Trigger points/Stages - Employment Tribunal

[EmpTri]

Cross posted

I’m taking my former employer to tribunal due to different forms of disability discrimination and unfair dismissal. They dismissed me for my sickness absences.

The vast majority of them were disability related and they refused to implement reasonable adjustments for me (in relation to their sickness and absence policy.)

They also did not seek up to date medical information prior to my dismissal and they did not look into redeployment, despite advertising suitable roles (for example an admin role when I have lots of experience of working in admin etc). They chose to dismiss me instead.

We’re right at the end now and are due to exchange our witness statements. It appears that they did not follow their own sickness and absence policy with me because they missed out the informal stage of their sickness and absence policy entirely and jumped straight to Stage 1 with me…
I had one OH assessment there and at the time of my dismissal, it was almost a year old. I was not offered another one after I had that.

Any employment lawyers or HR on here? Would love to hear your input.

Anyone?

They should follow their own policies so focus on showing they haven’t.

You say the majority of your absences were disability related… that sounds like you have had multiple absences which is far harder to manage than a single lengthy absence. They have to consider reasonable adjustments but don’t have to employ you if you are not capable of the job.

Thank you. I have talked about the fact they skipped the informal stage of their absence procedure with me and took my straight to Stage 1, even though I did not meet the threshold for a Stage 1 meeting at the time. At that time, I had three absences totalling 6 days (over the course of 7 months.) Whereas their policy states that Stage 1 absence review should take place after 12 sick days or 5 separate instances within 12 months.

Whereas, my comparator was taken through the informal stage and then onto Stage 1.

I did have multiple absences, but I asked for reasonable adjustments, but they were refused. My comparator had more absences than me, but was not dismissed.