Dealing with discrimination in employment

This guidance covers what you can do if you believe you have been unlawfully discriminated against in a work situation:

• by your employer
• by a worker employed by them or their agent
• when have applied for a job (or been stopped from applying) 

Read all pages in this guide before you decide what to do, so you know all the options you have.

It is especially important that you work out when the last day is that you can tell the Employment Tribunal about your complaint, so that you don’t miss that deadline, even if you are trying to work things out with your employer first.

To challenge discrimination at work, there are three things you can do:

• complain informally to your employer
• raise a grievance using your employer's grievance procedures
• make a claim to the Employment Tribunal

You do not have to choose only one of these. Instead, you could try them in turn. If you cannot get your employer to put things right, then you can make a claim to the Employment Tribunal.

You do not have to go to your employer before making a claim to the Employment Tribunal, but there are two reasons you might choose to do this:

1. Making a claim may be demanding on your time and emotions, so before starting the process you may want to look at whether or not you have a good chance of success. You may also want to see if there are better ways of sorting out your complaint. You should think carefully about whether making a claim to the Employment Tribunal is the right thing for you personally.
2. If you do not use your employer's grievance procedures to solve a problem before you make a claim to the Employment Tribunal, and you win your case, the Tribunal can reduce the amount of money it instructs your employer to pay you by up to a quarter if it thinks you acted unreasonably.

Do not forget that even if you try to sort the matter out with your employer first, formally or informally, you must keep to the Tribunal time limits if you want to bring an Employment Tribunal case. In order to keep within the time limit, you may have to start a case before you have finished discussing the matter internally with your employer.

Write down what happened as soon as you can after it happened, or tell someone else about it so they can write it down. Record as much detail as you can about who was involved and what was said or done.

Sometimes it is difficult to work out if what happened is against equality law. You need to show that your protected characteristics played a part. The rest of this guide tells you more about what this means for the different types of unlawful discrimination or for harassment or victimisation.

Remember, the problem will sometimes be that something was not done. For example, if you are a disabled person and you asked for a reasonable adjustment that was not made.

This guide focuses on making a complaint about something that is against equality law. You may have a complaint (which is often called ‘bringing a grievance’) about something else at work, which is not related to a protected characteristic.

You can get advice about your situation, and whether equality law applies, from other organisations, particularly the Arbitration and Conciliation Service (Acas), Citizens Advice or your trade union.