Sheffield Employment Tribunal has ruled in the case of Mrs J McBride v Capita Customer Management Services, finding that Mrs Mcbride was indirectly discriminated against after her employer tried to change her role from a part-time to a full-time position.

Before transferring to Capita Customer Management Services, Mrs McBride had worked with a company called Ventura – commencing her employment on 15 March 1999. Her position was that of Head of Quality and Compliance.

In April 2015 she started maternity leave, returning to work on 24 April 2017 as Implementation Manager, within a partnership deal she had previously worked on.

On 28 September 2017 – as a result of Mrs McBride having difficulty with the health of two of her children – she submitted a request to Mr Lovell, her Line Manager, requesting flexible working. This was refused.

In October of that year, Mr Lovell informed Mrs McBride there was the possibility of a job share and Mrs McBride accepted this proposal. On 2 November, Mr Lovell wrote to her confirming that she would be employed on a permanent part-time basis – but on a different project. 

However, Mrs McBride claimed that by December Mr Lovell had given her and the other employee sharing the job individual responsibility for separate projects and work streams - effectively weakening the original arrangement.

Mr Lovell told the tribunal that he had had to review the make-up of his team to deal with the requirements of a new initiative implemented by Capita - and to ensure that business hours were covered, all roles within his team would need to be carried out on a full-time basis. He also stated that he had previously observed risks and problems with the job share - but did not provide any evidence to substantiate this.

Mrs McBride felt the job share had not been adequately tested before the roles and workload were reorganised. She felt that the reasons given for not considering part-time working were not being based on a fair or reasonable benchmark - she believed a part-time or job share arrangement would work if the workloads were allocated appropriately.

On 30 April 2018 Mrs McBride was informed that all roles would be full time and she was invited to a consultation meeting to take place on 2 May 2018. She also attended redundancy meetings in May and June to seek alternative posts but she rejected all the positions offered as they were full time.

On 15 June 2018, Mrs McBride was given a formal notice of redundancy and despite her appealing against the decision, her redundancy was upheld on 16 July 2018. After working her notice period, her employment was terminated on 6 September 2018, resulting in her bringing claims of unfair dismissal and indirect sex discrimination on 28 November 2018.

In upholding the claims of unfair dismissal and indirect sex discrimination, Employment Judge Robert Little stated that Capita had “endeavoured to distance itself from the part-time/full-time dichotomy” and stated that a reasonable employer would test whether or not making Mrs McBride’s job full time would ensure the role worked most effectively. He added:

“We conclude a reasonable employer would have given the job share a fair trial period, respecting the detailed plans that the two senior job-sharing employees concerned had prepared and which plans presumably had at least tacit approval from the employer.”

Andrew Willis - Head of Legal at HR-inform - said the ruling demonstrated to employers that the particulars of flexible working arrangements should be fully considered before a decision is made on their feasibility. He stated:

“As seen here, if an employer feels that the job share situation is not working in their company, they should be prepared to provide valid business reasons for this. Simply informing employees that they will no longer be able to job share, without justification and not addressing their arguments against such a decision could quickly leave a company open to an unfair dismissal claim if the employees have the length of service.”