A complaint of maternity discrimination against Manchester-based Bright HR has been upheld by an employment tribunal after a saleswoman claimed that her request to return to her role after having a baby was greeted with derision.
Sarah Lindup, 27, lost her former job in the web team sales department while she was on maternity leave in 2022. When she returned to the company she was given different work. A new KPI system had been deployed and her performance suffered, partly she claimed because of the different use of sales data.
Ms Lindup claimed she had an agreement with her bosses at software company Bright HR, part of the HR consultancy Peninsula Group, that she could retain her job in its web sales team after her daughter’s birth.
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But while Lindup was on maternity leave, her boss removed her from that role, despite the saleswoman having generated £1.3 million for the company in less than a year.
An employment tribunal was told that Jayde Stott, a new sales director at the firm, telephoned Lindup while she was on leave for a “mum-to-mum chat” on 26 October 2022. Ms Lindup saw this as a back to work call but Ms Stott had viewed it as an informal introductory talk.
Lindup claimed at the hearing that Ms Stott “laughed” at the idea of her returning to the same post as if it were a “ludicrous idea”.
This was contested by Ms Stott at the tribunal, and the judge said: “So far as whether or not Jayde Stott was ‘rude’ to the claimant, we are not sure that the evidence goes that far.”
When Ms Lindup returned to work she was not allowed to rejoin the web team but was allocated a role elsewhere in the sales operation.
Ms Lindup said not returning to the web team had “disastrous” consequences for her, because her annual income fell from £65,000 to £24,000.
New KPI rollout
A significantly different key performance indicator system had been introduced by Ms Stott, who had considerable expertise and experience in this area, while Ms Lindup was on leave, the tribunal heard. The sales culture had undergone considerable change as a result. In her witness statement, Ms Stott said: “I do not agree that the discussion surrounding the web team was a refusal. I told Sarah that procedures, products and management within the department had significantly changed”.
Bright HR told the tribunal that Ms Lindup had failed to meet her targets from December 2022, January 2023, and onwards and that this poor performance post-return to work justified their decision not to put her in the web team. The judge, Abigail Holt, said that the firm was implying that Ms Lindup would have lost her place [on the web team] once the new KPIs were fully operational, had she been on the web team at that point.
However, Ms Lindup claimed that she was prevented from even having the opportunity to re-establish and demonstrate her superior sales talent and, thus, earnings capacity, because she was fed inferior sales leads/data from on her return to work.
But the judge concluded that had Ms Lindup not been on maternity leave, she would still have been in the web team at the start of the new KPI standards rollout. The judge wrote: “On the balance of probabilities, we find that there is no evidence to suggest that the claimant would not have maintained her awards-ceremony-celebrated performance record based on the evidence regarding her performance prior to her maternity leave.”
Awards
Lindup had joined the company as a software consultant in 2020 and was promoted in 2021 to the web team. She went on maternity leave in February 2022 and later received two company awards for sales – although Ms Stott claimed that these awards were earned by the whole team.
The tribunal was told that while Lindup was on maternity leave, bosses confirmed in conversation and writing that she would return to the web team. But the head of sales who gave that assurance transferred to a role abroad and was replaced by Ms Stott.
Judge Holt said that the employee’s “anger and resentment” then affected her performance. Holt concluded that “it was irrational for the respondent not to redeploy their award-winning web team member, who only months earlier they had feted, back to the position where she had a track record of bringing in £1.3 million in sales for them in less than a year. In the interim, between the bumper success of the claimant and the decision of the new head of sales, Ms Stott, the only other issue was the matter of the claimant’s maternity.”
The only conceivable reason for the sudden change in Bright HR’s attitude towards Ms Lindup, wrote the judge, and the resulting loss of remuneration, was her maternity leave.
Similar role
The firm said it was in its “gift” to offer Ms Lindup a similar role. But the judge said “similar” means similar levels of opportunity to earn similar levels of remuneration, not sitting in the same office and dealing with the same products.
“The maternity leave was not a background, contextual issue,” she added. “We find that this was the fundamental matter and the vehicle whereby, through Jayde Stott, the claimant could be ‘gifted’ the disadvantageous role.”
She concluded that she had been “treated unfavourably, with disastrous personal consequences for her income”, and her boss’s decision was “intimately connected” to Lindup’s maternity leave.
Lindup, who was represented by her father and whose daughter is now three, has since left the company. Her compensation will be decided at a later date.
A spokesperson for Bright HR said they would be appealing the tribunal decision and that it would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage.
Legal opinion
Jennifer Leeder, partner in the employment and immigration team at Birketts, said in such cases the employer must offer a suitable alternative role with equivalent terms and conditions. She said: “The Equality Act 2010 protects employees from discrimination because they are pregnant or on maternity leave. An employee returning to work following a period of maternity leave is entitled to return to the same job on the same terms and conditions if they take 26 weeks of maternity leave or less.
“If they are away for longer, they still have the right to return to the same role unless it is not reasonably practicable. In that case, they should then be offered a suitable alternative role with equivalent terms and conditions.
“Employers who fail to comply with their obligations face the possibility of legal action, financial penalties, and reputational damage, so it is important that they ensure that managers receive regular training on maternity rights and discrimination law. Policies should be clearly communicated and decisions reached must be objectively justifiable and well-documented.”
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