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.