Miss S Green v DFS Trading Ltd — 2020

Miss S Green worked for DFS Trading Limited as a customer service manager from 22 August 2017 to 23 December 2019. The tribunal accepted that she had hearing loss, and found that she mentioned it at interview or that it was visible because she was wearing NHS hearing aids. It also accepted that she bought private Amplifon hearing aids early in the employment, at a total personal cost of £3,424.28 inclusive of interest, and that after she acquired them and was allowed to keep her phone on her desk to sync with them, she was generally able to do the job. The tribunal held that the respondent knew or ought to have known of her hearing impairment by mid-September 2017 at the latest, but that she was not shown to be substantially disadvantaged in the workplace until the autumn of 2019.

The constructive unfair dismissal complaint failed. The tribunal rejected the allegations that the respondent had fundamentally breached contract by not referring the claimant to occupational health at the start, by refusing holiday on 27 December 2018, or by failing to appoint her to a supposed email-only role. It found that the only repudiatory conduct was Mr Yunis' conduct on 30 August 2019, when he raised his voice and threatened disciplinary action in front of colleagues during a rota dispute. Even so, the tribunal held that the claimant did not resign in response to that incident: she continued working, took part in grievance and occupational-health steps, and did not resign until 22 December 2019, so she had affirmed the contract.

On the reasonable adjustments complaint, the tribunal held that the respondent did not breach sections 20 and 21 of the Equality Act 2010. Although the claimant had hearing loss, the tribunal found that for most of the employment she was able to manage her role with the adjustments already made, including the mobile-phone arrangement and the limited customer-call exposure during training and quieter periods. Once she raised the issue in her grievance on 11 September 2019, the respondent arranged occupational health on 7 October 2019, received the report on 9 October 2019, met to discuss it on 12 November 2019, and investigated Bluetooth-enabled assistive technology. The tribunal found those steps to be reasonable, and also held that the hearing-aids complaint was in time because the September 2019 grievance reactivated the limitation period; alternatively, time would have been extended as just and equitable.

The section 15 claim also failed. The tribunal accepted that Mr Yunis spoke to the claimant in a louder tone than usual and that he threatened disciplinary action, but found that he did so because of frustration and pressure arising from the Saturday cover problem, not because of something arising in consequence of her disability. The tribunal therefore dismissed the disability discrimination complaints in full, and the separate Equality Act constructive dismissal point also failed. No compensation, interest, or other monetary award was made.