Possible Racial Bias with Redundancy

Bungle5393

All - sorry, been busy so not been able to reply.

Context for the emails I've seen so far are as follows -

1 - "Do you want me to feed back to him or are you going to meet up? I can put something together and get his peers to give me something - more likely to do that than face the battle that is KOSDOT"
2 - "I thought the email from the employee was going to be a complaining one about the new training or something, but appears to be perfectly reasonable. Defintely angry KOS DOT at play here...."

So nothing concrete in terms of these ones, it seems the nickname has been substituted for my own proper name.

What I'm interested in is where the nickname has come from, why they thought it was appropriate, and what other contexts was it used in. 
I have a new SAR in specifically for these terms, as my original SAR didn't necessarily have the parameters to pick up all the emails (I suspect there are many more).

To me, this is a bit of a smoking gun - and my new SAR may well reveal additional usage of this term. I fully appreciate I can't 100% prove my case, but can my employer 100% prove that there was no bias shown when this nickname seems to be in regular use? 

I believe this does fall under the Equality Act as a protected characteristic, as it refers to race and nationality. Yes, there is a fairly convoluted argument as to whether Scotland is a nation (as discussed above) - and we won't settle that here.

I'm going to speak to a lawyer this week about it to get their thoughts on likelihood of success. What I suspect will happen is that the ET forms will be lodged and they will try to settle out of court.

To answer the previous question about process - I applied through Acas for their Early Conciliation service, which is a recommended first step before you are issued the certificate to proceed to then lodge an ET1 form. My ex-employer didn't respond to their request for early concilition, therefore the certificate was issued at the end of the 30 day period. I now have 30 days within which to lodge the ET1 form.

Thanks to everyone for your responses and thoughts. This is not a case of toys back in the pram - I genuinely feel that I have been unfairly treated, so want to see this through to its natural conclusion (whatever that might be).

caprikid1

Personally I think you should think long and hard before making a further nuisance of yourself to your old company in this way. Some times it's time to move on and your face no longer fits. It happens I am afraid. You are not going to achieve the closure you seek in my opinion, you are more likely to damage your future, if a new employer gets wind of multiple DSAR's and Employment tribunal threats  / actions they will run a mile. You are in a bad enough place being selected for redundancy against others in the business you could make it a lot worse.
You come over as petty, bitter and likely to be difficult to manage. Focus on your next role not whether there was some ridiculous technicality. You are just wasting time and increasing your employment gap.

JamoLew

There is still nothing to show that the use of that term had any impact of the scoring matrix though

KatrinaWaves

Sorry but the clearly think you’re a bit arrogant/above your station.  The first one just seems to dread the idea of speaking to you, and a founded complaint against you, and then an unfounded complaint by you.

They don’t hate you because you’re  Scottish. sounds like you were made redundant because clearly multiple people had issues (speaking to your peers) and made unfounded complaints about other staff...

nora_nora

Have you perhaps thought to ask them why they used those terms?

AskAsk

nora_nora said:

Have you perhaps thought to ask them why they used those terms?

and you expect them to give an honest answer in the light of the OP making a claim against them? 

theoretica

How would you feel if the same emails had just had the factual abbreviation SDOT or even DOT? 

Bungle5393

theoretica said:

How would you feel if the same emails had just had the factual abbreviation SDOT or even DOT? 

I don't appreciate either part of the nickname. At no point did either of the HR people talk to me about any problems, they just opted to be childish and use inappropriate nicknames. 

nora_nora

The tone of those emails speak volumes about how they perceived you as an employee & would make me ask myself if there may be a reason my employers might see me as a bothersome complainer who has to be battled with and thinks he is in charge of training etc. Is there anything about yourself you can think of that may have given them the impression you are difficult and perhaps a bit above yourself? Genuine question. Talking from experience, if you're lucky ( with such a weak argument) they might offer you £1,500 to go away although i suspect that won't be enough for you in which case it will probably be struck out as vexatious & they will be awarded costs against you. Personally, I'd walk away while you still can. There's nothing in those emails pertaining to racial bias.

Bungle5393

nora_nora said:

The tone of those emails speak volumes about how they perceived you as an employee & would make me ask myself if there may be a reason my employers might see me as a bothersome complainer who has to be battled with and thinks he is in charge of training etc. Is there anything about yourself you can think of that may have given them the impression you are difficult and perhaps a bit above yourself? Genuine question. Talking from experience, if you're lucky ( with such a weak argument) they might offer you £1,500 to go away although i suspect that won't be enough for you in which case it will probably be struck out as vexatious & they will be awarded costs against you. Personally, I'd walk away while you still can. There's nothing in those emails pertaining to racial bias.

I am genuinely at a loss to understand where this has come from. Throughout the 5 years I worked for the business, I always gave 100% and always believed I was open to feedback and got on well with everyone I worked with. When we went through a restructure in early 2019, I came out of that as 3rd out 11 based on the selection criteria used at the time.
I did have responsibility for co-ordinating the training department from October last year until a new manager was recruited (never happened), and I did a branch and roots review of everything training-related across the business and put in place a significant amount of change and improvement.
I have high standards - and won't apologise for that - so I guess sometimes that can come across as arrogance. But the remit of my job was to provide leadership and maximise the performance of the business, so having high standards and holding people to account (as well as the coaching and support that goes along with this) is part of that remit.