Subject: Equality Act 2010

Thanks LifeLongLearner, that's really helpful.

ACAS have other resources on their site about the Equality Act 2010 which people might also find useful.

Hello LifeLongLearner,

Some instances you might be interested in:

(i) London Underground - has lots of posters at its stations advertising the fact that it won't tolerate abuse of its staff by commuters. (So a public commitment).

(ii) Some charities have specific policies (particularly in social care subsector) on how they tackle staff abuse from service-users.

(iii) shops and pubs, for example, will ban individuals who are abusive to staff or customers.

In the main, protecting staff from harassment by a third party will involve ensuring you have a clear commitment to protecting staff, a policy and procedure for both logging harassment from the general public and ensuring it is handled appropriately as it is encountered. This might involve giving staff (particularly line managers) training on what is harassment by a third party and what they should do where it occurs (eg report it, respond appropriately etc). You might also want to embed checks in other areas of your HR practice. (For example, in supervision meetings, if you have staff who deal with the public, you could maybe ask as a regular question if there've been any incidents with clients/service users that are worth raising).

For further ideas and discussions, we've a few items on the Equality Act discussed in our blog: http://www.hrbird.org.uk/blog.asp

I hope this helps!

Really useful piece by DSC today about the impact of the Equality Act on charities.

Here is the Charity Commission guidance the article references.