A former recruiter has won £25,000 in compensation at an employment tribunal after she returned to an empty office following her maternity leave.

Anna Munkevics worked for Echo Personnel in Hereford as a trainee recruitment consultant and in May 2022 began a year of maternity leave.

While she was pregnant, a male colleague was offered a permanent role of recruitment consultant on an annual salary of £25,000. The tribunal ruled that his work was “the same or broadly similar”.

Munkevics made a verbal agreement with her line manager that she would return to her previous role for two days a week, four hours a day, before returning to normal full-time hours after a few months. However, this was not recorded in writing.

Before she returned, she arranged childcare until July 2023, when she anticipated full-time nursery care would be in place and she would return to recruitment full time.

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However, just three weeks before she was due to return, she was informed by the finance director Jennie Alexander that her “agreement” with her manager would no longer be possible and she would need to return on a full-time basis from the start.

Munkevics raised a grievance claiming she had been “misled by two directors with regards to my return terms” and would be unable to arrange childcare for full-time work at such short notice. Two weeks later she resigned, giving a month’s notice.

She received no response to her grievance, but one director replied to her resignation acknowledging it and offering a reference if she needed it.

She returned to the office to work out her notice period in May 2023, only to find that the office had been “vacated and abandoned”, the tribunal heard.

She checked with a branch of Greggs next door, where staff told her that a removal van had recently attended the office and taken everything.

Munkevics told the tribunal that, as there had been no communication about the office closure, she “took this as a sign” that she was not expected to return for her notice period, but she still expected to be paid.

A mobile recruiting van was available from which to work, the company said, but other offices were many miles away. They did not tell Munkevics about the van.

The tribunal upheld claims of equal pay, breach of contract and automatic unfair dismissal (for reasons connected to pregnancy), and awarded her £25,109.92 in compensation for loss of earnings and injury to feelings.

Employment judge Jonathan Gidney said: “Mrs Alexander’s behaviour was calculated or likely to destroy or seriously damage trust and confidence. There was no reasonable and proper cause for it, in the absence of any attempt by Mrs Alexander to fairly explore and consider the request with the claimant.”

“We find it very hard to understand why Mrs Alexander did not write to the claimant … and explain that the Hereford office had been permanently closed and… that the claimant was to work from the mobile recruiting van until a new office was secured. No explanation has been provided for this failure.”

 

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