The claimant had one year service with the respondent until January 2020 when she was dismissed by way of a WhatsApp message without any procedure being undertaken at all.   The claimant subsequently claimed for statutory redundancy pay, unfair dismissal and issues relating to notice pay, holiday pay and unlawful deduction from wages.  The Respondent did not attend the hearing.

In terms of the statutory redundancy pay it was held by the Tribunal that this claim had to fail as the claimant did not have the requisite length of service (two years).  However, on the unfair dismissal claim it was held that the dismissal was automatically unfair, unsurprising considering no procedure was undertaken whatsoever with the dismissal being communicated to the claimant only via a WhatsApp message.

The claimant was able to obtain further employment at the end of February 2020 and the Tribunal did note that it was disrupted by the effects of Covid-19 which they stated would have happened in any event if she had still been employed with the Respondent.  This does raise issues about how compensation may be altered if they had been different industries.   The sudden nature of the dismissal meant that she received no notice, nor did she receive the holiday pay that she had accrued.  Accordingly, the Tribunal awarded these sums to the claimant.

Practical Lessons

The decision to dismiss an employee by way of WhatsApp clearer falls foul of the statutory procedure required.  This will not be much of a lesson.  However, an interesting point is that the Tribunal did make mention that the new job for the purposes of compensatory award was also affected by Covid-19.  It may mean very little in practice or it could lead to the effect that differences in how industries/jobs were affected may then mean that the compensatory award may go up or down.

NI Tribunal decisions are available on the OITFET website:
http://www.employmenttribunalsni.co.uk/