Nicole Natur, Solicitor in our Employment team at Ramsdens, has featured in the latest HR Grapevine article providing her professional opinion on whether HR have an issue with accent bias within the workplace.
Despite the scale of accent bias felt within the workplace, Nicole commented that legal protection for those experiencing it can be difficult to navigate:
“Discrimination on the grounds of a person's accent is probably more common than you might think, but there appears to be less general awareness surrounding it. The Equalities Act 2010 identifies characteristics that are protected by it, but none specifically relate to accents. At present, the law does not protect those who face discriminatory treatment due to a ‘regional’ accent. An example of this might be someone with an accent commonly associated with one region in the UK having a job promotion rejected from an employer in another region of the UK on account of their accent.”
To read the full article please visit HR Grapevine online.
For more information on the topics covered in the article, please get in touch with our Employment team, either by emailing us at info@ramsdens.co.uk or calling us on 01484 821 500.