A solicitor who worked for Citizens Advice in Manchester and made an ‘ill-judged’ comment about an employee award initative has had her employment tribunal claim against the organisation dismissed.
Sarah Guest brought a complaint of constructive unfair dismissal against Citizens Advice Manchester over a post made by the chief executive officer on the organisation’s internal workplace system. Guest worked for Citizens Advice Manchester from May 2010, she specialised in housing law from 2013 and from 2016 was the supervising solicitor. Her employment ended in December 2023.
In July 2023, a ‘relatively new’ director of operations posted an announcement on the internal system of the launch of a ‘Good Citizen’ award, where each month a nominated colleague would be chosen as a winner and would be able to take their birthday off as additional leave as a reward. Guest responded that the initiative sounded ‘a bit dubious’ and another colleague also posted a comment.
CEO Andy Brown posted in reponse that it was ‘a shame that when a new and positive initiative is launched to recognise excellence a few react with such negativity. What is dubious is whether those negative people are really aligned with the values and culture of CA’. Guest found the post ‘humiliating’, the judgment said.
Guest was told her post was ‘inappropriate’ during a conversation with her line manager Dan Pye weeks later. Emploment judge Slater said there was ‘nothing in the conversation’ with Pye which could be ‘considered objectively as breaching or contributing to a breach of the implied duty of mutual trust and confidence’.
She added: ‘Dan Pye had reasonable and proper cause for criticising the post made by the claimant. Indeed, the claimant acknowledged in that conversation and at this hearing that her comment was ill-judged.’
The judge said: ‘To describe the initiative as “dubious” on a forum open to all employees was an inappropriate way of raising any concerns that she might have. Given this context, I conclude that Andy Brown had reasonable and proper cause for responding in the same employee-wide forum supporting the initiative and regretting the negative reactions from the claimant and another employee.’
She did not consider that Brown ‘had reasonable and proper cause for commenting, “what is dubious is whether those negative people are really aligned with the values and culture of CA”' as it ‘went beyond a proportionate and appropriate employee-wide response to the posts of the claimant and another’.
The judge said: ‘I consider that such a disproportionate response would be capable of contributing towards a breach of the implied duty of mutual trust and confidence if there were other matters which, taken together with this, could constitute such a breach… I consider that the part of the comment I have identified could damage the trust and confidence but not to such a serious extent that there was a breach of the implied duty of mutual trust and confidence.'
