When you are claiming harassment based on age at Tribunal, you want to clearly argue that you have been subjected to unwanted conduct related to age (whether or not you are in that age group yourself). This needs to have the purpose or effect of violating your dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for you.
Some examples of harassment related to age are:
With age harassment, your employer can be liable for the acts of its employees, as well as the employees being personally responsible.
You don’t need to attach evidence to a Tribunal ET1 claim, but it’s a good idea to back up your claims by mentioning the evidence you intend to use. For harassment on the basis of age claims, people typically refer to evidence such as text messages, emails, letters, meeting notes and witness evidence.
If you’re successful in a Tribunal claim, you will be awarded a “remedy”. This mainly includes financial compensation, like loss of earnings. It can also include some non-financial remedies too.
Some of the key remedies you can ask for at Tribunal are:
As well as the common remedies that you can ask for, discrimination-specific claims also have the option to include an “injury to feelings” remedy. This is compensation which you can be awarded when you have been hurt or distressed because you have been discriminated against.
Injury to feelings is generally awarded within one of three “Vento bands” depending on severity.
For example, Mina was subjected to age-related and sexual harassment. This came after a number of comments and actions over a period of time, including when her boss told her she was thick and old because she did not have an iCloud account. She was awarded a sum of £8,000, plus interest, in compensation for injury to feelings. She was also successful in a number of other claims, some of which failed and some of which she won - including a successful claim for unfair dismissal.
Summary: a trainee Administrative Officer was much older than the other trainees in her cohort, and was the only non-white trainee. Some of the other trainees made fun of her and made nasty remarks.
Total award: £233,635.84
Outcome: the Tribunal found that the treatment of her was harassment related to her age and race. As well as her claims for age and race harassment, she was successful in claims for direct age and race discrimination, and victimisation. She also made complaints of sex discrimination, which were not successful.
Summary: an Estate Administrator, who was 24 years old, was successful in two allegations of age harassment. The first successful allegation related to a colleague saying she "did not find her beautiful at all and did not see what men saw in her". The other successful allegation related to her colleague's comment that she hoped her having a new baby helped her to become a "better person".
Total award: £13,860
Outcome: the Tribunal accepted that these comments were related to her working friendship with an older male colleague, and therefore were related to age. Her other age harassment claims and unfair dismissal claim were not successful.