When you are claiming harassment at Tribunal, you want to clearly argue that you have been subjected to unwanted conduct related to a protected characteristic (whether or not you have this protected characteristic 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 a protected characteristic are:
With 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 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 bisexual man working at a handbag shop was told that he should only hire women and gay men to work in the shop. He also heard managers explicitly discussing that they should hide the fact that he was bisexual, rather than gay.
Total award: £7,000 (plus interest)
Outcome: the Tribunal found that he had been harassed based on the protected characteristic of sexual orientation.
Summary: an employee who was blind in one eye was mocked by a colleague. The colleague squinted and made funny eyes with reference to her, in order to get others at work to laugh at her.
Total award: £11,218.20 for the harassment aspect
Outcome: the Tribunal found that this was harassment related to her disability. She also succeeded in claims for both wrongful and unfair dismissal.