A woman in Northern Ireland has settled a sexual harassment case with her employer after a male manager slapped her on the bottom with a ruler.
The woman, who cannot be named, has received a £90,000 pay out following the incident and a subsequent investigation in which she claimed the employer made disparaging and false remarks about her.
She claimed that, during a meeting in 2021, a male manager told the woman to stand up and turn around before hitting her on the bottom. The manager allegedly laughed and said, “I’m sorry, I had to”.
Another man was in the room. The woman looked at him and asked, “Is that allowed?”. She claimed both men treated the incident as a joke and told colleagues about it.
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The woman told her employer, which also cannot be named to protect her identity, that she would not return to work until the matter was addressed.
She turned down a meeting with a more senior manager and the manager who slapped her in a coffee shop because she felt it would be inappropriate. The manager who slapped her subsequently resigned from the organisation.
According to the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, which supported the woman with her legal case, her employer did not acknowledge her grievance for 10 days. The investigation took five weeks to conclude and, while her grievance was upheld, she claimed the outcome letter contained disparaging remarks about her.
When she appealed against the content of the letter, her employer raised concerns about her behaviour at work, including claims she dressed and behaved in a provocative manner, which she denied.
The woman and the employer have settled the case out of court. As part of the agreement, the organisation will work with the Equality Commission to ensure it has sufficient policies on sexual harasssment and training for managers and staff.
Chief commissioner at the Equality Commission, Geraldine McGahey, said: “To me this is a shocking story. There is something badly wrong with a workplace where this sort of behaviour is acceptable. This case demonstrates a toxic laddish culture that shows scant respect for female colleagues.
“This young woman felt she had no option but to resign from her job. She did not feel her employer was treating her as a victim of sexual harassment, rather it was treating her as a troublemaker. She lost faith that any of her employer’s actions were in her interest or that they ever took her concerns seriously. The investigation made her feel like a perpetrator rather than a victim.
“The lesson here for employers is that they should take preventative action to ensure that everyone knows that sexual harassment at work is completely unacceptable.
“It is vital that women who seek help from their employer are not blamed for what happened to them. It is essential that concerns raised by any woman are treated seriously, to address the culture where this can happen, focus on how it was allowed to happen and make a practical and helpful response after the incident. Failure to protect women at work means an employer is letting women down.”
The UK government has confirmed that it will introduce a mandatory duty on employers to protect workers from harassment at work.
Daniel Stander, an employment lawyer at Vedder Price, said: “As part of the expected reforms, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) will produce a statutory code of practice setting out the steps that employers should take to prevent and respond to sexual harassment to comply with the duty. The EHRC will be given ‘teeth’ and have enforcement powers for a breach or suspected breach of the duty.
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“In addition, if an employee is successful in a sexual harassment claim and the employment tribunal finds that the employer is in breach of the duty, it will have the power to award an uplift in compensation of up to 25%.”
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