A plumber has been awarded £130,000 in compensation after a judge ruled that excluding staff from group chats can be labelled as discrimination.
During a tribunal, Employment Judge Sarah George said that bosses who leave staff out of messages sent to other colleagues could be viewed as an “unfavourable act”.
Mark Brosnan - who was employed by Coalo, a company wholly owned by Hounslow Council, London - was left out of a group chat while off work with a back injury.
In June 2019, the plumber began suffering from a lower back injury and was took 15 days off work in February 2020.
Mark Brosnan - who was employed by Coalo, a company wholly owned by Hounslow Council, London - was left out of a group chat while off work with a back injury (stock image)
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He was called to a “formal absence meeting” where an occupational health assessment was carried out and it was determined that he could return to work in two to three weeks.
However, Brosnan told the tribunal he was left “extremely depressed” when his workplace ignored recommendations to help accommodate his return.
In the following April, he sustained another injury to his lower back, which he claimed resulted from a “failure to implement” the initial occupational health recommendations and from carrying out work he “had not been trained for”.
Later, in August 2021 Brosnan found out he had been “excluded from a WhatsApp group because of sickness absence”.
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George said the chat “had been created to communicate important information to employees (including in relation to health and safety)”.
A manager informed Brosnan that “he was not added because he was absent”.
He resigned in December 2021 after receiving no response from chiefs over his grievance and was denied full sick pay.
George said: “Some employers do not contact employees at all during sickness absence for risk of exacerbating their ill health or bothering them with work-related matters at a time when they should be recuperating.
The plumber was called to a 'formal absence meeting' where an occupational health assessment was carried out and it was determined that he could return to work in two to three weeks
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“But that cannot be presumed and in the absence of evidence put forward by [Coalo] I’m not satisfied that there was any justification for this.”
His claims for disability discrimination victimisation and unfair dismissal were also upheld.
Brosnan was awarded £134,411 in compensation.
