Receptionist discriminated against over home working awarded £45k

A GP’s receptionist has been awarded £45,000 after winning a discrimination claim over home working during the pandemic.

The case involved Tracy Keown, who was classified as disabled due to her microvascular angina. She had worked at Staines Road Surgery since 2019 and was considered to be in the high-risk category during the pandemic. Her role involved opening and closing the surgery, opening the mail, chaperoning patients, general reception duties and administering CPR.

Keown requested a laptop and funding for a phone system to work from home in March 2020 and told the practice manger Ms Butler about her condition. While her microvascular angina was not diagnosed by the surgery until May 2020, the practice was aware of her having a heart condition and, therefore, being disabled. The NHS Richmond Clinical Commissioning Group had also emailed surgeries recommending that high-risk employees should work from home. The email included details on getting electronic prescribing and telephone systems to enable forwarding calls, which enable receptionists to work from home.

Despite being aware of Keown’s disability and the advice of the NHS, the practice didn’t make reasonable adjustments to facilitate her needs. Butler said it wasn’t practical for Keown to do her job from home. Keown brought a claim against SRS and the Employment Tribunal ruled in her favour.

The surgery argued that tasks such as opening and closing the surgery, chaperoning patients or administering CPR could not be done from home. However, the tribunal heard that Keown didn’t often perform such tasks and that it didn’t take two receptionists to perform them. The court ruled that not allowing Keown to work from home placed her at a “substantial disadvantage in comparison with persons who are not disabled”. Keown was awarded £45,000 for disability discrimination, health and safety detriments and failure to make reasonable adjustments.

The Covid-19 pandemic has substantially increased the demand for remote and hybrid working for staff. There is no absolute right for employees to work from home, but provided an employee has worked for an employer for 26 weeks they can submit a flexible working request to do so.

Employers should ensure that when dealing with requests to work from home that they have evidence to support the position that home-working is not possible before refusing. This may be difficult if employees have been working from home during the pandemic.

When a request is received, employers should carry out a proper risk assessment as soon as possible to assess:

• the suitability of the employees proposed work space;
• how this will impact any disability they live with;
• what equipment they require to undertake their role from home; and
• what, if any, adjustments can be made to allow them to do this.

Employers may want to consider consulting with an occupational health provider for their recommendations where there is a risk that an employee could live with a disability.

New government plans will soon make flexible working the default, with employees being able to request flexible working from day one of their employment. This will give employees a greater say as to how and when they work. The proposed changes include: consultation with employees about any other available options before rejecting the request; extending the number of requests that employees are able to submit to two in any twelve month period; limiting the time given to employers to respond to the request to two months; and removing the requirement for employees to set out how the effects of their request might be dealt with by their employer.

Please contact us for more information about the issues raised in this article or any aspect of employment law.