Hurt feelings £11,852 pay-out for Sainsbury's manager after social post

A Sainsbury's store manager has been compensated after he was left out of a social media post celebrating International Men's Day.

Darren Cooper, who ran the Pontypridd store, was on leave for anxiety when his regional director uploaded a post to LinkedIn and Yammer celebrating male leaders who "all show up for work each day, put on a name badge and provide support, guidance and leadership".

When he saw he was not included, Cooper was left feeling "excluded, humiliated and violated" by the post. His boss said he left him out because he believed he did not wish to be contacted.

An employment tribunal ruled that he should receive £11,852 in compensation, including £7,500 for injury to feelings.

Cooper began working at Sainsbury's in 1993 and told the tribunal in Cardiff he had "orange blood" in his veins after decades of service to the retailer.

He became manager of the Pontypridd store in 2010, before taking sick leave due anxiety in July 2022.

In November that year, his line manager Matt Hourihan published a social media post on Yammer and LinkedIn.

In the post, Hourihan said he wanted to "celebrate the male leaders" in his teams at Sainsbury's stores in south Wales and England.

The post added: "All of you do this whilst leading busy lives outside of work too, dealing with health, family and personal issues in the same way that everyone else does, yet you all show up for work each day, put on a name badge and provide support, guidance and leadership to the thousands of colleagues that work on our region."

The tribunal heard there was an accompanying photo of every regional store manager named and tagged except for Cooper.

He said this post caused him to suffer "untold further damage" to his health along with the "angst" of having to field questions from friends and colleagues asking him if he had left Sainsbury's.

The tribunal ruled that the cause of the treatment was the "conscious thought process" of Hourihan to not include Cooper in the post.

"Therefore this amounted to unfavourable treatment because of something arising from disability," the panel added.

Hourihan said that as Cooper had deleted WhatsApp and said he did not wish to be contacted, he thought it was best to leave him out of the post.

He added that he did not have a photo of Cooper and thought it inappropriate to ask.

After many discussions over his return to work, Cooper was dismissed in June 2023, at which point he sued for disability discrimination, harassment, unfavourable treatment and unfair dismissal.

He won his claim for harassment related to disability and unfavourable treatment because of something arising in consequence of disability.

But claims of disability discrimination and unfair dismissal were dismissed by the tribunal.