By James Willis, Head of Employment at stevensdrake We are currently running a lot of internal training sessions for our clients and contacts. In the course of preparing myself for a seminar on equality and diversity, I came across a recent Personnel Today article on the case of Wickers v Colchester Visionplus. This dispute concerned a former employee of a Specsavers franchise who successfully claimed for disability discrimination after a company director made comments to the effect that: “everyone gets depressed sometimes, you just have to pull yourself together”. Now I might be inclined to say that you don’t need to have undergone detailed equality and diversity training to know that this probably wasn’t the right thing to say. Nevertheless, it aptly illustrates the sorts of mistakes and errors of judgement that managers and supervisors can make, especially if they have never taken the time to think about their duties and responsibilities in this area. As if to underline the point, you may also have read about the recent resignation of Shane Sutton, former technical director at British Cycling. He has been accused of (i) telling a female cyclist to “go and have a baby” and (ii) making derogatory comments about Paralympic athletes. These are allegations that he denies. Nevertheless, once again, it reminds us of the importance of knowing what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour in the workplace.

Who is at risk and what can be done?

Of course, the unfortunate reality is that whatever your colleagues might say or do, it is generally the business that will carry the can. That is unless the business can show that it took ‘all reasonable steps’ to prevent the discriminatory behaviour from happening in the first place. Establishing the ‘reasonable steps’ defence is not easy. But an important part of the jigsaw puzzle is the ability to show that you have trained your staff in relation to equality and diversity issues. With this in mind, why not kick things off by asking us to run a training session for you and your colleagues. And before you start to worry, we normally run these sorts of sessions completely free of charge. So that’s one less thing for you to worry about, isn’t it?

Want to know more?

If you are interested in discussing this offer further, just drop me a line or give me a call. I look forward to hearing from you. James Willis Head of Employment 01293 596931 james.willis@stevensdrake.com