Equality and Diversity Considerations

Personal Assistant (PA) employers need to treat their PAs fairly, without discrimination on the basis of a personal or ‘Protected Characteristic’, such as their sex, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity or martial status.

Employers have a legal duty not to discriminate before, during and after employment, according to the law (the Equality Act 2010).

The Equality Act

The Equality Act 2010 came into effect to protect people from harassment, discrimination and victimisation. There are nine protected characteristics covered within the Equality Act which protect people from being discriminated against. The protected characteristics are:

Age
Disability
Gender reassignment
Pregnancy and maternity
Race
Religion or belief
Marriage and civil partnership
Sex
Sexual orientation

This means that discrimination under any of these characteristics could result in a claim being made against the PA Employer. There is no minimum length of service required for workers to be able to bring a claim for unlawful discrimination. For the employer, a claim for discrimination can be made in respect of a job advert, during employment, or post employment (for example in a reference given for a former employee).

Therefore, as an employer, it is important to understand the importance of equality in the workplace before employing someone.

In some circumstances, it will be lawful to require that a person possesses a particular protected characteristic in order to do a particular kind of work, for example advertising for female-only candidates to be a PA. But certain conditions have to be satisfied first to ensure this is done legally – you should always take advice on this.

When interviewing potential candidates, it is important to ensure the candidate is not asked any questions which could be seen as discrimination or which relate to their protected characteristics. In particular, it may be unlawful to ask questions about disability or health during a recruitment process or until a formal job offer has been made, unless the question is to establish whether reasonable adjustments are required for the interview.