How can you prevent discrimination in your small business to protect employees and organisational reputation? Freeths LLP Senior Associate, Toby Pochron explains how discrimination laws affect businesses and strategies to prevent discrimination.
Discrimination in a business can create a hostile working environment and have lasting negative impacts on a business, whether it be to reputation or to staff morale. Discrimination can also have highly costly consequences, with the potential for substantial damages to be awarded in the employment tribunal.
Overall, businesses need to approach the topic of discrimination in the workplace with caution, as getting it wrong can be highly costly.
Starting from the beginning: the Equality Act 2010 protects all employees, workers and job applicants from direct and indirect discrimination, harassment, and victimisation on the grounds of their protected characteristics.
In practice, this protection afforded to the workforce covers not only the impact of actions and policies taken and made by a business, but also the actions of other employees in the course of their employment. Therefore, businesses have the risk of being vicariously liable if a member of staff discriminates against or harasses a colleague and could face a claim regardless of their knowledge of the incident.
What this means for businesses is that they need to have the correct measures and policies in place to mitigate this risk and ensure that their employees act with dignity and respect towards each other.
There are several ways in which businesses can protect their employees from discrimination in the workplace. The following are a few core elements which can be used to promote and monitor equality:
Businesses should ensure they carry out regular reviews of policies and procedures, even if the policy is not formal or written down. This will also include the application of policies and procedures.
The following policies tend to have the highest risk of being discriminatory:
It is key to carry out risk assessments regularly to consider the discrimination or harassment risks there are within the nature of a business and its commercial field. Beyond risk assessments, businesses may want to consider carrying out anonymous staff surveys or externally facilitated focus groups to gauge potential areas of risk.
To ensure that all levels of staff understand how to act in the workplace and how to look out for discrimination training is essential, especially at management level. This training can also focus on the business’s equality, discrimination, and anti-harassment policies.
Learn more: How to implement diversity training in the workplace
It is incredibly important to ensure that a culture of respect is embedded within the workplace. There are several ways in which a business can proactively encourage a workplace which is safe for all members of staff…
Having senior members of staff visibly promoting equality and communicating the business’s stance on discrimination in the workplace can be powerful for other employees to follow suit.
With some extra training, members of staff can act to:
Equality and diversity champions can be a strong core to centralise a business’s approach to equality in the workplace. Businesses should consider appointing equality champions at all levels of employment to ensure that all employees feel they have someone they can discuss any issues with.
Businesses can develop this by showing that they take discrimination issues seriously through the support offered to individuals who raise concerns and by investigating allegations thoroughly. It is also useful to facilitate as many ways of reporting discrimination as possible.
The aim of a discrimination policy is to reassure staff that the business values equality and diversity and is proactively standing against discrimination. It should also act to discourage discriminatory behaviour and encourage staff to raise any issues they may have in the workplace. Therefore, it is key to get it right when creating a discrimination policy.
These are a few key points to consider when creating a discrimination policy:
If ever in doubt of the effectiveness of a discrimination policy or concerns over discrimination occurring in the workplace, seek legal advice.
Managing diversity in the workplace