A recent case in Hull Employment Tribunal warns employers that they should not leave employees to make their own reasonable adjustments. The ET awarded an employee £45,000 because her employer failed to provide voice recognition software to ease pain that “left her in tears”.
Michelle Proctor, a disabled employee of Yorkshire-based Haxby Group Practice, suffers from carpal tunnel syndrome and arthritis. She declared this to her employers when she started the job in 1994, as a clerical assistant.
However, an increased workload led to her being absent from work between 11th and 31st March 2015, because of pain in both hands. A letter in May of that year, from occupational health, recommended a voice recognition software called Dragon Professional Natural Speaking and Proctor contacted her HR Manager to investigate the software. She obtained quotes and arranged a demonstration. Between 11th June 2015 and 27th January 2016 she was absent from work, once again, because of her condition. During this time, however, she continued to make progress regarding the software. She contacted her line manager to request that the software be in place before her return to work. Her manager, however, said he was waiting for her to return to work to restart the project.
In a letter to her manager in November 2015, Proctor wrote: “The delay in providing support to my working environment has been instrumental in the severity of my injury. I would also like to clarify the reason I did not come in whilst on the sick to train on the new software, is that my hands will be required to operate the keyboard in conjunction with the voice recognition and at this moment the pain would be too great.”
In her return to work (on a phased plan, with regular breaks) meeting on 27th January Proctor discussed the fact that no steps had been taken to acquire the software. Her manager stated to the tribunal that he had deemed Proctor competent to arrange this and that it was her project.
In August 2016, Proctor was offered and accepted a new role, reducing her keyboard time by 10%. In a meeting on 26th April 2017 it was suggested she switch to a flexible working arrangement, where she would be paid for the hours she worked. However, she was told she would lose her sick pay entitlement under the new arrangement, due in part to her Bradford Factor score. As a result Proctor said she wanted to stay on her permanent contract.
After another period of sick leave, she raised a formal grievance because she had not received full pay. Furthermore she complained that although the software had been installed on 2 May 2017, she had not been trained on it and was still expected to carry out her duties.
At a grievance meeting on 6 July 2017, Proctor said she had lost trust and confidence in her employer. She said she was disappointed by the subsequent investigation into her complaints after it found nothing more could have been done to support her. She resigned on 28 September 2017 because she was suffering constant pain and the necessary adjustments were not made to allow her to continue.
The ET ordered Haxby Group Practice pay Proctor £12,421 for compensation for unfair dismissal and £14,385 loss of earnings arising out of unlawful discrimination. Proctor was also granted £15,000 for injury to feelings arising out of unlawful discrimination, in particular the failure to make reasonable adjustments. With the addition of interest, Proctor received a total award of £44,673.75.
Employment Judge Maidment ruled: “Given that a material and indeed very significant cause of the claimant’s resignation was her having been subjected to unlawful discrimination, not least in the prolonged failure to make reasonable adjustments, that dismissal must also be categorised as a further act of unlawful discrimination.”
