Most of the time employers, especially high profile ones such as Barclays bank, would settle a sex discrimination claim like this rather than allow it to proceed to Tribunal and suffer the subsequent negative publicity, especially as they were fairly sure to lose this one as it is clear sexual harassment and quite embarrassing to boot!
However, as is often the case it seems the Claimant had completely unrealistic expectations about how much compensation she would win at Tribunal so I suspect a sensible compromise to settle this one could not be reached.
According to reports in Saturday’s ‘The Times’, the Claimant expected to receive £1.3 million if she won, which is fantasy land. I suspect that forced the employer’s hand to go to Tribunal even though they would rather not, and knew they would lose.
We have supported many employers with similar issues, where they agree that an employee made offensive comments but the Claimant has completely unrealistic expectations about how much they would win if successful at Tribunal and so the case goes all the way rather than a fair compromise being reached.
It’s a shame there isn’t a more robust process to penalise Claimants who do not accept a reasonable offer in these circumstances. More on the amounts awarded in this case later in the article.
Organisations of all sizes should do all they can to avoid such claims, and really do need to train their managers and staff to avoid causing offence through such ‘banter’.
Also, don’t forget the recent law change that means Tribunals now expect employers to have taken ‘all reasonable steps’ to avoid sexual harassment taking place when deciding the outcome. High quality training is one such step.
Surely it won’t be long before this wording applies to all forms of harassment not just sex.
A low cost, highly effective way of training employees that doesn’t take employees away from the business for long is through the 40 minute ‘banter and behaviour in the workplace’ e-learning course from 186hr Limited. See below for details, including a 2 minute demo that covers a well known sexual harassment case discussed in the training.
Banter & Behaviour in the Workplace
This new e-learning course describes the various forms of harassment and discrimination in an easy-to-understand format so organisations can appreciate where the bar is at work between acceptable behaviour and that which is likely to lead to a grievance or successful Tribunal claim.
The course, developed in partnership with the excellent eLearning specialist e-aspire costs £49.95, with discounts available for bulk purchases e.g. if you decide to train the whole team or your management team – which is highly recommended.
Back to the above case, the Claimant was awarded just under £50,000 in total so an expectation of £1.3 million really was unrealistic. In fact only £1,526 of the award was for sex discrimination, with the remainder for not making ‘reasonable adjustments’ regarding the Claimant’s disability – another area covered on the course.
If you have any queries about the course, discrimination or harassment in general, please don’t hesitate to contact us.