How To Make Your Small Business Equality Act Compliant

The Equality Act has helped to reduce discrimination against persons with disabilities. The marginalisation of deaf people the world over has contributed to a history of limited employment and full participation in daily life. According to the WHO, “There are 466 million people in the world with disabling hearing loss,” amounting to over 5% of the population worldwide. That number will only increase, to over 900 million by the year 2050.

Although more deaf people are employed than unemployed, many of them remain isolated and socially distant from their bosses, managers, and coworkers. Their work product may suffer as they navigate office politics and relationships; each workday can bring its own set of stressors and anxieties. Their concerns aren’t the concerns of hearing people at work. Everything centres on communication for the deaf employee: How will I understand my boss if she has an accent? How can I tell my coworker that he covers his mouth too much when he talks to me? And, what do I do if my employer is discriminating against me? Nowadays … what if my coworkers and clients are wearing masks and I can’t understand them?

Deaf citizens found some comfort when the UK government passed the Equality Act.

The Equality Act (EA), passed in 2010, rendered discrimination illegal in the workplace. It encapsulates all nine previous anti-discrimination laws.

There are nine protected characteristics, according to the UK government:

• Age
• Gender reassignment
• Being married or in a civil partnership
• Being pregnant or on maternity leave
• Disability
• Race
• Religious beliefs
• Sex
• Sexual orientation

Not only is discrimination illegal in the workplace, one is also protected from discrimination as a property buyer/renter, consumer, in education, and as a public service user.

The main changes the Equality Act made are related to disability and gender reassignment. An employer cannot discriminate against an employee due to a disability. The law also calls unlawful discrimination of persons living their lives as the opposite gender, regardless of whether they’ve undergone gender reassignment surgery.

The Equality Act applies to businesses large and small. However, a small business will not have as many financial resources at its disposal and is less likely to have concrete rules of workplace behaviour, but the EA protects all employees. Each employer is required to avoid all types of discrimination, such as:

• Direct discrimination (not treating employees fairly if they have protected characteristics)
• Direct discrimination by perception (treating an employee less kindly when believed they have a protected characteristic when they don’t)
• Indirect discrimination (enacting a policy that directly affects employees with protected characteristics more than an employee who does not)
• Discrimination arising from disability (treating unfairly an employee based on disability)
• Direct discrimination by association (the employer judges an employee unfairly when that employee knows someone who has a protected characteristic)
• Failure to make reasonable adjustments
• Harassment
• Victimisation

Simply put, the Equality Act was passed to protect all employees with protected characteristics from discrimination and harassment.

The enactment of the EA means tighter laws against various forms of discrimination. If an employer fails to follow the EA, the first option for the aggrieved employee would be to complain directly to the employer. As a small business doesn’t typically have a Human Resources department, they’re still required to have workplace policies in place.

If an informal complaint isn’t resolved, the employee can consult with a mediator, Acas, Citizens Advice, or a union representative.

The last option would be to take the complaint of discrimination to court. If that happens, the employee may be able to seek help for legal costs.

To make your small business Equality Act compliant, you must avoid direct and indirect forms of discrimination, harassment, and victimisation of employees who have one or more protected characteristics.

Guest Author: Juana Poareo

To help you to meet the requirements of The Equality Act, we provide the following services;

• Live captioning for your teleconference calls, meetings, lectures, webinars, and on large screen for your events. We were the first agency in the UK to provide remote live captioning, we have TONS of experience. Our captioning service is provided by stenographers (trained court reporters) at speeds up to 360 words per minute with 99.8% accuracy; this is the highest quality captioning you can get.
• Closed captions and transcriptions to make your videos accessible. Closed captions will increase your bottom line hugely, it will attract those with English as a second language, with an on-the-go lifestyle, and will optimise your digestibility. Great for YouTube videos.
• Access to Work deaf services. Benefit from our first-hand experience of obtaining ATW funding and renewing your support. We’ve been there, we know, we understand.
• Deaf awareness training and consultancy. Read this story about Hearing Dogs and why they should be allowed access. Our trainers are deaf and understand all the issues from first-hand experience, and we even have a Hearing Dog on our staff team.

To find out more about how we can help you, contact us.