An employment tribunal in the United Kingdom has ordered Citizen Star developer Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) to pay almost £30,000 ($38,000) in compensation for discriminating against a disabled employee.
The studio was taken to court by senior programmer Paul Ah-Thion (the petitioner) after it issued a return-to-office policy that failed to meet his needs as a disabled person diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
The claimant was employed by CIG in 2018 and made the company aware of his disability early in his tenure. Although he initially worked from the company’s office in Wilmslow, the COVID-19 pandemic required staff to work remotely.
As noted in the Court’s decision sent to Game Developers, after emerging from the pandemic, the studio opened a new office in Manchester and sought to relocate its workforce. However, during the pandemic, Ah-Thion found that working from home was more suitable for his limited abilities.
Rather than transfer to the Manchester office, the claimant asked CIG for a permanent remote work arrangement. The request was quickly denied. The CIG refused to change its stance despite repeated requests and eventually sacked Ah-Thion in July 2022.
During the trial, CIG referred to itself as a “start-up” enterprise – despite having over 400 employees – and tried to argue that the plaintiff had suffered from performance problems related to its remote work setup. He also claimed that he was unable to fulfill certain job criteria, such as mentoring new employees, when working remotely.
The court, however, found “there was no specific problem with the plaintiff’s performance related to working from home as opposed to his performance in general.” A witness for CIG said the company was taking a “tougher” stance on working from home, but despite the alleged issues with the plaintiff’s performance, never formally asked him to return to the office.
“The Tribunal finds that the Respondent’s concern about the Claimant’s performance appeared to be quite retrospective in the sense that while the Claimant was employed, the Respondent never formally investigated these concerns,” the judgment reads.
“The Tribunal finds that if the Respondent had a serious concern about the Claimant’s performance, they provided no evidence to suggest why they could not successfully monitor him remotely while he was working from home. Measures of normal performance, such as performance targets and regular review meetings, could have been handled online.”
Considering these points, along with plaintiff’s admission that office work often left him “exhausted and anxious,” the court found that CIG could have made the “reasonable adjustment” by allowing Ah-Thion to work from home forever. By refusing to do so, the studio was found to have acted in a discriminatory and disproportionate manner.
“The Tribunal finds that the Respondent cannot convince us that the Claimant’s termination of employment was proportionate. We rely on the fact that we have found that working from home was a reasonable accommodation that would have mitigated the substantial disadvantage to the Claimant. There is no evidence that working from home would have failed to achieve the defendant’s legitimate goal of providing acceptable performance to a senior game programmer,” the judgment said.
“We have found that there was a failure by the defendant to understand the nature of the plaintiff’s autism. It was a condition of his autism that he struggled with his duties to act as a coach, reviewer and mentor to new team members .the evidence shows that the plaintiff was struggling to do so when he worked in the office. […] We find that the defendant treated the plaintiff unfavorably because of something arising out of his disability. They have not been able to show that the dismissal was a proportionate means of achieving the legitimate aim and therefore the claimant’s claim succeeds.”
CIG has been ordered to pay the claimant £27,748 in compensation. This includes loss of earnings amounting to £14,045.31 and £12,000 for emotional distress.
“Employers should be careful not to confuse disability with weakness”
Speaking to Game Developer, Ah-Thion said he remains proud of his work at CIG and described many of his colleagues as “great people”. He did, however, tell us that the experience was tempered during his last nine months at the studio, where he was “shocked to see how willing CIG management was to ignore my disability and fire me for my work.” .
Ah-Thion said he feels “vindicated” after the court’s outcome. “I’ve been fighting this myself for two years, and being autistic made the whole process especially challenging. But we’re lucky to have an employment tribunal system where the average person can get justice without having to go bankrupt himself in the law, he continued.
“It was clear to me from the start that CIG did not want people to work from home after the expense of their new office in Manchester, and worked backwards from that to retroactively come up with reasons why my request should be refused , something they continued to do. do it right up until the final court hearing—all while ignoring the disability legislation was pleased the court looked at them as lightly as they did.
He also suggested that some employers may have a “common sense mentality” when it comes to accommodating workers with disabilities, “where sending a manager to a two-hour course on a disability is all they have to do.”
“In reality, every disabled worker is different and the easiest and best way is to talk to them, ideally on a semi-regular basis and outside the normal performance review process – and employers should be careful not to confuse disability with weakness.” he added.
The games developer contacted Kuits employment lawyer Jake McManus to find out how employers in England and Wales can support disabled workers and how disabled people can hold employers to account.
It explained that employers have a “legal obligation to make reasonable adjustments in the workplace for disabled workers” and said they should refrain from using a “one-size-fits-all” approach when identifying which adjustments must be done.
“They should tailor the adjustments to that individual and their specific needs. Employers should monitor these adjustments to ensure they are working and the employee continues to be supported, and be flexible to make further adjustments if required,” McManus said.
“This can be difficult with invisible disabilities such as autism, as it may not be immediately apparent how a condition affects an employee at work, or if they have a disability in the first place. However, employers cannot rely on ignorance: if there are indications that an employee may be disabled, then they should take steps to investigate it further. eventually they have discovered the disability”.
McManus’ advice to workers is to inform employers of their disability when they begin employment. This ensures that an employer will have no doubt about their legal obligations. “If an employee believes that they are being treated less fairly than other colleagues because of their disability, or because of something that is a consequence of their disability, then they should bring this to the attention of the employer in so that it can be addressed,” he continued.
“Employees should be aware that any workplace policy or procedure that puts them at a disadvantage compared to other employees without disabilities may be discriminatory. In this case, the company’s policy of requiring programmers “The high game of working from the office put Mr. Ah, a person with autism, at a disadvantage because of his social interaction difficulties.”
The Games Developer has reached out to CIG for comment.