Employers need to make sure that managers are trained to interact appropriately with employees under their supervision. Off-the-cuff comments can land managers in hot water if employees don’t find the ‘joke’ funny.
In the recent case of Coia v Event Medical Group, a female employee told her manager that she had a surprise for him. For some reason, his response was to ask whether she was pregnant. When she said that she was not, he offered his services to help her to become pregnant. Perhaps this was a joke, but it is hard to imagine how these comments could ever be regarded as appropriate or funny.
The employment tribunal agreed, deciding that she had been treated less favourably on the grounds of sex discrimination and awarded her £6000 in compensation for injury to feelings for the comments and her employer’s poor response to her complaint. The manager would not have reacted in the same way if a male colleague had told him that he had a surprise. The tribunal found that the employer’s response, in and of itself, was an act of harassment.
This case is a reminder to employers of the importance of both effective management training on appropriate workplace interactions (to hopefully prevent these issues happening at all) and of taking complaints seriously if they are made.
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