An employee was constructively dismissed from an ‘ethical’ dating app company after she complained that its chief executive had bullied colleagues, an employment tribunal has found.
Ethical Social Group (ESG), a now-defunct company that owned the Fluttr dating app, has been ordered to pay compensation to Ms Cameron-Peck, who was CEO of Fluttr’s sister company and ESG subsidiary, Wndr Social.
Shortly after joining the company in August 2021, Cameron-Peck received complaints from employees about Fluttr CEO Rhonda Alexander, who had been accused of bullying. The issues raised by staff included “having eggs thrown at their efforts or suggestions and becoming silenced” and “deep professional experience being talked down by louder inexperienced and rude voices [and] confidence being eroded”.
Cameron-Peck – who has more than 35 years of experience in IT and digital services – brought the complaints to the attention of ESG group CEO Graham Pullan. She wrote that she had also experienced much of Alexander’s behaviour as passive-aggressive, manipulative and “downright rude”.
Pullan had previously told the claimant that Alexander was “quite wealthy with access to contacts with funds”.
She did not receive any response to her email and she told the employment tribunal in Cambridge that Pullan and chief people officer Galina Ratcliffe did not investigate her complaint.
The tribunal found her complaint had amounted to a protected disclosure.
The claimant said she became increasingly isolated from other members of staff and was spoken to in a condescending manner by Pullan, who permitted Alexander to continue her bullying and aggressive behaviour. Cameron-Peck was later excluded from conversations and messages relating to Fluttr, which she claimed was in response to her saying that nothing had been done about the bullying.
She was also not invited to a board meeting, despite being a non-executive director of ESG.
Claimant ‘treated as the problem’
The employment tribunal’s judgment says that the claimant “had been treated as the problem, rather than Rhonda Alexander”.
“Prior to the claimant making complaints about Rhonda Alexander, the claimant and Graham Pullan had enjoyed a good working relationship. The claimant’s complaints appear to have provoked not only a lack of effective action but unpleasant behaviour from Graham Pullan,” employment judge Slater said.
“I consider the most likely explanation for the change in behaviour of Graham Pullan towards the claimant to be that she had become an irritant in his side, with the matters she was raising threatening his way of carrying on business. The claimant’s complaints about Rhonda Alexander, if they had been properly pursued, could have threatened what the second respondent regarded as a good source of investment.”
On 18 October 2021 the claimant was invited to meeting with Ratcliffe and Peter McNab, the firm’s chief talent development officer. She claimed they wrongly quoted things she was alleged to have done, and was told that it had been “illegal” for her to record a conversation she had had with Pullan. She said she was never told that the meeting was related to any possible disciplinary proceedings.
She later requested the notes from the meeting as part of a subject access request, but never received them.
It was alleged that Pullan, Ratcliffe and McNab fabricated falsely corroborated accusations against the claimant to get her to resign.
It was alleged that around this time another employee was asked to urgently write a new HR policy that expressed that covert recordings would be seen as an act of gross misconduct.
Resignation
Cameron-Peck was suspended from the organisation on 19 October 2021 and she resigned on 20 October.
Her resignation later said: “As you know, I have been unhappy with the way the company has allowed mistreatment of staff members to occur and continue … and I feel that you have not dealt adequately with misconduct occurring over several months which has resulted in damage. I am one of those who has suffered, has been treated with inequity, and has been the shoulder of hope that others have chosen to cry on. My physical and mental health has deteriorated consequently and my anxiety has become debilitating, interfering with my ability to function.”
A further letter sent on 28 October 2021 accused the company of breach of contract and for failing to pay her October 2021 salary; provide payslips; register her as an employee with HMRC; pay her tax and national insurance contributions to HMRC; automatically enrol her on to a pension scheme; pay pension contributions and pay her expenses claims.
The judgment says: “It appears to me most likely that the respondents formed the view that the best way to avoid the threat to their business model was to get the claimant out of the way.
“I conclude that the claimant has proved, on a balance of probabilities, that the reason or principal reason for the detrimental treatment which I have found constituted a breach of the implied duty of mutual trust and confidence, was that the claimant had made protected disclosures.”
ESG was ordered to pay £97,361 in compensation for unfair dismissal.
Pullan and Ratcliffe were ordered to pay £77,889 between them for financial loss suffered as a result of the acts of detrimental treatment and £10,000 for injury to feelings.
ESG, Pullan, Ratcliffe and McNab are also liable to pay a further £8,724 in compensation between them for non-payment of salary, expenses, pension contributions and payment in lieu of untaken holiday.
The Fluttr dating app is not to be confused with energy efficiency app Fluttr.
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