Bullying and Harassment at Work

Employers Beware! 

Do you know what is happening within your workforce?

If one of your employees is bullying another, you can be held responsible in negligence, under the health and safety legislation or most worryingly, under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997

Under that Act, there need only be 2 incidents targeted at the claimant, calculated to cause distress to him and which he finds oppressive and unreasonable. He can then come to you as the employer and say that you are responsible for the actions of the wrongdoer

• It does not matter that you might have taken stringent measures to prevent this sort of thing happening. You are strictly liable
• It does not matter that you have not been negligent
• It does not matter that you could not possibly have foreseen what happened

Nevertheless, you should be taking every conceivable course of action to prevent such things happening, including the publication of policies to the workforce indicating that any such bullying will not be tolerated and will lead to dismissal

Check whether your employer's liability policy covers claims under the Act