You should raise the issue with your employer. It’s best to do this informally at first. If that does not resolve the issue you can raise it formally. This is known as ‘raising a grievance’.
Discrimination
Understanding what counts as discrimination — and putting the right policies and training in place — is essential to protecting your business and your people.
What Is Discrimination?
Discrimination is when someone is treated unfairly for any of these reasons:
- Age
- Disability
- Gender reassignment
- Marriage or civil partnership
- Pregnancy or maternity
- Race (including colour, nationality, and ethnic or national origin)
- Religion or belief
- Sex
- Sexual orientation
These are called ‘protected characteristics’ under the law (the Equality Act 2010). Discrimination based on any of these protected characteristics is usually against the law.
Types of Unfair Treatment
According to the law, there are different types of unfair treatment. Discrimination is one type of unfair treatment and can, for example, be direct or indirect. Other types of unfair treatment include bullying.
Direct Discrimination
Direct discrimination is when someone is treated unfairly because of a protected characteristic, such as sex or race. For example, someone is not offered a promotion because they’re a woman and the job goes to a less qualified man.
Indirect Discrimination
Indirect discrimination can happen when there are rules or arrangements that apply to a group of employees or job applicants, but in practice are less fair to a certain protected characteristic.
The employee or applicant must be able to prove both of the following about the rule or arrangement:
- it’s unfair to them and to others with the same protected characteristic, for example a woman believes she’s experiencing sex discrimination >> against women
- it’s unfair compared with those who do not have the protected characteristic, for example, it’s unfair to employees who are women, but not to men
Indirect discrimination can be allowed if the employer can prove a business case for the rule or arrangement (‘objective justification’).
If someone has discriminated against you
If you believe someone at work has discriminated against you
You can also make a claim to an employment tribunal. It’s best to try the other options first.
Employer Liability
If an employee discriminates against someone else, by law their employer could also be held responsible. This is known as ‘vicarious liability’.
Whether the employee and employer are both held responsible depends on whether the discrimination is linked to the employee’s work. The law describes this relationship as ‘acting in the course of employment’.
This includes incidents that occur:
In the workplace or outside the workplace
At work-related social events
On social media that’s linked to work
TESTIMONIAL
