A food delivery sales manager who was sacked after his company found out he was working remotely from Egypt has been awarded £61,000 for unfair dismissal.
Tanveer Shah from the Vale of Glamorgan lost his job as the UK field sales manager for Stoke-on-Trent-based Food Hub in 2021.
He claimed he contracted Covid-19 after a holiday in Egypt, leaving unable to fly back to the UK.
He was dismissed for failing to follow a “reasonable management request” to work in the field.
The tribunal, held in Birmingham, was told that Mr Shah was initially hired as a field sales executive but progressed rapidly, reaching a UK manager level by the summer of 2021.
But after a two-week holiday to Egypt, he said he tested positive for Covid in the airport and was told he could not fly home.
“I rang the HR manager at Food Hub straight away,” he told the tribunal.
“I’d taken two week’s annual leave to go to Egypt and I had to stay longer because of Covid,” he said.
The tribunal heard Mr Shah was required to spend at least four days a week “in the field” while “coaching, mentoring and leading his team”.
Bosses at the food delivery company said his remote working arrangements were discovered when it was noticed he had not claimed as many expenses as other employees who were expected to travel.
After expressing concerns that Mr Shah had not been going out, chief executive Adrian Mula arranged a meeting with him.
In the meeting, Mr Mula was “so angry” that he dismissed Mr Shah on the spot.
Mr Shah appealed the decision, and was reinstated, with a disciplinary process to follow.
Following that process, Mr Shah was dismissed for failing to follow a “reasonable management request” to work in the field.
Employment Judge David Maxwell said there were “fundamental flaws” in the investigation into Mr Shah’s conduct.
He added that 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”.
Mr Shah also accused his former employer of being underhand in the way they sacked him.
“If you look at my employment record, I rapidly shot through the ranks due to my performance,” he said.
“I worked my socks off and blew away the sales and performance records. After putting such a shift in, would I shirk my responsibilities by working from Egypt?”
Mr Shah is now unemployed and said he hoped the tribunal would not affect his future employment.
