Culture Shift’s Response to the Acas Code Consultation

What happens to the concern someone never raises?

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Acas has been consulting on an updated Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures, and the direction is clear. For the first time, guidance on resolving concerns early and informally would sit inside the statutory Code itself. This is a major shift, because employment tribunals take the Code into account and can adjust awards by up to 25% where it hasn't been followed.

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The pressure behind this is obvious. The number of individual employment tribunal claims waiting to be resolved hit a record 70,000 at the end of June, up 51% in a year. New claims rose 28% while the number of cases cleared fell by 6%. From January 2027, the qualifying period for unfair dismissal protection drops from two years to six months. A system where claims already take over a year to resolve cannot absorb that. Resolving concerns earlier is the only sustainable route, and it is better for everyone involved.

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In our response, which we submitted before the consultation closed on 23 September, we set out our support for the shift towards early resolution. However, the draft Code merges two things that need to be kept apart, and the gap between them is where a lot of harm goes unseen.

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Two different things called "informal"

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The first is an informal route for raising a concern. The second is informal resolution of it. The draft Code talks a lot about the second and almost nothing about the first.

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We want to see much more of the first. Informal and anonymous routes are often the only way an employer ever hears about sexual harassment. Across a selection of our partners between September 2024 and August 2025, around 40% of all reports made through Report + Support™ were anonymous. Those are people who chose not to walk into an office and speak with HR or their line manager.

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On the second, we want more detail and caution. Once an employer knows about behaviour that may be sexual harassment, however it came to light, the response has to be serious: a risk assessment, a written record, and consideration of an employer-led investigation. A quiet word or a mediation session does not meet the preventative duty under the Worker Protection Act or the Employment Rights Act 2025, and the Code needs to say so clearly.

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The draft assumes people will just speak to someone

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Every route the draft Code describes for raising a concern informally involves speaking to someone directly: first the person whose behaviour is the problem, then a line manager, HR or someone else in the organisation. Written, digital and anonymous routes aren't mentioned anywhere. The only way to put a concern in writing is to lodge a formal grievance.

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That leaves someone who is being bullied or harassed with two options. Raise it in person, starting with the person responsible, or go formal. For a lot of people, neither feels possible.

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When we look at why people report anonymously, even about incidents that could amount to serious misconduct, the same reasons keep coming up. They don't think they have enough evidence to "prove" it. They feel shame or guilt. They aren't sure the behaviour counts. They fear repercussions, especially when the person involved is their manager. They've seen concerns mishandled before. They think it isn't serious enough for a formal process yet, but they're worried about where it's heading. Or they simply don't trust HR.

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The draft Code also says concerns about serious misconduct by a manager or another worker should usually go through a formal grievance from the start. For someone being harassed by the person who controls their rota or their promotion, that is not a realistic option. In our experience, many of those people leave instead, and the employer never finds out why, allowing the perpetrator to carry on unchecked.

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It is better for the employer to have surfaced that information, offered support, and been able to monitor patterns and manage risk, even where it can't act directly against the individual. We've asked Acas to recognise that workers may raise serious concerns informally or anonymously first, and that an informal disclosure should be treated as the start of a conversation about options, not a failure to follow procedure.

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Anonymous reporting belongs in the Code

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This isn't a new idea. The EHRC's technical guidance on the preventative duty already gives anonymous reporting channels as an example of a reasonable step, and its employer checklist tells organisations to give staff the option to report anonymously in case they don't feel confident coming forward.

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But that guidance sits alongside a separate duty. The Acas Code is the document most organisations build their grievance and conduct policies around. If the Code only describes routes that rely on someone speaking up in person, that is what policies will be designed around, and anonymous reporting stays a bolt-on for the compliance team.

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Embedding it in the Code would mean employers start from the right place: acknowledging how hard it is to speak up about workplace harm, and actively removing the barriers rather than waiting for people to overcome them. You can't take a prevention obligation seriously if your process only hears from the people brave enough to walk into someone's office.

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"But what about the right to respond?"

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This is the objection we hear most often, usually from HR or legal teams reluctant to accept anonymous reports or informal reports that name someone. The argument rests on the existing Code's principle that people should be told the basis of a concern and given the chance to put their case.

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That principle is essential where disciplinary action is on the table. It was never meant to stop organisations hearing from people who aren't ready to lodge a grievance. We've asked Acas to make this explicit: the right to respond applies to formal grievances, and an informal or anonymous report can be treated as information gathering rather than something that automatically triggers an investigation.

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That doesn't mean doing nothing. Several independent reports describing the same person can justify an employer-led investigation even when nobody is willing to go formal. That is often exactly how serial harassment gets stopped.

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Where informal resolution is the wrong answer

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For some behaviour, informal resolution is inappropriate and unsafe. That includes sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence such as stalking, sexual assault, spiking and image-based abuse.

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The draft reserves formal handling for gross misconduct and other serious issues that could result in dismissal. The trouble is that sexual harassment is routinely minimised, by employers and by the people experiencing it, and many policies don't list it as gross misconduct. In practice it will often end up handled informally. We've backed The 1752 Group's proposed revision so that informal handling is only considered once the employer has established there is no risk of harassment or gender-based violence and no power imbalance.

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We've also asked for a written record to be required, not just permitted, where an informal discussion involves possible harassment. Sexual harassment is often repeated behaviour. Without a record, an employer can't spot the pattern or show later that it acted.

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Mediation is one option, not the only one

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For concerns raised by workers, the only resolution options the draft names are mediation and facilitated conversations, both led by an independent third party. The real list is much longer. Employers can adjust shifts or working arrangements so two people aren't working closely together, hold separate conversations, run team-level communications or training, refresh policies, or have a line manager step in. For some people, accessing support is the only thing they want to happen after disclosing.

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Most first conversations about a concern happen with a line manager, not a trained mediator, and the Code says little about them. Manager training is most useful when it focuses on having a supportive first conversation and recognising when an issue isn't suitable for informal resolution at all.

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A few more things we asked in our Acas consultation response

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We suggested a new title, the Code of Practice on receiving and responding to concerns at work, because the current one tells people it's about disciplinaries and grievances, not the early conversations Acas wants to encourage.

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On employer size, we agreed that the amount of process can scale, but argued the standard of care can't. Prompt action, fairness, support and protection from retaliation should apply everywhere.

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We asked that people aren't made to write out their experience again at each stage, because repeating a traumatic account can be retraumatising. Information gathered early should follow the concern through.

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And we flagged something our partners are seeing more of: reports drafted with AI. That can help people who struggle to put their experience into words. But AI-drafted reports tend to be long and legalistic, and they can set expectations that don't match what the person actually wants. Employers need guidance on responding to the substance and checking with the worker what outcome they're looking for.

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What happens next?

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The final Code will land alongside the Employment Rights Act's extended duty to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment, and a tribunal system that is already struggling. An employer that only acts when a formal grievance arrives will struggle to show it has met the duty, and is more likely to end up in that queue.

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Informal and anonymous reporting routes, risk assessment, and acting on patterns across reports all form part of meeting the duty. Report + Support™ was built around exactly that. Anonymous and named reporting sit side by side, two-way anonymous messaging lets you offer support and reassurance, and analytics turn individual reports into patterns you can act on.

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Early resolution starts with early visibility. You can only resolve what people feel safe enough to tell you.