Description

An employment tribunal has recently heard a case in which an older employee argued that he had been discriminated against in a redundancy process because a factor taken into consideration was whether he had a professional qualification.  The employee argued that as he was older, he was less likely to have a degree than his younger colleagues. Listen along to find out what happened!

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Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Today in the Lefebvre HR and Employment Law podcast we're discussing the judgment in the case of Norman and Lidl Great Britain Limited in which an employment tribunal was asked to decide whether an employee had been the victim of indirect age discrimination and unfair dismissal when he received a lower score in a redundancy selection exercise on account of his lack of a degree or qualification which in turn led to his redundancy selection. N who was aged in his 60s and had over 20 years service. worked as a senior construction consultant in an office of a major discount supermarket chain. In early 2023, due to a reduction in new store openings and refurbishments, the company decided to restructure its operations and proposed to reduce the number of senior construction consultants employed at that office from three to one. The other two employees at risk were in their 30s. A redundancy selection matrix was used to determine which two employees would be selected for redundancy. which among other things included scores for experience, knowledge, skills, performance and disciplinary record. Earn placed second scoring 17 out of a possible 20 points and was therefore selected for redundancy. A colleague F who scored highest and was therefore retained scored one point higher than Earn. The key difference was the score awarded for knowledge and although the scoring guidance did not expressly specify that qualifications should be considered in scoring this element. The scoring manager later admitted that N had been marked down for not having relevant construction qualifications such as a construction degree. Following his dismissal for redundancy in March 2023, N brought unfair dismissal and indirect age discrimination claims. The Employment Tribunal held that the inclusion of the requirement to have a degree or construction qualification within the scoring of the redundancy selection criteria amounted to unlawful indirect age discrimination. Having considered statistical evidence of the range of qualifications possessed in the UK population by age, the Tribunal took judicial notice of the fact that people in their 60s were less likely to have a degree than those in their 30s. The inclusion of this qualification criteria therefore caused greater disadvantage to those in their 60s, including N when compared to younger colleagues. The employer did not seek to objectively justify the inclusion of this qualification criteria in the redundancy scoring exercise. The tribunal also went on to uphold N's unfair dismissal claim, pointing to failures in the consultation process, saying that rather than genuinely consulting with N, the employer was merely seeking to go through a prescribed script. The tribunal also specifically noted the employer's quite surprising instruction to those conducting the assessments to destroy their notes of any scoring, which had not assisted those managers to explain their scoring in evidence. The tribunal awarded and over £50,000 in compensation. including over £4,000 for injury to feelings, after a 50% pulchie reduction for the chance and would have been dismissed in any event had a fair procedure been followed. Look out for further episodes in this series to stay up to date on all things HR and employment law related.