Bullying and harassment are contrary to the Equality Act 2010 and the University's Equality, Diversity and Human Rights Code.
Bullying is offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting behaviour involving the misuse of power. These behaviours can make a person feel vulnerable, upset, humiliated, undermined or threatened. Power does not always mean being in a position of authority, but can include both personal strength and the power to coerce through fear or intimidation. This can be between two individuals or it may involve groups of people. It might be obvious or it might be insidious. It may be persistent or an isolated incident.
Bullying can take the form of physical, verbal and non-verbal conduct. Non-verbal conduct includes postings on social media outlets. Examples of bullying behaviours include:
- Shouting at, being sarcastic towards, ridiculing or demeaning others.
- Repeatedly putting down a person or group of people in public or private.
- Physical or psychological threats.
- Criticising a person in an inappropriate manner or belittling them about their work, personality or appearance overbearing and intimidating levels of supervision.
- Inappropriate and/or derogatory remarks about someone's performance.
- Abuse of authority or power by those in positions of seniority.
- Deliberately excluding someone from meetings or communications without good reason.
- Creating or using web pages that identify and shame people.
- Creating altered images to degrade people.
- Sharing personal information to blackmail or harass someone.
- Someone spreading a false rumour about another person.
Legitimate, reasonable and constructive criticism of performance or behaviour, or reasonable instructions will not amount to bullying on their own.
Harassment is unwanted physical, verbal or non-verbal conduct that may (intentionally or unintentionally) violate a person’s dignity or create an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment, which interferes with an individual’s learning, working or social environment. It also includes treating someone less favourably because they have submitted or refused to submit to such behaviour in the past.
Harassment may involve sexual harassment or be related to a protected characteristic such as age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, race (i.e colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin), religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation. Find out more about sexual harassment in our Gender-Based Violence support pages.
Harassment may include, for example:
- Unwanted physical conduct or ‘horseplay’, including touching, pinching, pushing, grabbing, brushing past someone, invading their personal space and more serious forms of physical or sexual assault.
- Offensive or intimidating comments or gestures, or insensitive jokes or pranks.
- Mocking, mimicking or belittling a person’s disability.
- Racist, sexist, homophobic or ageist jokes, or derogatory or stereotypical remarks about a particular ethnic or religious group or gender.
- Outing or threatening to out someone as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.
- Ignoring or shunning someone, for example, by deliberately excluding them from a conversation or a social activity.
A person may be harassed even if they were not the intended "target". For example, a person may be harassed by racist jokes about a different ethnic group if they create an offensive environment.
Some forms of harassment are considered hate incidents or hate crimes. Find out more about what constitutes hate incidents or hate crimes on our hate crime support pages.
UWS will challenge unacceptable actions and behaviours such as harassment, bullying or victimisation of people based on their personal characteristics, eliminate all forms of unlawful discrimination and deal with any discrimination consistently and effectively.
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- Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) provide further information on unlawful harassment
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