The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) recently found that comments on an employee’s accent may amount to race-related harassment (Carozzi v University of Hertfordshire [2024] EAT 169).
What is harassment?
The Equality Act 2010 prohibits discrimination, harassment and victimisation on the basis of various protected characteristics.
Under section 26 of the Equality Act, harassment occurs when someone engages in unwanted conduct related to a protected characteristic (such as sex, race, or disability) and the conduct has the purpose or effect of violating another person’s dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for that other person.
What is race-related harassment?
The Equality Act states that race includes colour, nationality and ethnic or national origins. Harassment relating to any of these characteristics may be considered race-related harassment.
Is an accent related to race?
The EAT considered whether an accent is related to the protected characteristic of race for the purposes of the Equality Act and found that accents may form part of a person’s national or ethnic identity. Negative comments about a person’s accent may amount to harassment or, in certain circumstances, discrimination.
The Tribunal made it clear that not every comment related to an accent will constitute harassment or discrimination. However, employers must take care to ensure that staff are not subjected to unwanted comments or behaviour which is unwanted and does, or is intended to, violate their dignity.
You should note that:
- Even if a comment is not intended to cause offence, it may still have the effect of violating a person’s dignity and can therefore be considered discrimination or harassment.
- Employers should be aware that comments not made to, or in earshot of, the relevant employee can still amount to discrimination or harassment.
How to prevent race-related discrimination, harassment and victimisation
Grievance procedures
You have a specific legal duty to ensure that your staff are protected from discrimination at work, and any staff member who feels you are responsible for discrimination against them has the right to bring a claim for compensation against you in an employment tribunal. A fair and rigorously applied grievance procedure can reduce the likelihood of such claims. For more information on how to handle a grievance, see our Q&A here.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission recommends that you continue to monitor the situation after you have dealt with a grievance, even if you did not find that there had been discrimination within your business. You must take care to ensure that any discriminatory behaviour that you have uncovered does not continue, and that the staff member who brought the complaint is not treated badly for having done so.
Policies and training
A complaint about discrimination may be an indication that you need to improve your discrimination prevention measures. It is important that you have suitable policies, procedures and systems in place, and that these policies and systems are understood and used properly by your staff. You can be held responsible for the discriminatory actions of your staff in the course of their work for you if you have not done everything that you reasonably can to prevent such actions. This can even include acts outside work that are connected to their work (eg at a company social event).
You should have a clearly communicated bullying and harassment policy, stating that discrimination and harassment will not be tolerated in the workplace. You can use our Staff handbook and policies toolkit to generate standalone HR policies or to create an entire staff handbook containing the employment policies and procedures of your choice.
Employees should be aware of how to report any incidents and managers should be trained in how to respond to discrimination and harassment. You may also consider hosting awareness events and training to prevent discrimination and harassment.
Learn more
You can learn more about discrimination, including race discrimination here.
For more on discrimination and harassment relating to other protected characteristics, read our blogs:
- International Day of Persons with Disabilities
- Menopause workplace support: a guide for employers
- Duty to prevent sexual harassment: new EHRC guidance
- National Inclusion Week: how to avoid discrimination when hiring
The content in this article is up to date at the date of publishing. The information provided is intended only for information purposes, and is not for the purpose of providing legal advice. Sparqa Legal’s Terms of Use apply.
Rahul joined Sparqa in 2025 from the Commercial Court, where he served as a Judicial Assistant. He has active interests in commercial, corporate and employment developments which he pursues alongside teaching undergraduate law.