Zero Tolerance Statement

Position Statement

We are committed to providing a professional and safe workplace for our employees.

We will not tolerate harassment of any kind including sexual harassment, threatening, abusive or violent behaviour, or behaviour that causes offence. Any instances of such behaviour will be taken seriously and dealt with, which may include contacting the local authorities.

About this position statement:

This position statement enables us to deal with unacceptable behaviour from our clients or external stakeholders professionally, consistently and fairly. It lets everyone know what we consider to be unacceptable and outlines the steps we may take to deal with such behaviour.

What behaviour is unacceptable?

Unacceptable behaviour Is defined as:

Behaviour or language (written, verbal or online) that we consider may cause our employees to feel harassed, intimidated, afraid, offended, threatened or abused.

Examples of this include (but are not exhaustive):

• Communication that we consider to be unreasonably demanding, or unreasonably persistent in its frequency, type and nature. This means telephone, email or written communication, face to face, online or through social media.
• Violent behaviour – physical contact made in an aggressive or threatening manner.
• Threatening behaviour – words or actions that cause a person to be concerned for their safety, the safety of colleagues, or the safety of their property. This includes visual threats or gestures, aggressive stance, sexually explicit or threatening language, abusive phone calls, on-line bullying, or obstruction.
• Abusive behaviour – words or actions that cause a person to feel harassed, intimidated or distressed. This includes: offensive gestures; aggressive stance; abusive, provocative or obscene language and inappropriate use of social media.
• Sexual harassment – unwanted conduct of a sexual nature which has the purpose or effect of violating a person’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for that person. This also includes treating someone less favourably because they have submitted to, or refused to submit to, unwanted conduct of a sexual nature or in relation to gender reassignment or sex.

What action will we take?

Our position on harassment, threatening or violent behaviour, racism or xenophobia is simple: zero tolerance. We will not tolerate it within our organisation and we wont tolerate it against our people from outside the organisation. If we feel any of our clients or external stakeholder’s behaviours are unacceptable we will take the following steps:

1. Identify:

We will ask that the behaviour is modified and explain the reasoning for this. If the behaviour continues our employees are advised to remove themselves from the situation.

2. Report:

The employee will inform human resources or a senior manager about the situation, and the incident will be recorded.

3. Review:

A member of our senior management team will investigate the situation and decide what action to take. We will keep all parties informed of the investigation and where we feel it necessary we may escalate the matter to the relevant authorities.

If there is a disagreement on the final decision all parties are entitled to make a complaint to our human resources department available on [email protected].