Harassment is unwanted behaviour which you find offensive or which makes you feel intimidated or humiliated.

Good incident notes can help when reporting bullying and harassment. You can download a template here.

To remind you, here’s a copy of the mind map which was used in the video.

Below are some of the main points about harassment and some examples of harassment involving a protected characteristic.

Unwanted behaviour could be:

  • spoken or written words of abuse
  • offensive emails, texts, comments on social networking sites
  • images and graffiti
  • physical gestures
  • facial expressions

You don’t need to have previously objected to something for it to be unwanted.

Harassment is unlawful discrimination under the Equality Act 2010 if it’s because of or connected to one of these protected characteristics:

  • age
  • ability/disability
  • gender reassignment
  • race
  • religion or belief/or no belief
  • sex
  • sexual orientation.

Harassment can also be related to pregnancy, breastfeeding, or recent childbirth.

The Equality Act says harassment occurs where a behaviour is meant to or has the effect of either:

  • violating a person’s dignity
  • creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.

Therefore, even if the person harassing you didn’t mean to offend or intimidate you, it is still considered to be harassment.

However, if this goes to court a judge would have to decide with it’s reasonable for the person to feel that way.

If someone behaves in a way which makes you feel distressed, intimidated, or offended and the behaviour is of a sexual nature, it’s called sexual harassment.

The idea behind this test is to ask whether ‘it would be reasonable, for a ‘reasonable person’ to be, in this case, offended by a particular behaviour.

An example of, ‘the man on the Clapham omnibus’ was sometimes used by the courts in English law – as a hypothetical ordinary and ‘reasonable’ person.

Of course, this his highly subjective, but serves in someway as a balance to someone saying, ‘I am offended, therefore it is offensive’.

Examples of harassment

A woman goes to her local gym to work out.

Some of the male gym users tease her and make insulting comments. For example, that it’s better for them not to talk to her at the moment as it’s ‘the wrong time of the month’.

She could have a claim for harassment related to sex.

A bus driver is making racist comments whilst driving.

The comments aren’t addressed to anyone in particular, but they created an intimidating and hostile environment for the passengers.

A claim for harassment related to race could be made.

Anyone could make the claim.

You go out for dinner to celebrate a birthday with some of your gay and lesbian friends.

Some of the restaurant staff make anti-gay/lesbian comments to each other.

The comments are loud enough for everyone to hear, and you find them offensive and feel humiliated by the staff’s behaviour.

You could have a claim for harassment related to sexual orientation.

The staff behind a bar were making loud and insulting comments about a person’s appearance, saying they were a male to female transsexual.

The person felt intimidated and upset by the remarks and decide to leave.

This could be harassment related to gender reassignment.

It wouldn’t matter if the comments were true or not.

Some of Brian’s work colleagues keep making comments and jokes saying that he’s gay.

They call him names and leave things like gay men’s’ magazines on his desk.

They all know Brian is not gay. They say they’re doing it for a laugh and just having fun.

Brian could have claim for harassment related to sexual orientation.