captions on.
  2. Ask: When did you first notice something was off? What made it hard for anyone at the table to step in? Nobody has to share their own story.
  3. Watch the rest: the same dinner, done right.
  4. Practise. The team leader reads the client's lines from the card. Everyone says the colleague's line out loud: Ellie, can you grab the car details? Clive, I wanted your take on Q2. Then the next morning: Last night, with Clive. You okay? What do you want to happen?
  5. Agree how you'll get someone out of a conversation. Who we tell, and where it's written down. Who speaks to the client's side. It doesn't matter how big the account is. We never move the person who reported it unless they ask.
  6. Close. If this brought anything up, talk to your manager or call your employee assistance line.

What your board sees

When your board, a tribunal or the EHRC asks what you did, you'll need to show them. You get a scorecard that shows where the risk is, then a dated Evidence Log of every step you take.

SAMPLE

Respect Check scorecard

Example Insurance Brokers Ltd · 6 offices · March 2027

64%of staff took the survey
31%saw or experienced harassment in the last year
11%of them reported it
Manager responseREDMost managers unsure what to doOnly 2 of 6 office heads knew where to log a concern
Customer harassmentREDNo procedure for a client who harasses staff
Policy and reportingAMBERPolicy exists. Most staff haven't seen it
Risk assessmentAMBERDone for safety, not for harassment
TrainingAMBERE-learning only, last done 2024
RecordingGREENFormal complaints tracked well

First 90 days: manager response in all 6 offices, then a client and customer procedure.

A sample. The company and figures are invented. Yours come from your own staff survey and records.

Want to see where you stand now? The Snapshot's free on the call.Book a 30-minute call

Same jokes. Two endings.

Nadia stacks the bottom shelf. Gaz thinks he's funny. Watch it twice.

Banter, grey area, or your problem?

Four situations your managers could face this week. Some are harder than they look.

On the bar1 of 4

A general guide to the law, not legal advice.

Want harder ones? Ten Hard Calls is a free five-minute quiz for your managers, from the shop floor to the client dinner.

Got one wrong? That's what it's for. Let's talk.Book a 30-minute call

Why not just buy a £500 course?

A course is one step. The law asks for all reasonable steps. Old training may not count either. In Allay v Gehlen (2021), the employer had trained its staff and still couldn't rely on it, because the training was stale.

And no complaints doesn't mean no problem.

85%

of people sexually harassed at work in the past year didn't formally report it.

39%

of working women's most recent experience of sexual harassment at work involved a customer, client or other outsider, not a colleague. Fewer than 1 in 3 women who were harassed told their employer.

A course on its ownRead the Room
A policy on the intranet nobody's openedA team that knows exactly what to say in the moment
E-learning clicked through at home, once a yearTen-minute huddles in work time all year, practising out loud together
"Report it to HR"A manager who's already shown they'll act
Complaints that arrive as grievancesA quiet word, early, before it gets that far
Casual and agency staff left outEveryone included, from their first week
A template pack you download and fill in yourselfTemplates written for your business, and help putting them to work
A certificateA record of what changed
What it's already costing you, and what changes
Your culture

After being harassed at work, the most common outcome people report is looking for another job. You don't see it coming. You just see good people go quiet, go off sick, or go.

What I'm aiming for: people who say something early and don't leave.

Your hours

Managers covering absences, chasing sick notes, rehiring, and handling complaints that should have been sorted weeks ago.

More of it sorted in a ten-minute chat, before anyone needs a formal grievance.

Your money

There's no cap on compensation. If a sexual harassment claim succeeds and you didn't take all reasonable steps, a tribunal can add up to 25%.

If a claim ever comes, you've got a record of every step you took.

And I measure it. Staff turnover, and the hours your managers spend on complaints, before and after.

85%: Government Equalities Office, 2020 Sexual Harassment Survey (published 2021), 12,131 people. 39% and 1 in 3: TUC and Opinium, April 2023, 1,010 working women in the UK (39% of most recent incidents involved a third party; 30% of women harassed told their employer). Allay (UK) Ltd v Gehlen, Employment Appeal Tribunal, 2021. Read the Room helps you take the steps; whether an employer took all reasonable steps is decided on the facts of each case.

One package. One fixed fee.

Everything is included for every member of staff, for the whole year:

  • The Respect Check, with a scorecard and a 90-day plan
  • Templates written for your business: policy, risk assessment, complaint process, a log for informal concerns, and a customer ban procedure
  • Eight videos with huddle cards, plus four new ones each year you renew
  • The Evidence Log, and a full re-check at twelve months with a report for your board
  • Every part mapped to the EHRC's eight steps

The fee is set by the size of your business, with no charge per head, so staff turnover doesn't cost you more.

Ask me for a quote

Rather run it yourselves? I'll train your own HR or learning team to run the Respect Check and the huddles in-house, with as many people as you need to cover your sites. You then pay a yearly licence instead of the renewal, and I come back for a full re-check every two to three years.

Optional extras: customer abuse on every ground the third-party rules cover, including racist, religious, homophobic and transphobic abuse. A culture review at board level.

"Can procurement buy this?"

Yes. Read the Room is a registered UK company, so it's a normal UK invoice. I hold professional indemnity and public liability insurance, and I'll send you the certificates.

"We already have a policy and an e-learning module."

Good. Keep them. A module clicked through once a year still doesn't change what happens at the client dinner, on the shop floor on a Friday night, or at the leaving drinks. This sits alongside it and changes what people do.

"What are the odds of a claim, really?"

Maybe low in any one year. You don't need a claim to pay for this. You're already paying in staff turnover, sick days and managers' time. And the EHRC doesn't wait for a claim: it can investigate and take enforcement action if it thinks the duty isn't being met.

Tasha Lawton, smiling, with short blonde hair and gold hoop earrings

I'm Tasha Lawton

Behaviour change specialist and prevention programme designer.

I'm a qualified counsellor and sexologist, so I can say the awkward words out loud without anyone dying of embarrassment. That's most of the job.

Born near Aberdeen. Twenty-six years in Australia, and now coming home. Australia put a positive duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment in December 2022, so I've watched this shift land once already.

For over a decade, I've designed respectful relationships and domestic abuse prevention programmes in Australia. They run in thousands of schools, including every school in Western Australia and every state school in Queensland and South Australia.

Programmes I've designed are used by Queensland Health, independent schools in South Australia and the Northern Territory, and all three school sectors in Western Australia (government, Catholic and independent).

I've trained hundreds of teachers to run these conversations themselves, run workshops, and spoken at conferences on this topic, including the World Association for Sexual Health (WAS).

Why I'm doing this

I've designed programmes that teach young people to read a room, and trained the teachers who run them. Most of the adults I meet at work never had that lesson. They need it now.

And I don't want my own kids going to work somewhere they'll be harassed. Nobody should have to put up with that to earn a living.

You work with me. I design it, I run your Respect Check, and I deliver the leadership workshop myself.

You'll speak to me

Book a 30-minute call

Tell me how many sites or offices you've got and what's worrying you. I'll tell you straight whether this is right for you, and if it isn't, I'll say so.

Get your free Reasonable Steps Snapshot

On the call, we'll go through ten yes-or-no questions about your business together. Afterwards, you'll get a one-page red, amber and green snapshot of where you stand today. It's free, and it's yours to keep, whether or not we work together. It's a practical guide, not a legal assessment.

Pick a time for your call Or email me