And speaking of keeping up standards brings me to the case of Royal Mail Group Ltd v Jhuti [2019], in which the Supreme Court grappled with a misguided dismissal of a whistleblower, following management manipulation of the truth.

Ms Jhuti worked for Royal Mail Group as a media specialist for less than a year, joining in September 2013 on a six-month trial period during which she could be dismissed at short notice. Shortly after starting, she raised concerns to her line manager, Mr Widmer, that a colleague was offering customers incentives in breach of regulatory guidance. Her action amounted to whistleblowing.

Rather than act on her concerns, Mr Widmer spent months pressuring her, setting unrealistic targets, holding excessive and lengthy meetings, and building a paper trail designed to make it look as though her performance, not her whistleblowing, was the problem.

Ms Jhuti was eventually signed off work with stress, anxiety and depression in March 2014 and never returned. Until in July 2014, a separate manager, Ms Vickers, who had been given only a partial and misleading account of events, decided to dismiss Ms Jhuti for poor performance.

Ms Jhuti then took Royal Mail Group to the employment tribunal for unfair dismissal, arguing that the true reason for her dismissal was her whistleblowing, not her performance.

The Employment Tribunal found that Mr Widmer had indeed subjected Ms Jhuti to detriments because of her protected disclosures, including imposing unmatched scrutiny on her and pushing her to retract her concerns under pressure, and that he had effectively engineered the case against her.

However, the ET dismissed her unfair dismissal complaint, finding that Ms Vickers, the actual decision-maker, had genuinely and honestly believed Ms Jhuti’s performance was inadequate and had not been influenced by the whistleblowing herself. Strikingly, the ET also commented that, given Mr Widmer’s conduct, it had been "inevitable" that Ms Vickers would dismiss Ms Jhuti as she did.

The case went on to be considered by the Employment Appeal Tribunal and the Court of Appeal, who reached opposing conclusions on whether Mr Widmer’s motivation could be attributed to the company. The Supreme Court ultimately found that the ET had been wrong to look only at Ms Vickers’ honest but manipulated state of mind. Where someone in a position of responsibility above the employee deliberately hides the real reason for a dismissal behind an invented reason which the actual decision-maker then adopts in good faith, the hidden reason, not the invented one, is treated as the reason for dismissal. Applying that principle to the facts already found, the Supreme Court held that the true reason for Ms Jhuti’s dismissal was her whistleblowing, restoring the original finding that her dismissal had been automatically unfair.

This case shows that employers cannot escape liability simply because the person who signs off a dismissal is acting in good faith. If a manager further up the chain manipulates the evidence or process to disguise the true reason for getting rid of an employee, that hidden motive will be attributed to the company. Employers should ensure that decision-makers are given the full picture, including any history of complaints or whistleblowing, and should be alert to managers who may be shaping the narrative behind the scenes.