From October 2026, the strengthened sexual harassment prevention duty under the Employment Rights Act 2025 requires organisations to evidence proactive prevention measures, not merely hold a policy in a drawer. For recruitment agencies and labour providers, the harassment prevention duty is enforceable by the Fair Work Agency, and “we have a policy” will not satisfy it.
This is a shift from reactive to preventative. The question a regulator will ask is no longer whether you responded to a complaint, but what you did to stop the risk arising in the first place — and whether you can prove it.
What the Strengthened Duty Requires
The existing duty, introduced in October 2024, required employers to take “reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment. The Employment Rights Act 2025 raises that bar to “all reasonable steps” and brings enforcement under the Fair Work Agency framework from October 2026.
The practical consequence is a higher evidential standard. An organisation must be able to demonstrate:
- A current risk assessment covering where and how harassment could occur, including third-party harassment from clients or the public.
- Active, dated training records for staff and, where relevant, for workers placed on assignment.
- Clear reporting routes that workers actually know about and can use.
- Evidence that concerns raised were acted on and reviewed.
A policy document alone now counts for very little. What is tested is what you did with it.
Why Recruitment Agencies Are Squarely in Scope
Agencies occupy an awkward position: they place workers into workplaces they do not control. That does not remove the duty — it complicates it.
Where a temporary worker is harassed on assignment, questions will be asked of the agency about what steps it took to protect that worker, including what it agreed with the end client. The tri-partite nature of temporary work means responsibility is shared, and an agency cannot assume the hirer carries all of it.
This is why the arrangements between agency, umbrella and end client need to be explicit. Who provides the training? Where does a placed worker report a concern? Who investigates? If those answers are not documented before an assignment starts, they will be argued about after an incident — the worst possible time.
The Fair Work Agency is Watching
The Fair Work Agency, launched in April 2026, consolidates National Minimum Wage, holiday pay, agency worker and labour abuse enforcement into a single body operating on an intelligence-led model. Harassment prevention now sits within that same enforcement architecture.
That matters because it changes how the duty is likely to be policed. The Agency uses data-matching and multi-agency risk-sharing rather than waiting for individual complaints. Sectors with high volumes of low-paid, temporary or vulnerable workers — precisely where much agency labour sits — are an obvious enforcement priority.
For a labour provider, being unable to produce evidence of prevention measures during a compliance check is now a live risk, independent of whether any complaint has been made.
What to Put in Place Before October 2026
The duty is preventative, so the work must be done in advance. Agencies and umbrella companies should:
- Carry out and document a harassment risk assessment covering their own operations and the environments workers are placed into.
- Deliver and record training for internal staff, and set expectations for placed workers.
- Agree, in writing with end clients, who is responsible for prevention, reporting and investigation on assignment.
- Establish a reporting route that a temporary worker can use easily and confidentially, and log how concerns are handled.
- Review the arrangements periodically, because a stale risk assessment is close to no risk assessment.
None of this is exotic. It is the same discipline that underpins every other area of temporary-labour compliance: assess the risk, act on it, and keep the records.
FCSA’s Position
Worker protection is the point of the standard, not a by-product of it. FCSA assessment already tests a Member’s contractual arrangements, worker communications and governance — the same foundations the strengthened harassment duty depends on. An FCSA Member is one that treats compliance as an operating discipline rather than a document, which is exactly what “all reasonable steps” now demands.
Agencies building a compliant supply chain should confirm their providers meet an independently tested standard. Use the FCSA Members register to verify accredited providers, and review what FCSA Accreditation covers to understand the assurance it gives on worker protection.
