The claimant in this case claimed that she had been directly and indirectly discriminated against by the respondent on the ground of her sex. One particular issue focused on the claimant’s allegation that the respondent indirectly discriminated against women with respect to its career break policy.

In November 2010 the claimant was granted a career break until November 2012 but sought an early return to work in August 2012. However, there were no funded vacancies for her to return to. She argued that statistically more females took career breaks than males and thus women were disadvantaged by the detrimental outworking of the policies i.e. that the respondent did not reinstate such employees on return.

In the period she was off, the respondent identified the need to drastically reduce staff numbers and the claimant’s position had effectively disappeared. On two previous occasions the claimant had returned to work after a period off and it was possible to facilitate a return to her post but this time the staffing situation was radically different. The claimant failed to produce satisfactory evidence before the tribunal that a higher proportion of women than men had taken a career break. Accordingly, the claim was dismissed.

Practical Lessons

The claimant’s argument that the respondent should have to reinstate career break staff to the payroll despite no work or funding being available was branded ‘an unreasonable stance’ by the tribunal.

The overarching point here though is that there are no current laws dealing specifically with career breaks. Employers are not required to offer them and employees technically have no right to return. Nonetheless, as was the case here, employee handbooks often contain a ‘career break policy’ and their contents are important. The handbook in this case made it very clear that there was no automatic entitlement to return to the same post/location but that the employer would make all reasonable efforts to facilitate a return to same grade/pay range.

In the absence of a binding legal framework, handbooks take on even greater importance. Employers should ensure that their own career break policies don’t offer guarantees upon return but do make clear that all reasonable efforts will be made to find a similar post.