‘Global Quality

• The Scenario
You are a Project Manager for Wifi Kettles and have just been given the responsibility of managing a key IT project for the next twelve months, codenamed ‘Global Quality’. You are responsible for ensuring that the project is delivered on time and within budget.
Your objective is to develop a suite of software programs to enable the company to monitor quality throughout its global operations. This will be a web-based IT system that allows quality data collected from remote locations (such as the company’s three manufacturing plants in China) to be entered into a central database where it can be analysed by the quality department.
The members of your team are all university graduates, their ages vary between 25 and 45 years, and they are all consider themselves relatively well paid. Five of the team members work directly for the company and three are freelance contractors.

As you can see from the organisational chart above:
• The team has eight members excluding yourself;
• Two Quality Officers have been seconded to the project from the quality department;
• Two Data Analysts have been seconded to the project from the IT department;
• One Database Analyst, also seconded from the IT department, is only available to the team on a part-time basis; and
• The three programmers in the team are external contractors.

Question

Ben Smith is the part-time Database Analyst. Laura Seren is one of the Data Analysts. She can be at times quite aggressive but also at times flirtatious. She uses affectionate terms such as “sweetie” or “darling”, and sometimes “sexy”. She also comments on Ben’s dress sense and says how “handsome” he looks. The day before a meeting Ben was expected to attend with Laura and Simon, the other Data Analyst, she told to him in wearing something extra special “so that I can appreciate all your best qualities in the meeting”. Ben was convinced she was staring at his bottom when she said this. Ben finds this disconcerting but, in an effort to get along with his team members, he made no objections and to some extent has played along because he finds Laura’s flirtatious side easier to deal with than with her aggressive side.

Recently there was a Halloween party at Wifi Kettles’ headquarters, and alcohol was consumed. After the party, a largish group of people went on to a local nightclub. Ben and Laura were among them. Laura was quite drunk and became very amorous towards Ben and suggested they go home together. When he made it clear he was not interested in her, she became aggressive towards him. Ben left the nightclub and went home.

Since then, Laura has been more aggressive and cold towards Ben at work.

The company’s equal opportunities policy, which was introduced shortly before Laura joined, prohibits all forms of bullying and harassment and gives numerous examples of inappropriate behaviour. Staff were given a training session on the policy when it was introduced.

Ben has had enough comes to you for advice as his Project Manager.

Consider possible claims Ben may have under the Equality Act 2010 and discuss their merits.

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