In the case of Mrs J Follows v Nationwide Building Society Ms Follows was employed from December 2011, latterly as a Senior Lending Manager (SLM), to her dismissal on the purported ground of redundancy on 15 January 2018. Ms Follows’ work record was good throughout her employment, she had high ratings and appraisals and was “a top performer”.
Ms Follows’ contract was a ‘home working contract’ and she was usually in the office 2 to 3 days a week. The respondent’s management was aware during her employment of the reasons why she worked from home which was because she was the primary carer for her elderly mother.
The tribunal heard that in October 2017, Nationwide decided to slash the number of SLMs from 12 to eight and, as part of this process, the decision was made to eliminate home working contracts.
Ms Follows role was at risk of redundancy and she was invited to an initial consultation meeting. She was informed that ‘the proposal is to place the roles that are currently home-based at risk’.
The tribunal heard that her boss told her: ‘I would expect all the team to be in the office every day unless there is a specific business need or benefit to working from home on a particular day – I certainly would expect it to be no more than a single day in any week’.
In November Ms Follows sent a formal complaint to Mr Alexander claiming Nationwide was ‘attempting to change my terms and conditions by asking me to work in an unsuitable location’.
In January 2018 Ms Follows was told she was being made redundant with immediate effect.
Upholding the majority of her claims, the tribunal – chaired by Employment Judge Mark Emery – said: ‘[Nationwide] was unable to show that its rationale for deleting homeworking posts had any basis in evidence.
‘We concluded that it was based on a view amongst senior management that homeworking posts should be deleted, it would be “better” to do so, rather than based on any analysis of the business need for on-site SLMs or any consideration of an alternative approach.
‘There was no suggestion by [Nationwide] that it considered the balance between the clearly discriminatory effect of the requirement on [Ms Follows] and the commercial department’s business needs.
‘We accepted that [Nationwide] made the decision to delete homeworking SLM roles on the basis of some dissatisfaction expressed by some junior staff, and a management view that it would be ‘better’ to make this change.
‘[Ms Follows’] evidence and work record at the very least suggested that any issue with supervision did not lie with staff on homeworking contracts. In other words, [Nationwide’s] view was not based on actual evidence or rational judgment and was instead based on subjective impressions.’
Ms Follows was awarded £345,708.
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