UK employment tribunals are adjudicating a rising number of disputes centered on specific everyday workplace behaviors. Recent rulings have treated actions such as comparing a colleague to Darth Vader, exclusion from communal rituals like the tea round, sighing at a colleague, allocating a low-status desk, and minor physical gestures as potential contributors to compensation, discrimination, or constructive dismissal claims. Outcomes vary widely: some actions produced large awards, others were not deemed harassment or discrimination. Many cases involve complex, multifactorial circumstances. The increase in granular scrutiny has created significant challenges for human resources and workplace norms, independent of pandemic-related behavior changes.
Comparing a colleague to Darth Vader in an online personality test resulted in a 30,000 compensation award. Leaving someone out of the tea round could contribute to unfair constructive dismissal. Sighing at a colleague could be discriminatory. An air kiss wasn't harassment and neither was telling a manager his work was messy. Allocating a senior employee a low-status desk can be seen as a demotion.
But it does look like more cases considering how we should behave at work in quite granular ways are reaching tribunals. So, what's going on? For a start, is workplace behaviour getting worse? That old Covid meant we forgot our manners cliche is certainly applied to workplaces the idea being that too much time in slippers and sweats made us ruder and more self-centred, and we are now bringing rather too much of our unpalatable whole selves to work.
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