The Training Every UK Employer Needs Under the 2023 Act

A guide for HR professionals, safeguarding leads and managers on bullying and harassment prevention, sexual harassment awareness, cultural competence, professional boundaries and managing difficult telephone calls

The Workers Protection Act 2023 changed the legal landscape for UK employers in a way that many organisations are still catching up with. From October 2024, employers face a positive legal duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their workers, not simply to respond to it after it has occurred. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has enforcement powers to act where employers have failed in this duty, even in the absence of an individual complaint.

This shift from reactive to proactive obligation is significant. It is no longer sufficient to have a harassment policy in an employee handbook that nobody reads. Employers must be able to demonstrate that they have taken concrete reasonable steps: conducting risk assessments, delivering training, reviewing reporting processes, and creating a workplace culture in which harassment is genuinely less likely to occur.

This guide covers the training that UK organisations need to fulfil this obligation and go beyond it: sexual harassment awareness training, bullying and harassment prevention, cultural awareness, professional boundaries, and managing difficult telephone calls. Each addresses a distinct but connected aspect of workplace wellbeing and legal compliance.

Sexual harassment awareness training: what the 2023 Act means for your organisation

Sexual harassment is defined under the Equality Act 2010 as unwanted conduct of a sexual nature that has the purpose or effect of violating someone’s dignity, or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. The definition is deliberately broad: it covers a wide range of behaviours, from unwanted physical contact to sexual comments, inappropriate jokes, the sending of sexual material, and suggestive remarks. It covers harassment by colleagues, managers, and third parties including customers and clients.

The third-party dimension is particularly important in the context of the 2023 Act. Many of the workers at greatest risk of sexual harassment from third parties, those in retail, hospitality, healthcare, social care, and other public-facing roles, are also among the lowest-paid and least likely to feel empowered to report incidents. Employers in these sectors need to take specific steps to address third-party risk, not simply rely on general anti-harassment policies aimed at colleague behaviour.

Effective sexual harassment awareness training does three things. It builds accurate understanding of what constitutes sexual harassment, including the many behaviours that employees and managers fail to recognise as such. It equips both targets and bystanders with practical knowledge of reporting routes and their rights. And it builds the organisational culture in which reporting is safe and taken seriously, rather than met with scepticism, minimisation, or retaliation.

NNTC’s sexual harassment awareness training is designed for UK organisations navigating the post-2023 Act compliance landscape, addressing both the legal framework and the practical cultural work that genuine prevention requires. It is suitable for all levels of an organisation, with content and tone calibrated to be honest and direct without being alienating.

Bullying and harassment training: drawing the line and building the culture

Bullying and harassment are not the same thing, but they are often conflated in training and policy. Harassment has a legal definition under the Equality Act 2010: it relates to unwanted conduct connected to a protected characteristic such as race, sex, disability, religion, sexual orientation, or age. Bullying does not have a legal definition in UK employment law, but it is defined by ACAS as offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting behaviour, an abuse or misuse of power through means intended to undermine, humiliate, denigrate or injure.

Both carry serious consequences for organisations and individuals. Bullying and harassment are consistently among the top reasons workers leave their jobs in the UK, and the mental health impact of sustained exposure to bullying behaviour, in particular, is well-evidenced and severe. The employment tribunal claims that result from inadequately handled harassment complaints are costly both financially and reputationally.

Strong bullying and harassment training addresses three distinct audiences with different content needs. For all staff, it builds awareness of what behaviours constitute bullying and harassment, how to report, and what to expect from the reporting process. For managers, it builds the skills to recognise, address and document bullying and harassment, including the critical skill of handling disclosures appropriately. For HR and designated advisers, it builds the investigative and advisory capability to manage formal processes fairly and in accordance with law and ACAS guidance.

NNTC’s bullying and harassment awareness training covers all three audiences with tailored content for each. The training is interactive and scenario-based, using realistic workplace situations that help participants recognise behaviours they might otherwise normalise, and practice the responses they need to be effective in real situations.

Cultural awareness training: the competency that underpins inclusive practice

Cultural awareness training is one of the more frequently misunderstood categories in the L&D landscape. At its least effective, it becomes a box-ticking exercise in cultural stereotyping: a list of cultural practices associated with various national or religious groups, delivered as if every member of those groups shares the same characteristics. This approach is not only ineffective but actively counterproductive, reinforcing the fixed thinking it claims to challenge.

Genuinely effective cultural awareness training is about developing a competency, not a knowledge base. The competency is the ability to recognise that one’s own cultural framework is not universal, to approach unfamiliar cultural contexts with curiosity and openness rather than assumption, and to communicate and provide services in ways that are genuinely accessible and respectful to people whose backgrounds differ from one’s own. It is, in essence, a form of advanced empathy applied to difference.

In the UK public sector and health and social care specifically, cultural awareness is not merely a nice-to-have competency. It is essential to equitable service delivery. Health outcomes, safeguarding outcomes, and care quality are all measurably affected by the degree to which frontline workers can communicate effectively and build trust with service users from diverse backgrounds. The Equality Act 2010’s public sector equality duty reinforces this as a legal obligation.

NNTC’s cultural awareness training is designed to build this practical competency rather than deliver cultural catalogues. It is particularly relevant for teams in health, social care, housing, education and public services who work with diverse communities and need to do so effectively and equitably.

Professional boundaries training: the line that protects both workers and service users

Professional boundaries define the limits of appropriate relationship between a worker and the people they serve in a professional capacity. They exist to protect service users from exploitation and abuse of trust, to protect workers from allegations and the emotional burden of over-involvement, and to ensure that professional relationships remain focused on the needs of the service user rather than the emotional needs of the worker.

Boundary violations in professional relationships exist on a spectrum. At one end, relatively minor transgressions like sharing personal information inappropriately or accepting small gifts can be addressed through supervision and awareness training. At the other end, boundary violations become safeguarding concerns, including inappropriate personal relationships with service users, sharing confidential information outside professional channels, or using a position of professional trust to exploit vulnerability. The serious end of this spectrum features regularly in safeguarding investigations across health, care and social work.

What makes professional boundaries training effective is its honesty about the gradual nature of violations. Most serious boundary transgressions do not begin with a single dramatic decision. They develop through a series of small steps, each of which felt justifiable at the time, from a place of genuine care or good intentions. Training that helps workers recognise and name these incremental drifts, sometimes called the slippery slope or the boundary crossing continuum, is significantly more protective than training that focuses only on the obvious transgressions.

NNTC’s professional boundaries training uses realistic scenario-based learning to help workers identify boundary drift in situations that reflect the genuine complexity of their working relationships. It is suitable for all workers in roles involving direct contact with service users, clients or patients, and is especially relevant in health, social care, education and housing.

Dealing with difficult telephone calls: the training that protects front-office staff

Telephone-based aggression is one of the most prevalent and least well-managed forms of workplace violence in the UK. It affects receptionists, call centre workers, helpline operators, GP surgery staff, local authority contact centres, utility customer service teams, and anyone else who handles inbound calls from distressed, frustrated or angry members of the public. Because it does not result in physical injury, it is frequently under-reported and under-addressed. But the psychological impact of sustained exposure to verbal abuse by telephone is well-evidenced and significant.

Effective training for dealing with difficult telephone calls combines knowledge with practised technique. Understanding why callers become aggressive, including the frustration of unresolved issues, feelings of powerlessness, and the disinhibiting effect of the telephone medium, gives workers the context to manage their own responses. Specific verbal techniques for acknowledging distress, setting limits on unacceptable behaviour, and resolving calls constructively give them the tools. Practice in realistic scenarios, with feedback, builds the confidence to apply them under pressure.

The training also needs to address the organisational infrastructure around managing abusive callers: when and how to terminate a call, what to document, how to report patterns of abuse from specific callers, and how to recover professionally and psychologically after a difficult call. Workers who have a clear organisational framework supporting them are significantly more resilient than those who feel they are navigating abuse alone.

NNTC’s training on dealing with difficult telephone calls addresses all of these dimensions in a practical, scenario-based format. It can be delivered to customer-facing teams across any sector where telephone-based aggression is a recognised risk, and is particularly relevant for health and social care contact centres, local authority services, and any organisation managing high volumes of emotionally charged inbound calls.

Building a comprehensive workplace wellbeing and safety training programme

The training categories covered in this guide and in the complementary guide on violence at work are not separate islands. They are interconnected elements of a coherent organisational approach to staff safety and wellbeing. A worker who has received personal safety training but no cultural awareness training may find their safety skills undermined in cross-cultural situations. A manager who has completed bullying and harassment training but has no understanding of professional boundaries may still create the conditions for exploitation.

The most effective approach is a structured training programme that maps each course to the specific risks of each role, sequencing them appropriately across induction and refresher cycles. NNTC’s expertise spans both pillars of this programme: Violence at Work training and Equality, Diversity and Harassment training, allowing organisations to work with a single trusted provider across their full safety and wellbeing curriculum.

For enquiries about any course, including tailored delivery for specific sectors or organisations, contact NNTC at enquiries@nntc.org.uk or call 07375 675564. The team is based in Bradford and travels to client sites across the UK. Charitable and public sector organisations qualify for a reduction in standard fees, and all courses carry OCN Credit For Learning accreditation.