A senior Google employee has claimed she was made redundant from the tech giant as retaliation for reporting her manager for telling clients about his swinger lifestyle and showing them a naked photo of his wife.

Former senior industry head in Google’s UK Sales and Agencies team Victoria Woodall has launched a case in the London Central Employment Tribunal after she was made redundant in March 2024.

In the case, Woodall is alleging she was let go by the company after she reported a manager in her team for misconduct, and this manager was fired for sexual harassment, as reported by the BBC, citing court documents.

Google has rejected Woodall’s claims, instead alleging the former employee had become “paranoid” after blowing the whistle on the manager and that her redundancy was a normal business activity.

‘Relentless campaign of retaliation’

The court heard that in August 2022, Woodall said she was contacted by a female client who alleged that during a business lunch, the manager had, unprompted, discussed his and his wife’s lifestyles as “swingers”.

She claimed that he also had bragged about the number of women he had slept with, according to the report.

Woodall said she was told by another client that the same manager had shown them a naked photo of his wife while scrolling through photos on his phone.

Woodall reported these concerns to the managing director of her team, and Google launched an internal investigation into them, the court heard.

As part of this investigation, 12 people were interviewed, and more incidents were reported, which the company determined on the balance of probabilities amounted to sexual harassment by the manager reported by Woodall, leading to his dismissal.

The report also found that the manager had made inappropriate comments. He was fired from Google for misconduct, according to the reporting.

Woodall’s complaint also included two of the manager’s friends, who allegedly witnessed his behaviour but did not report it.

In court, Woodall is claiming that after her whistleblowing, she was subjected to a “relentless campaign of retaliation”, culminating with her redundancy.

She alleged that soon after reporting the manager, her boss gave her “little choice” but to swap from her successful client account to a failing one that she labelled a “poisoned chalice” and said it made her more vulnerable to a redundancy.

Woodall was then demoted to a lower role on an internal project and claims that her boss downgraded her performance in retaliation.

‘Boys club’

In May 2023, Woodall made another complaint about a “boys club” culture at Google and the alleged retaliation she was facing.

These complaints were made in a meeting with the then-Google UK vice-president Debbie Weinstein.

According to documents submitted to court, soon after the meeting Weinstein messaged a Google HR worker: “Just met with Vicki. Holy Moly. Want to get you for 10 mins today.”

In March 2024, Woodall was made redundant at Google, 18 months after she had engaged in the whistleblowing.

In other claims made in the tribunal, Woodall said that Google had been funding a men’s only “chairman’s lunch” up until the end of 2022.

Google has said that an investigation has found no evidence of a “boys club” internally, and that the lunch was cancelled as it was no longer in line with its policies.

The tech giant also told the court that Woodall was among 26 people in her team and the wider department who were let go at the time, and that the events following her whistleblowing were normal business decisions.

The London Central Employment Tribunal is expected to make its ruling in the coming weeks.

Fellow tech giant Microsoft was in the spotlight last year after a number of employees were allegedly fired after protesting the company supplying AI systems to the Israeli military.

And a Twitter employee was awarded nearly $1 million in late 2024 after he was unfairly dismissed for not responding to an email from CEO Elon Musk that called on workers to be “extremely hardcore”.

Earlier this year Australian software giant TechnologyOne won an unfair dismissal case against a former employee who had alleged he was fired after he made a series of bullying complaints.