Is Your Company Culturally Clueless? The Risks of Ignoring Cultural Awareness in the Workplace.

Welcome back to our weekly case update. We hope you are all looking forward to the last long weekend in May! Especially as the next bank holiday isn’t until August. For those unfortunate enough to have missed our last update, you can enlighten yourselves here. This week we are looking at the employment law minefield that is cultural differences and a Sikh employee who complained of discrimination.

Mr Sidhu, the claimant, had been employed with Our Place Schools Ltd as a Weekend Support Worker. The claimant brought issues on two grounds. The first was in relation to an accusation of a ‘sawing’ hand motion by a colleague. The argument stood that, as a member of the Sikh faith, the motion made reference to a history of Sikh execution at the hands of Muslims in the 17th Century. The context was a discussion with said staff member sharing their knowledge of the atrocities perpetuated on members of the Claimant’s religion. Finding the reference ‘offensive, derogatory and humiliating’ the claimant sought to use this as a basis for claims of harassment. A comparison was made in the tribunal to a chocking gesture to illustrate the deaths of Jewish people in Nazi gas chambers.

The tribunal was not convinced. Not only did the claimant not indicate these feelings at the time of the conversation, but also failed to mention them until over 4 months later. While the tribunal did accept that the alleged hand motion did occur – as well as finding that a hand motion in reference to a historic event could be offensive – they found no evidence that sawing gestures generally are offensive to Sikhs. Neither did they find any evidence that the gesture was actually found to have caused offence. This point was dismissed as it was not reasonable for the conduct to have that effect.

The second ground was that a different colleague had referred to a lack of ‘coloured people’ in Herefordshire. The claimant alleged that this remark would not have been made had he been white. Similar to the previous incident, the claimant did not raise this as an issue at the time and only made his employer aware in a grievance submitted several months afterwards.

The tribunal dismissed this ground also. While the comment could have amounted to unwanted conduct, it did not have the purpose of either violating the claimant’s dignity or creating a hostile environment. Emphasis was also placed on the colleague’s earnest use of the phrase and lack of ill intentions towards the claimant.

Takeaway Points

Ensuring that your business is aware of the cultures and history of their employees can be crucial in dealing with complaints of this type. In these circumstances the employer was spared on the facts of the case. Due to the delay between the conduct and the complaint, the tribunal found that the claimant was not as seriously offended as he had initially claimed.

A previous case was referred to in the judgment where the context, as well as the intent, was crucial in determining whether a remark could amount to harassment. A gesture of a sawing motion is not inherently offensive. But it could have been given the context, had the intention of the colleague been different.

Ensuring correct training and understanding between colleagues is crucial to preventing claims such as these from hindering the workplace. PJH Law can assist in training your workforce on harassment issues, contact us for further details.