UK tribunal finds that company “treated the claimant unfavourably” due to disability
Ah-Thion, however, had found that working from home allowed him to avoid what he describes as the exhaustion and distress of working on Cloud Imperium’s premises. The article doesn’t go into detail about this, but it’s worth noting here that many autistic people havegreat difficultywith the sensory environment and social expectations of in-office work, unless proper accommodations are made.
The tribunal, however, rejected many of Cloud Imperium’s justifications for the dismissal, noting that in the absence of a formal investigation of Ah-Thion at the time, “concern about the claimant’s performance seemed rather retrospective”. According to a Cloud Imperium witness at the trial, the company never formally asked Ah-Thion to return to the office, despite their alleged misgivings about the impact of remote-working on his performance.
The tribunal also found that Cloud Imperium “failed to give any evidence to suggest why they could not monitor [Ah-Thion’s performance] successfully remotely whilst he was working from home” and that “there is no evidence that working from home would have failed to achieve the respondent’s legitimate aim of ensuring the acceptable performance of a senior gameplay programmer”. As such the tribunal’s conclusion is that Cloud Imperium “treated the claimant unfavourably because of something arising in consequence of his disability”, and that the company could have offered thereasonable adjustmentof letting him work from home.
“We find there was a failure of the respondent to understand the nature of the claimant’s autism,” the judgement comments. “It was a condition of his autism that he struggled with his duties to act as a coach, reviewer and mentor to the junior members of the team. The evidence shows that the claimant was struggling to do this when he worked in the office.”
Game Developer also has some comment from Ah-Thion himself, who calls attention to what he calls a “tick-box mentality” to looking after disabled workers at companies who think that “sending a manager on a two-hour course about a disability is all they need to do”.
“I’ve been fighting this by myself for two years, and being autistic made the whole process especially challenging,” he told the site. “But we’re lucky to have the employment tribunal system, where an ordinary person can actually find justice without having to bankrupt themselves on legal fees.”
