Tribunal rules that WFH is acceptable for important meetings

A tribunal ruled that an IT director unfairly fired for insisting on working at home during a meeting of importance.

Ben Wicken, who worked at Akita Systems in May 2022, was asked to meet the managing director Christophe Boudet to resolve a dispute.

Wicken asked to attend the Microsoft Teams mediation meeting instead as he had to supervise gardeners doing work on his property.

The tribunal was told that a previous meeting had been “productive” and “positive”, and that there were hopes for a better working relationship in the future.

Boudet expressed his “disappointment” at the fact that the follow-up couldn’t be done in person. He told Wicken he didn’t seem to take the process very seriously. He then attended the office.

Wicken, Boudet, and Maria Cruse (an external HR consultant) attended this meeting. They questioned Wicken’s decision to work from home in order to “sort out the gardeners” rather than attending an important meeting.

Wicken said to the tribunal that he was “attacked” by Boudet during the meeting.

Boudet said that it was “questionable”, whether management did a “good” job, when asked whether the process of mediation had been well handled.

Wicken was asked to come back for a second meeting so he could create an improvement plan. He said that he had been busy at work and did not have time.

He said that the directors “were very cold towards him” and told him they would cancel the meetings, without any indication of what could happen next.

He apologized to the management for “wrongly agreeing to have a strategy” as it was “too early” and that he wasn’t ready. However, he said he would be happy to meet with them to discuss.

Wicken met with his managers in mid-May to discuss an improvement plan, which included “not wearing his jacket all the time” and “working to improve his image”.

Cruse expressed disappointment that the plan failed to address his role as technical director and informed Wicken that all directors had “unanimously” lost confidence and trust in his work. A meeting would take place the following day.

The next day’s meeting was without prejudice, and two days after that Wicken filed a grievance outlining the events and claiming any dismissal of him would be unfair as Akita management had made it clear to Wicken they intended to fire him.

He said: “I reserve my right to resign due to [the respondent’s] fundamental breach in contract. I will be deciding whether or not to do this in the next few days.”

Akita hired another HR consultant to manage the grievance process, David Charity. The tribunal heard Charity was a friend of Boudet’s for a long time and that he had “no prior experience conducting workplace investigations on behalf of the respondent”.

Wicken sent management an email again, saying that the process was “unfair and pointless” because David was a friend of his outside of work. The stress was signed off for two months.

Charity closed the case in a letter to him at the end of June after he refused to participate in the grievance procedure. Wicken resigned citing several reasons, including Charity’s refusal of recusal from the grievance process and directors’ treatment towards him.

The tribunal found that Wicken was unfairly dismissed. It acknowledged that “the insistence that Mr Charity stay as the HR professional compounded perceptions of bias”, and that it further damaged the trust and confidence relationship between the employer and employee.

In conclusion, employment judge Liseburge said that “looking at the respondent’s conduct in its entirety and determining the cumulative effect of it, the tribunal concluded that the claimant couldn’t be expected to tolerate it.”

She continued: “The respondent asserts that the claimant acknowledged that his decision to prioritize arrangements with his gardener in front of attendance at a follow-up one-to-one meeting for mediation was a mistake, and that he had refused to cooperate with a grievance investigation.

“However, the actions in question, when viewed within the context of all the facts that were found and described, did not constitute a ‘culpable’ or ‘blameworthy’ conduct.”

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