This is of course a famous quote from ex-heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson.
As in boxing, by the time you get ‘punched in the face’ with a claim for discrimination it becomes more about damage limitation than preventing it from happening in the first place.
If there is evidence that discrimination happened, you are in for a big bill whatever your thoughts on how legitimate or fair the claim is.
Even before any tribunal award if the individual wins their case, along with negative publicity and the need to declare such issues in tender processes, we have found that even a straightforward legal defence at Tribunal now costs over £10,000, with many organisations having to pay far, far more.
To state the bleeding obvious, the best course is to try and avoid receiving claims in the first place. The only realistic way to do this is to educate your teams on where the line is between healthy banter and behaviour and that which crosses the line.
The good news is it is quite straightforward to do this as long as you engage with someone that knows the law and also best practice – which, generally, does not involve stamping out all behaviour that may cause offence no matter how small, and coming down on everyone like a ton of bricks.
After running literally hundreds of courses on this subject over the last couple of decades, we put together the ‘banter and behaviour in the workplace’ e-learning course.
Whist initially expecting the course to be a little dull, customers report finding it really interesting, informative and it has also improved their culture. It is good, realistic training and advice, certainly not the woke nonsense we read about and despair over!
You can find more details below, including a 2-minute demo that discusses the learning points from a swimming pool legal case where lifeguards made lewd comments about a female customer.
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, which was developed with the excellent e-learning specialists e-aspire, costs £49.95 – with discounts available for bulk purchases e.g. if you wish to train the management team or all employees.
For more details about the course, HR, discrimination or harassment in general please contact us. We would love you hear from you.