A recent tribunal decision found that an employee being repeatedly called a ‘good girl’ by her male boss amounted to sexual harassment.
Background
Over a three-month period, the employee was repeatedly called a ‘good girl’ by her older male boss. The tribunal held that this behaviour amounted to sexual harassment as referring to a woman in this way was “demeaning” and used as a way to reinforce his authority over her.
Practical takeaways
Adequate training – another reminder that training on harassment needs to be robust and regularly refreshed. The tribunal found the employer’s training to be too simplistic and showed no commitment to genuinely tackling harassment. They also noted that acceptable language evolves over time meaning your training should keep pace to appropriately educate employees on what is and isn’t acceptable.
Tick-box policy – bullying, harassment and inclusivity policies must be dynamic and engaging. In this case, the tribunal specifically called out the employer’s out of date policies as simply “paper commitments to equality issues”.
Our survey – your thoughts
Aviva’s CEO was recently told by shareholders that she’s “not the man for the job” and she should be “wearing trousers”. We’d like to hear your experiences with sexual harassment and sexist comments in the workplace if you’re comfortable sharing – here’s our short survey.
Our survey is entirely anonymous and any responses gathered will only be used by us for the purposes of our continued employment law updates on this topic.
