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ARTICLE · 20 JULY 2023

Eliminating Workplace Harassment

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The recent news story regarding harassment claims from workers at McDonald's highlights the importance of ensuring organisations have a robust approach to eliminating workplace harassment...

United KingdomEmployment and HR
Sam Greenhalgh
Sam Greenhalgh

The recent news story regarding harassment claims from workers at McDonald's highlights the importance of ensuring organisations have a robust approach to eliminating workplace harassment and when it occurs, and a clear process in place to manage it. Simply having a policy in place is not enough.

What is harrassment?

The law relating to workplace harassment can be found in the Equality Act 2010. The relevant provisions define harassment to be "unwanted conduct of a sexual nature or related to a relevant protected characteristic (such as sex, age, race, religion, and belief, disability, gender reassignment or sexual orientation) that has the purpose or effect of violating an individual's dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment". This is a very specific definition, and in order for a claim of harassment to succeed, the alleged behaviour complained about must meet all of the constituent requirements of the

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