As an employer, the way that you run your workplace is your domain. If your business began with a small team in an environment that felt like family, a discrimination policy may have been the furthest thing from your mind. Yet as businesses grow, and employees enter and exit a business, paying attention to discrimination should become a high priority.
Like most preventative issues in a workplace, the best way to protect your business against discrimination claims is a combination of strong policies and even stronger training. Policies serve as your employees’ guidebook, and they allow you to set out the rules of your workplace and the punishments for not following those rules, which can include discipline and even dismissal for repeated infractions.
Those policies need to be thoroughly incorporated into your workplace though, and that is where the training element comes in. Incorporate talk of discrimination into your employee training, such as into your harassment training, and ensure that employees know what sort of conduct is simply not acceptable. Employees may still act badly, but the best prevention is when they know what not to do and what the ramifications will be.
Finally, employer’s actions, rules, and policies that are conducted in good faith, and that may be part of a bona fide occupational requirement, should not be considered discriminatory. If a policy or rule restricts a certain class of workers based on a protected ground such as age or disability, and the rule is issued in good faith and the worker cannot be reasonably accommodated, this is not viewed by courts and tribunals as discriminatory conduct.