{"id":177186,"date":"2022-10-15T16:21:32","date_gmt":"2022-10-15T15:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/legalvision.co.uk\/?p=177186"},"modified":"2022-10-25T00:07:15","modified_gmt":"2022-10-24T23:07:15","slug":"prevent-religious-belief-discrimination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/legalvision.co.uk\/employment\/prevent-religious-belief-discrimination\/","title":{"rendered":"Steps Employers Should Take to Prevent Religious Discrimination"},"content":{"rendered":"

Religious discrimination is one of nine unlawful forms of workplace <\/span>discrimination<\/span><\/a>. As an employer, you must ensure that you do not personally discriminate based on a person’s religion or belief. You must also ensure that others in your workplace do not do so. Otherwise, an employee can claim against you at an employment <\/span>tribunal<\/span><\/a> for failing to keep the workplace free from religious discrimination. <\/span>This article will explain what you, as an employer, should do to prevent religious or belief discrimination in the workplace. It will explain, for example, what religious or belief discrimination is and give examples of ways you may be able to prevent this.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is Religious Discrimination?<\/span><\/h2>\n

Religious discrimination \u2014\u00a0also called belief discrimination \u2014is where one person is treated less favourably than another or otherwise unfairly disadvantaged based on their religion or belief. In this context, religion is any type of religion, including having no religion at all, and a belief is a religious or philosophical belief or not a belief at all.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Unlawful religious discrimination comes in two forms:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Direct discrimination<\/b><\/td>\n\n

Where a person is treated less favourably because of their religion, belief, or lack thereof. For example, if you choose not to promote your employee simply because they are Jewish.<\/span><\/p>\n

Direct discrimination is almost always unlawful.\u00a0<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

Indirect discrimination\u00a0<\/b><\/td>\n\n

Where some policy or provision has the unintended effect of disadvantaging an employee because of their religious beliefs. Indirect discrimination is unlawful if there is no reasonable business case for the policy that gives rise to indirect discrimination.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, a policy obligating staff to wear a hat in the workplace would disadvantage a Sikh from wearing their turban. This is likely, therefore, to be unlawful indirect discrimination.\u00a0<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Further Considerations\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Direct or indirect discrimination can take several different forms. These include:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Associative discrimination\u00a0<\/b><\/td>\nWhere you treat another less favourably because they associate with others with a particular religion or belief or those without one.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Perceptive discrimination<\/b><\/td>\nWhere you discriminate against someone based on what you think their religion or belief may be.\u00a0<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Victimisation<\/b><\/td>\nWhere you treat someone unfavourably because they have made a complaint about religious discrimination.\u00a0<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Harassment\u00a0<\/b><\/td>\nHarassment<\/span><\/a> is when someone receives \u201cunwanted conduct related to a relevant protected characteristic, which has the purpose or effect of violating an individual\u2019s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for that individual.\u201d<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

How to Prevent Religious or Belief Discrimination?<\/span><\/h2>\n

Religious and belief discrimination can occur in various ways, as detailed above. Therefore, you must take all reasonable steps to prevent such discrimination in the workplace.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Clear Policies<\/span><\/h3>\n

As an employer, to prevent religious or belief discrimination from occurring, you should ensure that you create policies around this. You should have an overall policy against discrimination along with one specifically related to religious and belief discrimination. Ideally, this policy should be zero-tolerance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

An essential part of this policy should be to clarify how your staff should make a request concerning their religion or belief in their job role with you and how managers should respond to these. Requests could arise in terms of, for example:<\/span><\/p>\n