A Nigerian employee of Johnson & Johnson has won a racial discrimination claim after her manager used a cultural styles report to ‘racially profile’ her.
Tolulope Fayokun began work at the pharmaceutical company as a senior manager for strategic insights in 2017. She and her director Alessandra Toro originally had a good relationship, the tribunal heard, enjoying shared birthday lunches and exchanges of gifts.
In her first mid-year review, Toro told Fayokun that she had started well, displaying “strong leadership and the ability to connect and influence with key stakeholders and partners”.
However, the relationship began to sour and by the time she reached her end of year review, her bonus expectations had been revised from what she was told when she joined the company.
The tribunal also heard that Fayokun had been ‘expected’ to manipulate certain aspects of her research and cover up identified project errors.
Race discrimination
In the following months, she struggled with her workload and asked her manager for help. She was asked to take on more work but had to refuse because she was “barely getting four hours sleep a day” and was not seeing her children.
She then claimed she attended a debriefing meeting with Toro where she was criticised for her manner of speech and body language. Giving evidence, Fayokun said Toro had told her “she was only trying to help me because colleagues found my mannerisms offensive”. In response to this Toro told the tribunal her feedback had never been racially or religiously based.
She claimed Fayokun had created a “false narrative” based on a conversation about her ‘Berlitz’ report, a tool designed to help people from different cultures understand each other’s cultural preferences. Fayokun described this document as “racial profiling”.
In further meetings, Toro made reference to Fayokun’s “negative Nigerian traits”, claiming the report had helped her understand her “Nigerian workstyle”. The tribunal heard that she was subject to lazy stereotypes and was once told she was working on “African time”.
The tribunal found that Fayokun’s complaints about the Berlitz report were justified, in that she was subject to detriment and treated less favourably on the grounds of her Nigerian nationality.
The judgment added that the way the report was used and discussed “polluted not only the claimant’s relationship with [Toro] but her relationship with other colleagues… the effect of this discriminatory act in our view continued to impact on the claimant”.
From February 2019 Fayokun could no longer work due to sickness, and she wrote to the company stating she had suffered workplace abuse. She was invited to submit a formal grievance but declined, eventually approaching Acas for early conciliation in May 2019.
She was later offered a referral to occupational health, and told if she did not agree to this she would be invited to a formal capability meeting. She submitted a response but in January 2020 was informed she had been dismissed as there was little prospect of her returning to work. An appeal to this decision was refused.
Judge Andrew Gumbiti-Zimuto concluded that Fayokun had been “unfairly racially profiled”, adding that the tribunal was satisfied that she had been “disadvantaged in the workplace by reason of being told that this exercise had been carried out and was being actively used to manage her”.
Further claims of unfair dismissal, victimisation, harassment and religious discrimination were not upheld.
Her compensation will be decided at a future remedy hearing.
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