For the last few years, sexual harassment at work has been one of those topics that appears in waves.
A high-profile story breaks.
Everyone pays attention for a while.
Policies get updated.
Training gets commissioned.
And then, gradually, the conversation fades again.
Until the next story.
None of this means progress hasn’t been made. It clearly has. People are more willing to talk about these issues than they were ten or fifteen years ago. Organisations are far more aware of their responsibilities.
But if you spend time inside workplaces – really inside them, not just reading policies – you start to notice something.
The law has moved forward faster than culture, and that gap is where most of the problems still sit.
Sometimes It Takes a Public Reckoning
A good example appeared recently in hospitality.
In The Times, chef Sally Abé announced a pledge aimed at tackling sexism, bullying and harassment in professional kitchens. Anyone who has spent time around that world will recognise the environment being described – long hours, intense pressure, strong personalities and a very clear hierarchy.
The stereotype of the shouty chef didn’t appear by accident. But what made the story interesting wasn’t just the pledge itself. It was the wider context surrounding it.
The industry is still processing allegations surrounding René Redzepi and the culture inside Noma. Those stories forced a difficult conversation about what had been tolerated in some kitchens for years.
And when those kinds of stories surface, industries tend to go through a familiar cycle.
There is a moment of shock.
Then a moment of reflection.
Then, usually, a rush towards pledges, policies and codes of conduct.
Some of that is necessary. But policies alone rarely change culture. The real shift happens when leaders decide where the line actually sits – and apply it consistently.
Hospitality kitchens will always be demanding environments. The same is true in plenty of professions where performance matters and pressure is part of the job.
The question isn’t whether workplaces should remove pressure entirely. That would be unrealistic. The question is whether pressure becomes an excuse for behaviour that most people would recognise as unacceptable anywhere else.
Respect doesn’t mean lowering standards. In fact, it usually means the opposite. It means being clear about the standards that matter – not just around performance, but around how people treat each other while trying to achieve it.
When those boundaries are understood, cultures can change surprisingly quickly. When they’re left vague, the same conversations tend to come back around every few years.
Hospitality is having that moment now.
Most industries have either had it already, or will.
The Law Is Tightening. That Part Is Clear.
The UK has already introduced a legal duty for employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment. Over the next couple of years that duty strengthens further, and whistleblowing protections around harassment are becoming more explicit.
All of that is sensible.
It removes some of the ambiguity that used to exist around employer responsibility. It also makes it harder for organisations to treat sexual harassment as something that only needs attention once it becomes serious enough to reach HR.
But laws don’t change behaviour on their own; They can raise the floor, but they rarely change the atmosphere of a workplace. And that atmosphere is where most issues either start or quietly disappear.
It’s Rarely the Obvious Villain
When sexual harassment cases make headlines, they often involve behaviour that is so blatant it becomes almost cartoonish.
That’s not usually what I see in organisations.
Most of the time it starts in much more ordinary ways.
- Someone makes a joke that lands badly
- Someone pushes familiarity a bit too far
- Someone decides alcohol is a personality trait and behaves accordingly at a work event.
Individually, these moments can seem small enough to ignore. Collectively, they start to shape a culture.
People notice patterns. They adjust how comfortable they feel speaking up. They quietly work out what behaviour seems to be tolerated.
By the time a serious complaint appears, it’s rarely about one moment. It’s about everything that happened before it.
The Respect Conversation Still Matters
I talk about respect a lot when I work with organisations. Occasionally someone will roll their eyes slightly when they hear the word, as if it’s about to lead into a lecture on politeness.
It isn’t.
Respect, in this context, is much more practical than that. It’s about understanding that other people have boundaries and that those boundaries don’t exist for your convenience.
It’s also about judgement.
Workplaces shouldn’t be humourless places where everyone speaks as if they’re drafting a legal statement. That would be unbearable and, frankly, unrealistic.
People joke. They have personalities. They relax around colleagues they trust. That’s normal.
But there is a fairly obvious difference between humour and humiliation, and between warmth and entitlement. Most adults understand that distinction perfectly well when they choose to.
The problem is not confusion. It’s often complacency.
Why People Still Don’t Speak Up Early
One of the questions organisations still struggle with is why people don’t report problems sooner.
On paper, reporting systems look straightforward. In reality, employees are doing a much more complicated calculation.
- Is this serious enough?
- Am I overreacting?
- Will anything actually happen?
- Will I end up being the problem?
Those thoughts can run through someone’s head in a matter of seconds. So they wait. Or they ignore it. Or they decide it isn’t worth the trouble.
By the time someone formally raises an issue, the original incident has often been sitting there for weeks or months, quietly accumulating frustration around it.
Which is why the healthiest workplaces aren’t just good at handling complaints. They’re good at preventing the situation where a complaint feels like the only option.
Sometimes that prevention looks very simple.
- A manager stepping in early.
- A colleague saying “that didn’t land well”.
- Someone deciding to read the room rather than double down on a joke.
Not complicated. Just grown-up behaviour.
Training Helps. But Only If It Resembles Real Life.
I’ve seen training sessions that completely change how people think about these issues. I’ve also seen some that appear to have been designed by people who have never worked with other humans before.
If the message people take away is “never say anything remotely personal ever again”, that’s not clarity. That’s panic.
Good training does something much simpler.
- It helps people recognise where the line tends to sit.
- It explains why power dynamics matter.
- It gives people language for addressing awkward moments without escalating them unnecessarily.
Most people don’t want to make colleagues uncomfortable. They just want to understand where the boundaries actually are. Once they do, behaviour tends to adjust surprisingly quickly.
The Real Question Isn’t Legal. It’s Cultural
As the law tightens, organisations will quite rightly review their policies, reporting systems and training programmes.
That’s necessary, but the more interesting question is the one underneath all of that.
What kind of environment are you actually trying to create?
One where people feel they need to walk on eggshells, say nothing personal and avoid anything remotely human?
Or one where expectations are clear, boundaries are respected and people trust that if something goes wrong it will be handled fairly?
Those environments look very different.
Sexual harassment is often treated as a compliance issue. In reality it’s usually a cultural one long before it becomes legal.
Which brings us back to something quite simple.
Most workplaces don’t need more panic about this topic. They need clearer standards, better judgement and a slightly stronger commitment to treating colleagues with respect.
That sounds obvious, but judging by the number of organisations still having this conversation, it clearly isn’t obvious enough yet.
