Google employee made redundant after reporting sexual harassment, court hears

A senior Google employee has claimed she was made redundant after reporting a manager who told clients stories about his swinger lifestyle and showed a nude of his wife.

Victoria Woodall told an employment tribunal she was subjected to a campaign of retaliation by the company after whistleblowing on the man who was later sacked.

Google UK’s internal investigation found the manager had touched two female colleagues without their consent, and his behaviour amounted to sexual harassment, documents seen by the BBC in court show.

The tech giant denies retaliating against Woodall and argues she became “paranoid” after whistleblowing and began to view normal business activities as “sinister”.

In her claim, Woodall says her own boss subjected her to a “relentless campaign of retaliation” after her complaint also implicated his close friends who were later disciplined for witnessing the manager’s behaviour and failing to challenge it.

The claim also included Woodall’s allegations of a “boys’ club” culture, including that up until December 2022, Google had been funding a men’s only “chairman’s lunch”.

Google said an internal investigation found no such culture and the event was ended as it was no longer in line with its policies.

A judgement from London Central Employment Tribunal is expected in the coming weeks.

Woodall worked as a senior industry head in Google’s UK Sales and Agencies team.

In August 2022, according to her claim, she was contacted by a female client who said that, during a business lunch, a manager in the team had boasted about the number of black women he had had sex with.

He said “he and his wife were swingers” and also described how they had sex with two women they met on the beach on holiday, according to summary notes of Google’s investigation submitted to court.

The client said the conversation was unprompted and happened in front of his line manager who did nothing to stop him, describing their behaviour as “disgusting,” in court documents.

Woodall reported the client’s concerns to her boss Matt Bush, then managing director of the agency team, and Google opened an internal investigation into the manager’s conduct, it adds.

While this investigation was underway, Woodall raised a second complaint from another female client who alleged the same manager had shown her a “picture of his wife’s vagina” while scrolling through photos on his phone, according to her claim.

Google interviewed 12 people as part of its investigation and uncovered further incidents which it found amounted to sexual harassment in breach of company policies, according to emails, notes and a copy of the report submitted to the tribunal.

The manager was found on the balance of probabilities to have sexually harassed two female employees during a work event, where he allegedly touched one colleague’s leg during a conversation and rubbed another colleague’s back and shoulders, both without their consent.

Google also found he had allegedly made inappropriate comments to staff, including telling a female colleague he had met for the first time that he was in an open marriage and that if she had “sex with him in the bathroom, his wife would enjoy hearing about it”.

The manager denied the allegations during Google’s investigation and said he did not think he had shared with his workmates that he has an open relationship with his wife, according to the report.

He was sacked for gross misconduct, court documents show, while his line manager and another senior colleague were recommended for “documented coaching” for failing to intervene. They were both later made redundant.

Woodall claims that shortly after reporting the sexual harassment in 2022, her boss, Matt Bush, gave her “little choice” but to swap her successful client account with a failing one – which up until that point had belonged to one of the two colleagues to later receive disciplinary action following her whistleblowing.

She described the move as a “poisoned chalice” that had left her vulnerable to redundancy, the court heard.

She says she was then demoted to a subordinate role on a big internal project supporting the other senior manager her report had implicated. Her boss later tried to downgrade her performance among other retaliatory actions, according to her claim.

In his witness statement, Bush says he always supported Woodall’s career and took fostering inclusivity and gender equality in hiring pipelines and promotions very seriously, adding that it was standard practice to regularly move accounts between the team.

In 2023, Google started a redundancy process that resulted in the departures of her boss and one of the senior managers who failed to report the sexual harassment, according to court documents.

In May that year, Woodall took her concerns about a boys’ club culture and the retaliation she was facing to the top of the organisation.

In her witness statement, she says she met with Debbie Weinstein, then vice president of Google UK and Ireland after hearing from a HR colleague that she was concerned about the team and the experiences of women.

Following their discussion, Weinstein, now president of Europe, Middle East and Africa, appeared shocked by Woodall’s claims. Court documents show she messaged a member of HR: “Just met Vicki [Woodall]. Holy moly. Want to get you for 10 mins today.”

Then in November 2023, as Google prepared for a broader reorganisation and redundancy process, Woodall claims there was a final push to remove her from the agency team.

That month, Weinstein messaged Dyana Najdi, Google’s managing director for UK and Ireland advertising, to say: “keep pushing…for solution on how you can run a process including agency [Woodall’s team]… gotta use this as a chance to exit people”, according to messages of their conversation submitted to court.

In March 2024, Woodall was made redundant alongside the second senior manager involved in the misconduct investigation, however she remains employed by the company receiving long-term sickness payments for work-related stress, according to her claim.

Google denies that Woodall was made redundant for whistleblowing, adding that her role was one of 26 across the team and wider department closed, according to its defence.

It disputes that Weinstein attempted to make Woodall redundant, saying she was very supportive towards her and instigated the investigation into the culture of the agency team.

The company accepts that Woodall’s report of the manager accused of misconduct was an act of whistleblowing, but denies any retaliation against her, saying the subsequent events were perfectly normal business decisions.