Unfair dismissal of a museum worker who posted typos on social media was found by a tribunal after her employer did not follow the performance policy.
Anita Briggs was employed by National Museums Scotland and responsible for the creation of Facebook, LinkedIn, and X posts on behalf of her employer.
She was fired after failing to pass three performance reviews. In one month, she had only posted six articles compared with 73 for a colleague. The tribunal also heard that she would regularly miss deadlines, and her posts contained many spelling mistakes.
Russell Dornan, a digital media content producer, was Briggs’s boss between February 2021 to June 2023. He was concerned about her performance, and met her in May 2022.
Dornan was put on a six-month informal performance improvement (PIP) plan. However, she felt there had been no “satisfactory” improvement in her performance after the period.
The tribunal heard Dornan was dealing with “a number of challenging personal issues” and agreed to a new informal performance plan, provided National Museums Scotland conducted a stress risk evaluation.
Briggs was absent from December 2022 and January 2023, but this assessment wasn’t done until March 2023. Briggs sent an email to HR at the organization claiming Dornan had “it in for me”, and that she was intimidated.
Dornan will leave the organization in June 2023, and Briggs will then report to Ms Barton who is head of digital media.
Briggs produced only two pieces of content between June and August of 2023. One of them required significant revision. Briggs received a second PIP in June 2023 and was cleared for work-related stress by early September.
The tribunal heard that to cover Ms Barton’s performance issues and her absence, the team was forced to hire social media freelancers. She also could not take an annual leave to meet the production targets.
Briggs went to a welfare check in on the 4th of October 2023 and admitted that she was anxious about her job. Barton told Briggs that when she returned to her job a week after her return, she hadn’t met the requirements for her second PIP. This would now be a formal PIP from October 2023 until January 2024.
She was informed that the result of the process could be her dismissal. She received a return-to-work program and improvement guidelines.
She did not produce enough social media posts, despite receiving regular support in one-on-one meetings and having her historical workload reduced.
Briggs requested a second stress risk assessment for December 2023. She stated that the PIP was her primary source of anxiety. Barton reviewed her PIP in January and told Briggs that she didn’t have confidence in her abilities to perform her job.
In February, she attended a formal hearing at which her employment was terminated due to a lack of capabilities.
Briggs appealed, but was denied. She then filed a claim with the employment tribunal for unfair dismissal. She said there was a “longstanding orchestrated campaign” to terminate her employment.
She won on procedural grounds – National Museums Scotland failed to issue her with a formal warning before her dismissal.
National Museums Scotland claimed that this was the case. However, the judge pointed out that the performance policy of the museum required formal warnings to be issued in a escalating fashion (first written and final written), which had not happened.
In his decision Employment judge Nielson stated: “The Tribunal concludes that this is not a fair dismissal as no formal warnings were issued under the Performance Policy.”
“[Ms Briggs] had a legitimate expectation [that the museum] would follow the terms and conditions of the Performance Policy, and it was reasonable to expect that at least one formal warning level prior to dismissal.” This did not occur here.
Briggs received a total award of PS22210.75 to compensate her for the loss of pension contributions, reduced salary and benefits that she received after being dismissed from a temporary position at Edinburgh University.
