Defining harassment

Section 26(1) of the EA 10 defines harassment as unwanted conduct which has the purpose or effect of:

• violating the employee’s dignity; or

• creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for that employee.

The unwanted conduct must be related to one of the following protected characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation. Note the exclusion from this list of marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity.