Natwest rethink after cancer patient is fired

NATWEST is reviewing its internal processes after a tribunal ruled that a senior worker was unfairly sacked two days after her cancer operation.

Sources said the bank is looking to make its processes “better and easier to understand” for staff after a tribunal ruled earlier this year that compliance officer Adeline Willis’s redundancy had been “tainted with discrimination”.

Ms Willis, who worked at the taxpayer-backed bank for six years, was off work recovering from major surgery when she was told two days after her operation that she would not be kept on in her £160,000-a-year role.

Ms Willis told The Daily Telegraph that she hopes the bank is “genuinely looking at its processes and what happened” so that nobody else goes through what she did.

She recommended better manager training and more direct lines of communication between staff and HR, claiming that she was never allowed to talk directly to a senior HR executive and only had access to a helpline. “It’s the corporate nature of a large institution with the left hand and right hand not knowing what’s going on,” she said.

A key piece of evidence in her case was a recorded phone call of her manager seeking advice from HR on how to terminate her secondment early a week after she notified the bank of her treatment plan for bowel cancer, which involved chemotherapy and radiotherapy every day for months.

The court heard how her team had weekly Monday morning meetings which Ms Willis attended throughout her treatment by dialing in from home.

When she returned to the office she went to attend the meeting but was told by her manager she was not needed. According to Ms Willis’s case, she felt “surprised and humiliated” and was later left “physically and emotionally in turmoil” after Natwest dismissed her just eight months after her cancer diagnosis.

A spokesman said: “We recognise the extremely difficult and complex personal circumstances in this case. We remain committed to making sure we have an inclusive culture throughout the bank and are considering carefully the judgment … in order to learn lessons.”

The bank faces a compensation claim of about £2m. If the two sides do not agree on damages, a further hearing will take place in November.