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When you can no longer buy silence, you have to invest in safety. That's the shift HR teams now need to plan for. Some organisations have historically leaned on settlement agreements and non-disclosure agreements to resolve harassment complaints quietly, keeping the details contained and the reputational risk low. The Employment Rights Act 2025 closes that option down. Once the NDA ban comes into force, a culture of silence stops being something the law will let you enforce.

Most harassment policies are built around one scenario: two colleagues, one incident. But a lot of harassment comes from outside the organisation - customers, clients, patients, delegates - and the law is catching up. Learn what third party harassment looks like in practice, where employer liability stands under the Worker Protection Act, and what changes from October 2026 under the Employment Rights Act, including a higher bar for "reasonable steps" and liability from the first incident.

Most organisations already have some way for staff to raise a concern: a line manager, an HR inbox, a form on the intranet nobody's touched since 2019. The question HR teams are asking now isn't whether they have a reporting system, it's whether the one they've got is good enough.

Join Stefan Jordan, Colchester Institute's Director of Inclusion and Wellbeing, with Culture Shift Co-Founder, Gemma McCall, and as they break down what Ofsted's new further education and skills inspection toolkit actually expects from you on speaking up, follow-through, and staff protection.

At a recent Community of Practice session, colleagues from the University of Sussex shared how they've strengthened their student misconduct processes. One insight stood out: successful outcomes don't start in the hearing room. They start long before a panel is ever convened.

Featured in HR News, our latest research in the Culture Shifters Annual Report 26-27 reveals a stark gap between how confident HR professionals feel about sexual harassment compliance and what they can actually prove. Of 300 senior UK HR professionals surveyed, 91% said they're confident their organisation could evidence taking "all reasonable steps" to prevent sexual harassment if challenged today. But when asked to demonstrate specific measures, the evidence often isn't there. Only half can show clear reporting processes are in place. Only a third have measures to prevent retaliation.

Join Ash McDowell, Chief Financial Officer at Culture Shift, and Christine Bonney, Head of Culture Transformation, as they explore the true cost of workplace misconduct in financial services and what organisations can do to reduce both risk and cost.

Our latest research, surveying 300 HR leaders, has exposed a dangerous mismatch between what employers believe and what they can actually prove.

Our recent survey found that 28% of UK employees have been bullied or harassed at work in the past year. Almost 60% of those didn't report it.

The publication of the new NHS staff standards this month is a moment worth pausing on. For years, the sector has talked about the importance of staff experience, safety and wellbeing. Now, for the first time, that experience will be measured, and organisations will be held accountable for delivering it.

The creative industries thrive on innovation, collaboration and talent. Yet across film, television, music, publishing, advertising, gaming and the wider creative sector, one challenge continues to undermine healthy workplace cultures: people still don't feel safe speaking up.

Gemma McCall, Culture Shift CEO, gives her thoughts on the news that protected belief cases have increased by 380% in five years.

In the world of the performing arts, the National Theatre stands as an institution of creativity and excellence. Yet, behind the curtain of any organisation, the true measure of success lies in the wellbeing and safety of its people. For Sarah Dean, the National Theatre’s People Policy and Engagement Partner, creating a safe environment meant tackling a common but significant hurdle: the daunting nature of formal HR processes.

Protected beliefs have become one of the most challenging areas of employment law and workplace culture. At Culture Shift's Annual Conference, employment law experts and workplace culture specialists discussed the growing complexity of protected beliefs, conflicting rights and how organisations can respond fairly and legally.

In a recent article for HRZone, Gemma McCall explores why organisations need to stop viewing workplace misconduct as a reporting problem and start addressing the trust issues that prevent people from speaking up in the first place.

The launch of the CIISA standards marked a significant moment for the creative industries, signalling growing recognition of the need for stronger protections around bullying, harassment and misconduct across film, television and wider media environments. But in a recent article for Broadcast Now, we highlight that whistleblowing protections alone will not solve the deeper cultural issues that have allowed harmful behaviour to persist for years.

With the CIISA Standards having been in place for a year and with the introduction of the Employment Rights Act, expectations around creating a healthy and effective speak up culture are shifting. Organisations being asked to move beyond policy and demonstrate how they are creating real, effective speak-up cultures.

Discover why Microsoft Forms falls short for misconduct and harassment reporting, and find out what HR teams need instead to meet the Employment Rights Act's “all reasonable steps” requirement.

Workplace misconduct is evolving, and many HR processes are struggling to keep up. At this year’s Culture Shift Annual Conference, one thing was clear: what worked even a year ago isn’t enough anymore. In this webinar join Gemma McCall (CEO) and Charlotte Taylor (Training Manager and ED&I Specialist) as they bring the most important conversations from the conference floor into a practical session for HR, People and Compliance leaders. You’ll hear what industry experts and legal professionals are seeing right now, and what it means for how you design, communicate and manage your approach to misconduct.

For decades, the creative industries have operated under a silent contract. In exchange for the opportunity to work in world-class institutions, staff and freelancers were often expected to tolerate “difficult” environments. Harmful behaviour was frequently excused as a byproduct of creative brilliance or simply accepted as part of the job.

In our recent article for Insurance Post, we explore how insurers can use anonymous reporting data not simply as a record of incidents, but as a valuable source of organisational insight.

Employee safety and wellbeing is still, in many organisations, framed as something separate from “core business”. It sits in wellbeing programmes. It sits in policies, resources, and initiatives that are often well-intentioned but structurally peripheral to how work is actually designed, experienced, and managed.

Bullying, harassment and workplace misconduct remain far more common than many organisations are willing to admit. While businesses continue to invest in wellbeing initiatives and employee engagement, new research into UK workplaces suggests there is still a significant gap between policy and reality.

The legal profession is well positioned to advise organisations on workplace culture, reporting systems and harassment prevention. But new commentary for Practical Law from our CEO and Co-founder, Gemma McCall, questions whether many firms are applying the same standards internally.