If your employer promises to fix something after a grievance and then doesn’t, that broken promise can itself be harassment.
“HarassmentUnwanted behaviour related to a protected characteristic, such as your sex, race, disability, age or religion, that violates your dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile or humiliating environment... related to sex upheld; compensation to be decided at a remedy hearing”
If your employer promises to fix something, through a grievanceA formal complaint raised by an employee against their employer, triggering a legal obligation to investigate and respond. outcome or a return-to-work plan, and then doesn't deliver on it, that broken promise can itself count as harassment, separate from the original problem.
- Keep a copy of any commitments made in a grievance outcome or return-to-work plan, and note whether they're actually delivered.
- You don't need to show your employer meant to let you down. The effect on you is what matters.
- Don't let an unresolved issue drift. Get advice on the three-month time limit before an ongoing problem becomes too old to bring as a claim.
The situation
An employee returning from maternity leave needed somewhere private to express breast milk during shifts. After an earlier return to work went badly, she raised a formal grievance, and her employer's own grievance outcome promised her a lockable room to express in. When she came back from a further period of leave, that promise still hadn't been delivered. Management hadn't actioned it before her return, and once she was back there was still nowhere safe and lockable on the ward for her to express, unless she waited until after 9pm.
What the tribunal found
The tribunal found this was unwanted conduct related to sex, because it was related to breastfeeding. It did not need to have been done deliberately to count. What mattered was the effect: being let down on a specific promise, about something that had already caused her distress once before, left her feeling humiliated and unsupported. The tribunal was clear that the harm came from a known problem not being fixed once it had already been flagged, not from any new or different failure. This was enough to make out harassment related to sex under section 26 of the Equality Act 2010The main piece of legislation protecting employees from discrimination at work. It covers nine protected characteristics including age, disability, sex, race, and religion, and makes it unlawful for a....
An earlier set of similar problems, from her first return to work in 2021, was not decided on the same basis. The tribunal accepted that some of that earlier conduct would likely have succeeded too, but by the time she brought her claim it fell outside the three-month time limitThe deadline by which you must submit a claim to an employment tribunal. For most claims the limit is three months less one day from the act you are complaining about, and it is strictly enforced. Mis..., so it was never fully determined. Only the later, 2023 failures were found to be harassment. Compensation has not yet been decided; that will be dealt with at a separate remedy hearing.
For the fuller legal test behind this, see our guide on what counts as harassment at work. A similar principle protected an employee who kept being threatened with discipline during a family emergency, even though no one meant to discriminate against him.
Gibbins v Cardiff and Vale University Local Health Board. Case 1602976/2023. Cardiff Employment Tribunal. December 2024.