A senior Google employee who claimed she was made redundant after reporting a manager for sharing inappropriate stories about his swinger lifestyle has lost her case against the tech giant.
Victoria Woodall told a London employment tribunal that she was subjected to a campaign of retaliation after whistleblowing on the man who was later sacked for gross misconduct, which the company found amounted to sexual harassment.
Judge Barry Smith dismissed her claims of victimisation, disability discrimination and whistleblowing detriment. He said it was relevant that about 26 people in Google’s UK Sales and Agencies team had also been made redundant alongside Woodall in a restructuring process.
Google UK, which previously denied the allegations, has been approached for comment.
London Central Employment Tribunal found that Woodall’s alleged mistreatment was “not in any way because of, or materially influenced by,” her disclosures.
Judge Smith said this was because of insufficient evidence and the tribunal accepted Google’s explanations, which were sufficiently supported by documentary and oral evidence.
Woodall was working as a senior industry head for Google UK when a female client reported to her that a company employee, referred to as Mr O, had made inappropriate sexual comments during a business lunch in August 2022.
The client reported that Mr O, then a Google manager, had boasted about the number of black women he had had sex with, and the incident was witnessed by his line manager who did nothing to stop him.
In her claim, Woodall says she raised the client’s concerns in a meeting with her boss Matt Bush, then managing director of Google’s UK Sales and Agencies team, and the company opened an internal investigation into Mr O’s conduct.
The investigation uncovered further incidents of inappropriate behaviour and Mr O was sacked, tribunal documents show.
Woodall claimed that her boss Bush had then retaliated against her because her complaint also implicated two senior managers in the team who were his close friends.
She claimed this included swapping her successful client account with a failing one, demoting her on a big internal project, and trying to downgrade her performance, the tribunal heard.
Both senior managers were subsequently disciplined by Google for witnessing Mr O’s conduct and failing to intervene, before later being made redundant.
Georgina Halford-Hall, the chief executive of WhistleblowersUK which is supporting Woodall, commented that her case “highlighted the stark realities facing technology whistleblowers, showing the impact of inadequate protection in the courts and the absence of regulation across tech companies”.
“The implications for other women in big tech who have contacted us as a result of this case are that they are now even more afraid to speak out,” she added.
In his ruling, Judge Smith found the scope of Woodall’s initial disclosure was disputed and there were no clear notes of exactly what was reported to Bush.
The tribunal said it accepted Bush’s evidence that he had decided to switch someone new onto the failing client account before Woodall had first reported Mr O’s conduct and that this, among other actions, were not in any way influenced by or due to her disclosures.
In his ruling, Judge Smith said that while Woodall’s report was an act of whistleblowing, there was insufficient evidence to determine whether her disclosures contained allegations about sexist bias and a discriminatory culture at the company more broadly.
Others made redundant in the restructuring alongside Woodall, included Bush – her boss at the time – and the two senior managers.
“There is another, more compelling, alternative to the claimant’s overall theme of her being treated badly as a whistleblower,” Judge Smith said.
“There is also the narrative of there simply being an individual who was reported to have committed sexual harassment at work […] The individual was investigated, disciplined and dismissed.
“The claimant may well have felt that she had been retaliated against, but those concerns were also investigated, and her concerns dismissed.”