Ms G Sullivan v IBM (United Kingdom) Ltd — 2022

Ms G Sullivan, employed by IBM (United Kingdom) Ltd from 6 February 1984 until 6 November 2020, was dismissed in a redundancy exercise affecting the Cloud and Cognitive team. The tribunal found the respondent had a potentially fair redundancy reason and accepted that the selection process used weighted criteria for current skills, performance, and adaptability/flexibility, with scores derived from stakeholder evidence, appraisals, and other work examples. It rejected the claimant's argument that the criteria or reliance on stakeholder feedback were, of themselves, unfair.

The unfair dismissal claim succeeded on a procedural ground only. The tribunal held it was wholly unnecessary and procedurally unfair to place the managers who were making the assessments into the same redundancy pool as the employees they scored. That created a conflict of interest and an appearance that scores could be manipulated, contrary to principles of natural justice. The tribunal said no reasonable employer would have structured the exercise that way, and treated that as the sole basis on which the dismissal was unfair.

The part-time workers claim under regulation 5 of the Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000 was dismissed. Although three of the six employees made redundant were technically part-time, the tribunal found that was coincidence rather than proof of less favourable treatment. It held the respondent had shown that the claimant's scores were explained by the evidence gathered from stakeholders and that her 35-hour week in 2019, and even her earlier 30-hour pattern in 2018, played no role in the scoring outcome.

On remedy, the tribunal did not make a monetary award in this judgment. It noted that the claimant had already received a redundancy payment and that there could be an overlap with any basic award, so it directed the parties to file written submissions on whether a remedy hearing was needed and, if so, on what basis.