{"id":363649,"date":"2026-01-11T00:58:04","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T00:58:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/363649\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T00:58:04","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T00:58:04","slug":"google-employee-made-redundant-after-reporting-sexual-harassment-court-hears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/363649\/","title":{"rendered":"Google employee made redundant after reporting sexual harassment, court hears"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In May that year, Woodall took her concerns about a boys&#8217; club culture and the retaliation she was facing to the top of the organisation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Following their discussion, Weinstein, now president of Europe, Middle East and Africa, appeared shocked by Woodall&#8217;s claims. Court documents show she messaged a member of HR: &#8220;Just met Vicki [Woodall]. Holy moly. Want to get you for 10 mins today.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">That month, Weinstein messaged Dyana Najdi, Google&#8217;s managing director for UK and Ireland advertising, to say: &#8220;keep pushing&#8230;for solution on how you can run a process including agency [Woodall&#8217;s team]\u2026 gotta use this as a chance to exit people&#8221;, according to messages of their conversation submitted to court.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The company accepts that Woodall&#8217;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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2023, Google started a redundancy process that resulted in the departures of her boss and one of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-363649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}