A pregnant account manager, who was found to have been discriminated against, has had her total award increased from £37,000 to more than £350,000.
Nicola Hinds began working as a regional account manager on the Sainsbury’s Logistics account at Mitie in October 2018 and took on the lead role for the Argos account. She discovered that she was pregnant while on annual leave the week commencing 6 April 2020, and informed Nav Kalley, account director for Mitie, and Karla Harper, head of operations, of the pregnancy informally after returning, and formally on 23 July 2020.
On 16 October 2020, Hinds sent an email to Kalley and Harper, disclosing that she had experienced several panic attacks the previous week and was struggling with aspects of her role due to alleged behaviour of a Sainsbury’s employee she regularly interacted with. Concerned she might become seriously ill with work-related stress and anxiety, she requested to establish a handover plan.
On 16 October, Kalley sent an email to HR business partner Helen Young, which stated: “I was expecting this email as Nicola has become very emotional and tearful, especially over the last week or so. I am very frustrated with this as she is certainly not overworked and we have been very supportive in helping her manage her workload.”
The tribunal noted that Mitie’s duties under the Maternity and Parental Leave Regulations 1999 had been triggered 12 weeks earlier and that, on receipt of Hinds’ email, it should have considered a risk assessment, altering her working conditions or hours of work, potentially redeploying her to a suitable alternative role or suspending her on full pay.
A call was not set up until 19 October, which was then postponed as it clashed with a medical appointment for Kalley. Hinds took a day’s sick leave and told Kalley and Young in an email that she felt disappointed and worthless. She told the tribunal that Kalley failed to support her use of keeping in touch days and left it to Hinds to identify for herself when she might use the days.
On 10 June, Hinds had a return to work interview, which she argued was inadequate. During her maternity leave, her mental wellbeing deteriorated and she was certified with depression on 20 June 2021, and postnatal depression on 27 July and 2 September. She resigned a few days later. She began therapy on 15 July 2021 until 18 May 2022 and was assessed as unfit for work in January 2022.
The tribunal found that Hinds was discriminated against because of her employer’s failure to carry out a risk assessment during her pregnancy and deal appropriately with the issues she raised. She was found to be unfairly constructively dismissed.
Following this, another employment tribunal has increased Hinds’ payout after additional information was provided, allowing her loss of earnings to be factored in.
Employment judge Roger Tynan said: “Whether through a lack of relevant training or a lack of thought and attention, or because he failed to prioritise such issues or simply assumed that others would take responsibility for them, Kalley failed to ensure that the organisation discharged its responsibilities to the claimant.
“The inference was that she was not fully in control of her emotions because of the pregnancy and that she was making unreasonable demands as a result, when in fact she was experiencing significant work-related stress in the advanced stages of her pregnancy, had suffered two panic attacks in short succession, felt overwhelmed and was worried about letting others down but equally concerned that she might become seriously unwell.”
A Mitie spokesperson said: “We have apologised for the impact the case will have had on Mrs Hinds and her family. We are committed to caring for, and supporting, our people and take on board the comments from the tribunal.”
