An NHS training supervisor has been awarded £29,000 after being assigned a Darth Vader personality type in a Star Wars-themed Myers-Briggs exercise.
Croydon employment tribunal awarded Mrs Rooke £17,000 for financial losses and £12,000 for injury to feelings after she was subjected to two detriments for whistleblowing at NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT).
The panel ruled that Rooke suffered detriments for NHSBT’s failure to allow her to retract her resignation, and in relation to a Myers-Briggs type indicator – carried out on her behalf – which assigned her a Darth Vader personality type, which translated to “someone who was a very focused individual who brings the team together”.
The protected disclosure, one of three raised by the claimant, involved an omission in a question on a new blood donor safety check that was due to “go live” the following month.
Rooke worked for NHS Blood and Transplant as a training and practice supervisor from April 2003, until her resignation from the Nursing Care Quality Team (NCQT) in October 2021, which she later unsuccessfully attempted to retract.
She brought claims to the employment tribunal against NHSBT for constructive unfair dismissal, direct disability discrimination, a failure to make reasonable adjustments, and protected disclosure detriment.
Protected disclosures
Rooke asserted that she made three disclosures. First, in March 2020, at the beginning of the first lockdown, she wrote on the in-house platform Yammer that she was concerned that staff were being put at risk by not having personal protective equipment.
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Second, in June 2020, she expressed concerns that training shortcuts were taking place, putting blood donors and patients at risk. And third, in May 2021, she informed a colleague, Ms Harber, of the omission in the donor safety check.
For six months from September 2020, Rooke was signed off work with “low mood and anxiety”.
The tribunal also heard numerous examples of how Rooke felt her role was being eroded, but the tribunal found that, where aspects of her role had changed, they had been temporary – in response to the pandemic.
The panel found that Rooke, who represented herself at tribunal, failed to prove several other disputed facts in the case, including her claim that she was asked to deliver “inadequate” training, and NHSBT’s “disregard” for suggestions of new ways of working.
‘Overwhelm’
The judgment found that Rooke resigned because of “the overwhelm” she felt dealing with the immensely difficult situation with her mother, who was suffering from dementia, and because of her “panic” about a new technological development due to commence the following day.
However, it found that NHSBT’s communications with Rooke when she wished to retract her resignation as “odd” and “confusing”. Reasons given included that the recruitment process to fill her role had already begun, when it had not, but the tribunal also heard about a “recruitment freeze”, for which evidence was lacking.
The tribunal considered that either there was “some considerable confusion among the relevant respondent personnel at the time, or there was some obfuscation on their part in their communications with the claimant”.
The judgment said: “The adverse inference we draw, based on the lack of plausible explanation for [NHSBT’s] actions and our concerns with the position put forward by [NHSBT], is that the third disclosure was a more than trivial influence on the respondent’s treatment of the claimant.”
The tribunal did not find that the other two disclosures were protected because, the first was made on Yammer, which NHSBT management did not necessarily monitor, and the second was not demonstrated as a “reasonable belief” by Rooke.
Darth Vader personality type
As for the Darth Vader Incident, while the panel did not regard it as having sufficient effect on Rooke to amount to a fundamental breach of contract, it did consider it a detriment.
“The tribunal finds that [Rooke] did perceive her characterisation as having a Darth Vader personality type to be a detriment, and it was reasonable for her do so. Ms Dee’s attempt to argue that being characterised as a Darth Vader personality type had some positive attributes was not successful in persuading us that this was not a detriment – Darth Vader is a legendary villain of the Star Wars series, and being aligned with his personality is insulting.
“Nor was this simply ‘the output of the test which the whole team agreed to take’, because it was not the claimant’s answers that gave the Darth Vader result, but rather Ms Harber’s answers, standing in the shoes of the claimant. It therefore reflected Ms Harber’s perception of [Rooke’s] personality, and was shared in a group environment. It is little wonder that the claimant was upset by it.”
The panel said Rooke’s unchallenged evidence was that Harber’s pursuit of the gap in the draft donor safety check, identified in the third disclosure, had resulted in Harber being “told that she was a bad representative of the NCQT”.
“We find this more than sufficient to satisfy the requirement that the detriment was ‘on the ground’ of the claimant having made the protected third disclosure,” concluded the panel.
Rooke’s claims for constructive unfair dismissal, direct disability discrimination and a failure to make reasonable adjustments were dismissed.
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