Work Social Events: 7 Duties That Do Not Stop at the Office Door
Professional and financial firms run a great many events. Summer parties, Christmas parties, client entertainment, team offsites, away days, leaving drinks, awards evenings, and the informal continuation that follows most of them.
These are organised by whoever volunteered, budgeted by finance, and assessed by nobody. The prevailing assumption is that once people leave the building and start enjoying themselves, the employer's responsibility stops.
That assumption has never been reliable, and from October 2026 it becomes considerably less so, because the preventative duty on harassment rises to all reasonable steps and employer liability for third-party harassment returns. Work events are where a disproportionate share of harassment claims originate.
Seven duties.
1. Work-related does not require being at work
The legal starting point, and it is a spectrum rather than a line.
The duty under section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 attaches to the employment relationship, and the obligation to assess risks under regulation 3 of the Management Regulations does not carve out activities the employer organises away from its premises.
More significantly, section 109 of the Equality Act 2010 makes an employer liable for things done by employees in the course of employment, and tribunals have consistently read work social events as capable of falling within that. The courts have also found employers vicariously liable for conduct at gatherings that continued after the official event ended, where the connection with employment was sufficiently close.
The practical position is that the further an event sits from the organised core, the weaker the connection becomes, and there is no point at which it obviously disappears.
2. The event itself needs a proportionate assessment
Not a twelve-page document. A short, honest look at what could go wrong.
Consider the venue and its capacity, its fire and evacuation arrangements, whether anyone attending needs assistance to evacuate a building they do not know, first aid provision, and how someone would raise an alarm. For an offsite, add the journey, the accommodation and the activities.
The proportionality point matters. A drinks reception in a familiar venue for forty people needs a paragraph. A three-day offsite with outdoor activities in another country needs rather more, and the difference is obvious to anyone who looks.
3. Alcohol is a control decision, not a hospitality decision
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The single largest contributor to what goes wrong, and it is almost always decided by budget rather than by risk.
An unlimited free bar is a decision with foreseeable consequences. So is scheduling a long reception with no food, or providing only token non-alcoholic options. None of these is prohibited, and each is a choice the organisation makes and should make consciously.
Practical measures are unremarkable: substantial food rather than canapés, genuine non-alcoholic alternatives rather than one soft drink, a defined end to the funded bar, and someone senior who is explicitly not drinking and holds responsibility for the evening. That last one is the most effective and the least commonly done.
4. Getting home is part of the event
Where organisations most often stop thinking, and where a serious injury is most likely.
If people have been drinking at an event you organised, how they get home is a foreseeable consequence of that. The controls are practical: pre-booked transport, an account with a taxi provider, a stated position on who pays, and attention to anyone travelling alone late at night.
The connection to driving is direct and frequently ignored. Where employees drive to a venue, they need to know before they arrive that they will not be driving home, and the arrangements have to make that possible. Guidance on the drink drive limit is worth circulating in advance rather than after. The morning after matters too, and an organisation with a grey fleet population should say so explicitly.
5. Harassment is the risk the law is about to sharpen
The duty changing in October 2026, and events are its natural habitat.
Harassment under section 26 of the Equality Act covers unwanted conduct related to a protected characteristic which violates dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. Alcohol, informality, seniority and the absence of normal workplace observation combine at events in a way that produces exactly that.
Anticipatory steps are what the duty requires. Communicate expectations before the event rather than only in a policy nobody reads. Brief managers on what to do if something is reported to them on the night. Provide a reporting route that does not require approaching the person who organised the event or the senior person involved. And make clear the following morning that reports will be taken seriously, because the window in which someone will say something is short.
Acas publishes practical guidance on sexual harassment. Chile brought in equivalent duties in 2024 covering third parties expressly, so multi-country groups may already be subject to more than the British position.
6. Activities need provider checks, not enthusiasm
For offsites and away days involving anything physical.
Establish that the provider is competent and insured, that the activity is suitable for the group, and that there is a route for someone to decline without explanation or embarrassment. Health declarations should be handled confidentially and used to adjust rather than to exclude.
The inclusion point is a compliance question as well as a cultural one. An activity that effectively excludes people with a disability, or that creates pressure to disclose a health condition, engages the reasonable adjustments duty and creates the kind of situation the harassment provisions address.
7. Overseas offsites are travel, with everything that follows
The final category, and it inherits the whole travel duty of care question.
Destination risk, transport, accommodation, insurance validity for the activities involved, medical arrangements, and a contact route that works out of hours in the destination time zone. The international guidance standard on travel risk management provides a structure, and it applies to a company offsite as much as to a client visit.
Where an offsite crosses borders, consultation obligations may also apply in entities where employee representatives have statutory standing, because a mandatory offsite is a change to working arrangements.
Before the next event
| Element | Weak | Adequate |
|---|---|---|
| Assessment | None | Proportionate note covering venue, journey, activities |
| Venue | Booked on price and availability | Evacuation, capacity and accessibility checked |
| Alcohol | Unlimited, budget-led | Food, alternatives, defined end, named sober lead |
| Getting home | Individual responsibility | Transport arranged, drivers told in advance |
| Harassment | Policy exists | Expectations communicated, reporting route away from organisers |
| Activities | Provider chosen on reviews | Competence and insurance verified, opt-out available |
| Overseas | Treated as a party abroad | Treated as business travel |
| Afterwards | Nothing | Route to report, and a named person to receive it |
The last row is worth dwelling on. Something that happens at an event is far less likely to be reported through the normal channel, because the normal channel frequently runs through people who were present.
For international groups
Two additional considerations.
The harassment position differs. Great Britain's duty rises in October 2026. Chile has required prevention protocols covering harassment and third-party violence since August 2024. Several European systems address the same ground through psychosocial risk obligations. A group standard for events should be written to the highest applicable requirement rather than the most familiar.
And where an event brings people together from several entities, the applicable duties travel with the individuals as well as attaching to the location, which is the same concurrent-duty structure that applies to secondments and client-site working.
Recording assessments, incidents and actions from events alongside your ordinary records is where health and safety consultants and software are worth more together than either alone, and periodic health and safety audits will reveal whether events have ever been assessed at all.
Where Arinite fits
Arinite works with firms whose calendars are full of events and whose risk registers do not mention them. We support 1,500+ businesses across 50+ countries and protect 100,000+ employees, with 95%+ client retention over 15+ years. Our health and safety consultants work extensively with legal, finance and banking and professional services organisations, where client entertainment and team events are part of the business rather than an extra.
Where events involve people from several countries, our global health and safety consultants establish what each jurisdiction requires, and our international health and safety consultants keep that current.
If your next event is booked and nobody has looked at it beyond the budget, a free gap analysis will identify what a proportionate assessment would cover.
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Written by
Arinite Health & Safety Consultants
Health & Safety Expert at Arinite
