Company
Real Talk Studio × The Consent Collective: sexual harassment training managers actually practise
We are pleased to announce our collaboration with The Consent Collective.
We are joining forces to build the best sexual harassment training in the UK. The Consent Collective bring the expertise: years of helping workplaces, universities, regulators and the criminal justice system prevent and respond to sexual harassment, led by Dr Nina Burrowes, author of All Reasonable Steps. Real Talk Studio brings the assurance platform: a safe place for every manager to practise the conversation before it is real, and the evidence that they can hold it.
Together, that gives an organisation something training has never really offered. Not a record that people attended. Confidence that managers and employees will know how to act and respond when it matters.
The timing is not an accident. On 30 October 2026 the law changes.
What changes on 30 October 2026
Since October 2024, UK employers have had a duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment at work. The Employment Rights Act 2025 raises that bar. From 30 October 2026, employers must take all reasonable steps — and become liable for harassment of their staff by third parties (customers, clients, patients, contractors, the public) unless they can show they took all reasonable steps to prevent it.
One extra word. A very different question.
Under the old duty, a tribunal asked whether what you did was reasonable. Under the new one, it asks whether there was any further reasonable step available that you did not take. If a more effective, proportionate option existed and you chose the cheaper one, the defence is gone.
The detailed regulations on what counts as a reasonable step are not expected until 2027. Employers do not get to wait for them. The duty is live from day one — and for third-party harassment, individual workers will be able to bring a claim directly.
Why traditional training is unlikely to prove "all reasonable steps"
Most organisations will point to the same evidence: a policy, an annual e-learning module, a completion report showing 97% of staff finished it.
That evidence has four problems.
1. Completion is not capability. A quiz at the end of a slide deck proves someone can recognise the right answer when it is written down. It says nothing about whether a manager can respond, out loud, in real time, when a colleague says "can I tell you something in confidence?" or when the loudest person in the room makes a sexualised joke and everyone laughs. Knowing the policy and being able to hold the conversation are different skills. Only one of them gets trained.
2. It is passive. Nobody learns to have a hard conversation by reading about one. Managers currently do their first live attempt at an intervention or a disclosure conversation on a real colleague, with real stakes, with no rehearsal. We would never accept that in any other high-consequence skill.
3. It goes stale. Tribunals have already shown they will look past the paperwork. In Allay (UK) Ltd v Gehlen, the Employment Appeal Tribunal found that training delivered years earlier, which nobody could recall, was "stale" — and the employer could not rely on it. Annual, forgettable training is a liability dressed up as compliance.
4. It proves nothing about your managers. Managers are where prevention actually happens. They witness the banter. They hear the disclosure. They deal with the difficult client. Yet the standard module treats a first-line manager in a hospitality venue exactly like a home-based analyst who never meets a customer. Under a duty that explicitly asks "what else could you reasonably have done?", generic content for the highest-risk group is hard to defend.
Here is the uncomfortable part. From 30 October, realistic practice with feedback is an available, proportionate, well-established step. Once a better option exists, "we ran the e-learning" stops being an answer to the question the tribunal is now asking.
What we are building together
Expertise from The Consent Collective. Every scenario, every feedback standard and every debrief is grounded in what actually works to prevent and respond to sexual harassment — not a generic "difficult conversations" framework with the word harassment swapped in. Sessions are live, online and facilitated by Dr Nina Burrowes.
Practice from Real Talk Studio. Managers step into a realistic conversation with an AI avatar. They try an approach. They get specific, scored feedback on what they said. They debrief. Then they go again and put the insight into practice straight away. The aim is not a perfect first attempt. It is noticing what is happening, making considered choices, and getting better.
Assurance for the organisation. Every practice session produces evidence: who has practised, how they performed against the standard, where the gaps are across teams, and how capability has moved over time. That is a fundamentally different record to a completion certificate. It shows what your managers can do.
The standard programme develops the two capabilities every manager needs:
- Addressing inappropriate behaviour — stepping in on the joke, the comment, the "banter", including with third parties
- Hearing a disclosure from a colleague and supporting them with appropriate next steps
Organisations can also add tailored scenarios: an issue you have faced before, a specific third-party risk in your environment, or the situation your managers privately tell you they dread.
See a practice session
The video at the top of this post is a complete practice session, from opening the conversation through to reflection and feedback. Watch how the manager opens, where the avatar pushes back, and how the feedback picks out the exact moment the conversation turned.
Now it is your turn
Reading about a conversation is one thing. Try one.
In yesterday's meeting, Daniel made an inappropriate sexualised joke. You were there. Now you are following up with him privately. What would you say? Where might the conversation lead?
The session is private. You will need a microphone to talk to the avatar; you do not need a camera. Only you see your debrief, which you can download as a PDF. On the back end we see a score and a transcript, not connected to a name or email address. It takes about ten minutes and there is no login.
Then consider the wider question: how would your managers respond?
Join us on 16 October
Two weeks before the law changes, we are running a free, live webinar with The Consent Collective for HR, People, Compliance and Legal leaders who are responsible for getting this right.
Are your managers ready for "All Reasonable Steps"?
Your managers know the policy. But have they had the chance to practise the conversation? In one hour you will come away with:
- A clear read on the new duty — what "all reasonable steps" and third-party liability demand from 30 October, in plain language
- An honest look at your current training — why completion data is unlikely to be enough, and what a tribunal will ask instead
- A live practice conversation — a manager scenario run in real time, followed by the debrief and feedback
- A practical plan — what a defensible, practice-based programme looks like and how to evidence it
- Your questions answered — bring the scenario your managers are least prepared for
Two weeks before the duty changes on 30 October.
Prevention happens in conversations. From 30 October, so does the defence. Let's make sure your managers have had the practice.