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Equality Act 2010 Harassment

The Equalities Act prohibits three types of harassment:

Harassment related to a ‘relevant protected characteristic’

  • Which are
  • Disability
  • Gender Reassignment
  • Race
  • Religion or belief
  • Sexual Orientation

This type of harassment occurs when an individual’s dignity is violated or a hostile, offensive, degrading, intimidating or humiliating work environment is created for a worker with a protected characteristic. The Act defines the behaviour that may lead to the creation of such an environment as ‘unwanted conduct’ and gives examples such as facial expressions, graffiti, physical gestures, pranks etc. However, a single, serious example of unwanted conduct can be enough to be called harassment.

Abusive behaviour does not need to be directed at an individual in order for it to be considered harassment. Inappropriate remarks directed at a group of people can be categorised as harassment if just one individual with a protected characteristic finds the remarks offensive or humiliating.

The Act also offers protection to those that do not have a protected characteristic, but have a connection with a protected characteristic, if the unwanted conduct is dictated by a relevant protected characteristic. Workers who are wrongly perceived as having a protected characteristic are also covered by the legislation.

There may be a case for harassment whereby unwanted conduct related to a protected characteristic is not directed at a particular worker or it directed at no-one in particular but still causes offense.

Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment is defined by the Act as being unwanted verbal or non-verbal conduct, which is of a sexual nature, including sexual jokes, displaying pornographic photographs etc.

Less favourable treatment of a worker because they submit to or reject sexual harassment or harassment related to sex or gender reassignment.

A case can be made when unwanted conduct of a sexual nature, or conduct related to either sex or gender reassignment, is either rejected or submitted to and as a result the worker receives less favourable treatment. Under this type of harassment the initial unwanted conduct may be committed by the person who treats the worker less favourably or by another person.

When an individual’s dignity is violated or a hostile, offensive, degrading, intimidating or humiliating work environment is created, it doesn’t matter if that was the purpose of the unwanted conducted or not if that is the effect. One must take into account the following when deciding whether conduct has had such an effect:

  • How did the worker perceive the conduct and did they consider that it violated their dignity or created an intimidating environment
  • Other circumstances that may be relevant to the case
  • Whether it would be considered reasonable for the conduct to have such an effect on the worker

Under the terms of the act there is no need for comparators when considering harassment.

The Act also states that Employers may be liable for harassment of the employees or job applicants by third parties – such as customers – who are not directly under their control.

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