Employee awarded £29k in damages for sex discrimination in the workplace

In the case of Goh v Asda Stores, an employee subject to sex discrimination was awarded damages over £29,000, including £18,500 for injury to feelings.

Mr Goh was a Checkout Operator who had been working for Asda since December 2010.

In 2019, Goh was “kicked in the backside” by a female colleague, who then swore at him as they were walking away.

While Goh assumed this was a one-off, the same colleague did this again, prompting Goh to report this to their manager on the same day.

Goh also reported needing to go to the GP for medical treatment as a result of the incident.

Goh didn’t receive any further information about their complaint, and it didn’t appear that the complaint was acted on or any investigation undertaken, although a colleague later told Goh that they had overheard others discussing the event in the canteen.

Goh went to ask the manager for an update on his complaint.

Goh was told to resubmit his complaint, but even after that, he did not receive much in the way of updates, and it was not clear who was in charge of managing the complaint.

He wasn’t even made aware when colleagues were being interviewed.

And throughout this time, there had been no attempt to separate Goh from the perpetrator.

Mediation was later proposed and carried out in December 2019.

In this meeting, the perpetrator made allegations of sexual assault against Goh, after which Goh then took out a formal grievance against them.

The grievance manager met with Goh and his Trade Union representative.

In the meeting, he told them that he had not referred to the previous investigation and approached this as a new investigation, before stating that the perpetrator had been spoken to about their behaviour and no further action would be taken.

Goh appealed the decision.

However, he was told that the grounds of his appeal were unclear, although the Employment Tribunal disagreed with this opinion, stating that the appeal was clear and should not have required Goh to resubmit.

On its arrival, the appeal outcome letter did not make any reference to sex discrimination, which Goh had specifically presented in his appeal.

Following this, Goh then began ACAS early conciliation process.

Throughout the process, the Tribunal observed that Asda didn’t take the assaults seriously, and the process was entirely mismanaged.

It was also observed that this was unlikely to have happened if Goh had been a woman and the assault had been perpetrated by a man.

This is an important case for employers, particularly with the upcoming changes to The Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 later this year, which places more responsibility on employers to prevent sexual harassment within the workplace.

Employers will be expected to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment and, where this is not done, there could be a compensatory uplift by as much as 25%.

As such, employers should take all reports of sexual assault or harassment seriously and ensure that procedure is followed fairly and consistently.

This includes ensuring that there is adequate training for all staff and that there are effective reporting channels available to employees.