Social media worker sacked for not posting anything for a month wins £22,000 payout

A digital content producer has been handed £22,000 from her former bosses after she was sacked for not doing enough work.

Anita Briggs was meant to run the social media channels for National Museums of Scotland.

However, in one month, she failed to create a single piece of content. In another she created just six posts compared to a colleague’s 73.

A tribunal heard that she would regularly miss deadlines and make spelling errors, a pace of work that was deemed ‘substantially below what was expected’.

She then failed three performance reviews and so was sacked from the job that she had held since 2009.

Concerns were first raised by her boss, Russell Dornan, in 2022 and he put her on a personal improvement plan to improve her attention to detail, increase her output and perform tasks via agreed processes.

After six months, Mr Dornan felt her progress had been unsatisfactory.

Her job included running Facebook LinkedIn and X for four museums across Scotland that are largely funded by the Scottish government.

A second plan was put in place, but Ms Briggs was not happy with the proposal and gave reasons for why she may not have performed as might have been expected.

She said that Mr Dornan had it in for her, but when he left and Hannah Barton stepped into the role, she also found that she had not fulfilled her role to a satisfactory standard.

The tribunal heard: ‘Ms Barton considered that required performance had not been met as there were continued errors around typos, spelling, grammar and proofing; missed deadlines for producing content and a failure to follow processes for work allocation in line with wider team priorities.’

After a period of sickness, Ms Briggs returned to work last January to be told she was facing a third personal improvement plan which could result in her dismissal.

After failing that and being sacked, she accused her bosses of a ‘long-standing orchestrated campaign to terminate her employment’.

Judge Nielson said: ‘There was simply no evidence of any conspiracy or campaign to terminate the employment of [Ms Briggs] for a reason other than capability.’

However, she won her claim after the tribunal found she was not given any formal warnings that she might be sacked.

The Trustees of the National Museums of Scotland were ordered to pay her £22,210.75 in compensation.

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