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Beneficiary harassing staff

Governance | 12 Jan 2011

When a client is abusive to a charity employee, the chair asks for advice on what can be done.

Dear chairman,

I am chair of a small charity focused on assisting people with debt and finance problems. Amongst other things we offer a counselling and advisory service that, as well as providing a telephone contact service, also offers the facility of face-to-face interviews with trained advisers at our organisation’s offices.

Not surprisingly, those seeking our help are often under great stress and can be quite emotional. Recently my chief executive advised me that our female receptionist had complained that a client had made rude comments to her about her age. Whilst sympathetic, he had told her that she would have to expect such treatment from time to time; it was the nature of the job; and, anyway, given that the comments had been made by a client over whom the charity had no control, there was nothing he could do about it. She had subsequently responded that she had spoken to a lawyer friend and been told that there was a new law that did make the charity responsible in such situations. Is she right?

Yours sincerely

Vic Arius

Dear Mr Arius

Yes she is – at least in part. The new law referred to is the Equality Act 2010 which largely came into force in October 2010.

The Act identifies nine ‘protected characteristics’ (eg race, sex, disability and age) and prohibits discrimination, victimisation and harassment in relation to any of those characteristics.

Harassment means any unwanted conduct which has the purpose or effect of violating dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. When deciding whether conduct amounts to harassment, you must take into account not only how the victim perceives the conduct, but also the circumstances of the case and whether it is reasonable for the conduct to have that effect on the victim (unless it is deliberate, when it will be automatically discriminatory).

It would certainly appear that the conduct about which your receptionist has complained would amount to harassment.

A new development is the introduction of protection against third-party harassment in most circumstances provided the employer knows of previous third-party harassment on at least two other occasions and has failed to take steps to prevent it. (A third party is someone other than the employer or a fellow employee).

It seems at this stage that you are aware of only one such incident, so legally you are not yet liable for the harassment she has suffered. But if it happened twice more, (and it could be a different third party doing the harassing, and the grounds of the harassment need not be the same on each occasion), then your charity would be liable unless you could show that you had taken reasonable practicable steps to prevent such harassment.

Reasonably practicable steps would include:

• having appropriate policies that refer to third-party harassment;
• communicating those policies widely and repeatedly;
• training managers to address third-party harassment;
• displaying notices that third-party harassment will not be tolerated;
• minimising the risk to employees of thirdparty harassment.

Considering the activities of your charity generally, and the receptionist’s complaint in particular, you should ensure that such measures are in place and that your managers react promptly and appropriately to any future complaints of third-party harassment.

Yours etc,

The Chairman 

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