How To Avoid Disability Discrimination In The Workplace

Every employee in the UK has the legal right to earn their living in a environment that is free from the negativity generated from discrimination, intimidation and victimisation. There is a culture of discrimination and harassment that has been left unchecked will soon begin to adversely affect employee efficiency and could harm the business as a whole. Any trust and confidence lost over the mishandling of a claim of discrimination by management will be hard to retrieve.

There are a number of steps that employers can take to create a place of work in which there is less discrimination and therefore a more equal atmosphere. The most important of these is to make everyone in the company aware of the legislature surrounding issues of discrimination in the work place. The Disability Discrimination Act and the Equality Act work in together to outlaw discrimination that is not justified in all areas of the workplace. These acts place a moral duty on employers to make sure that the workplace is suitable for all workers and that discriminatory behaviour will not be tolerated. Employees should be made aware of the companies internal grievance procedure and also of the process of obtaining Questionnaires and lodging complaints with the Employment tribunal. If employees are made aware of the forms and effects of discrimination in the workplace it will act to discourage the practice.

Companies will also need to create plans to improve the business for disabled employees and these plans should be open to consultation and regularly reviewed. This should be go hand in hand with explaining that the philosophy of any business should be based on merit and not somebody's physical or mental condition. The employer and employees should sign an agreement acknowledging this philosophy and the rules that go with it so that they can be held accountable if found to have acted otherwise.

It is an employer's job to try to create a working environment that fosters cooperation over division, ability over condition and egalitarianism over divisiveness. If employees and employers can work together to create this environment, using the law as a foundation, then it has a much better chance of lasting the test of time.

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