A British sales boss who was found to be working remotely in Egypt was “unfairly dismissed” by his employer, an employment tribunal has ruled.
As UK Field Sales manager at Food Hub, Tanveer Shah was required to spend at least four days a week “in the field”, a tribunal heard.
But Mr Shah was found working remotely from Egypt where he had family, for what evidence presented to the tribunal suggested was “several weeks” – although the exact amount of time remains uncertain.
He was fired by the CEO later that year, which the tribunal judge ruled as an “unfair dismissal” with “fundamental flaws” in its investigation. Mr Shah was awarded £61,419 in compensation.
The sacking came after a discovery was made by Mr Shah’s boss that he was not filing as many expenses as his colleagues, despite his more senior position requiring extra travel across the country.
Ardian Mula, the CEO of the food delivery app business, called Mr Shah in for a review meeting in early 2022 and raised concerns about him not spending enough time “in the field”.
Previously, Mr Shah was a “high performer” and was even promoted several times from his old role as Field Sales Executive role eventually to UK Field Sales Manager. During this discussion a decision was made to extend his trial period in his newly promoted role.
During this period, Simon Farmer was appointed as Mr Shah’s new line manager and he discovered that he had been out of the country outside of a time of “authorised annual leave”.
Mr Shah claimed that at the end 2021, he was in Egypt for a holiday but then contracted Covid, which prohibited his travel back to the UK.
Employment Judge David Maxwell said Mr Shah was “unable to say whether he had been in Egypt for days, a week or several weeks at the end of 2021 and beginning of 2022.”
He remarked: “Given (his bosses) would have expected him to be in the UK carrying out his duties, it was a surprising gap in (his) memory.”
At the time, the company also saw a policy change which required employees to purchase a car using a granted financial allowance rather than using a company issued vehicle. By February Mr Shah’s line manager discovered that his employee had still not purchased a car.
This led to concerns that he was not fulfilling his responsibilities to be “in the field” and so they gave him an ultimatum of two weeks to purchase a car.
Later that year in August, after Mr Shah had eventually bought a car, Mr Mula invited Mr Shah in for a “catch up” to confront him on his lack of expenses and remote working, suspecting he hadn’t been fulfilling his work duties.
He accused him of “illegitimately taking a salary” by not doing his job. According to the tribunal, “Mr Mula was so angry that he dismissed the claimant on the spot”.
After the meeting, Mr Mula spoke to a HR representative who advised him that he should have followed the correct process because his dismissal would inevitably be found unfair by an employment Tribunal.
Mr Shah, who was said to have a record of “unblemished good service”, subsequently sued for unfair dismissal and this claim was upheld by the trial.
Overall, the judge ruled that there were “fundamental flaws” in the investigation into Mr Shah’s conduct and said a business partner had “recognised the initial dismissal by Mr Mula would almost certainly be found by a Tribunal as unfair and set about organising a process that would appear fair, but would achieve the same result.”
