I have spoken several times in my articles about vicarious liability, where employers are responsible for the actions of their employees.
This issue is even more precarious for employers following last October’s law change requiring organisations to take ‘all reasonable steps’ to prevent harassment in work.
In this case, during an argument in the workplace Hammond, who is white called Campbell, who is black a ‘f****** monkey’ and a ‘f****** muppet’.
Campbell subsequently took their employer, ‘Sheffield … Hospital Trust’ along with Hammond himself to Tribunal for racial harassment, arguing that the Trust was responsible for Hammond’s behaviour under vicarious liability.
The Trust argued that they had taken ‘all reasonable steps’ as per the legal requirements to prevent their employee Hammond from racially harassing colleagues. Specifically, just a few days before the incident Hammond had undergone an online diversity training course.
This satisfied the Tribunal**, and the Trust won the case.
Confirmation that an online diversity training course may satisfy the ‘all reasonable steps’ legal requirement for defending discrimination and harassment claims at Tribunal is great news for employers as, in addition to being good practice and improving organisation culture, such training is not time consuming, is inexpensive to provide, and easy to administer. We recommend all employees undertake such training annually.
If you are looking for a suitable online course, look no further than our ‘banter and behaviour in the workplace’ e-learning course. In it we discuss, with actual Tribunal examples to bring learning points to life, where the bar is in terms of what is acceptable behaviour and banter at work, so you can hopefully avoid Tribunals in the first place. If not, this latest ruling suggests you will at least be able to confidently defend any claims.
The course also includes a proven way of tackling individuals who go too far, without having to sack half of your workforce! This helps with ensuring a healthy culture, which has been shown to improve staff retention and also make the workplace a more enjoyable place. Finally, all who pass the end of course quiz receive a certificate, which can be strong evidence at Tribunal that you took ‘all reasonable steps’ to prevent the employee harassing or discriminating against others.
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.
Please see the above link for more details about the 40 minute course along with a 2 minute demo that discusses the learning points from a well known sexual discrimination case where lifeguards made lewd comments about a female swimmer whilst in work.
The course, which was developed with the excellent e-learning specialists e-aspire, costs £49.95 – with significant discounts available for bulk purchases e.g. if you train all employees, as recommended.
For more details about the course, HR, discrimination or harassment in general please contact us. We would love to hear from you.
*Case details for this article were obtained via our subscription to the CIPD’s HR-Inform service, which I would recommend for any organisation that needs to check employment case law, HR policies and templates.
**There are further relevant details to this case that may have influenced the result, including other steps taken by the Trust regarding equality. I have not included them here as the article would be too long. Please take advice before acting.