Go to Employment Tribunal?

[WorrieaboutFIL]

Should I do this? I'm really upset after being dismissed during my probation, particularly as I had asked for adjustments (due to disability) and these were completely dismissed.

Maybe 15 days, plus some gardening leave plus 1 day sick.

No not really I just wondered if it was more.

honestly op I think you’re going to struggle but if you wish to proceed then I think it would be good to put everything down in one document so you’ve a clear timeline of everything that happened.

Why were you put on garden leave? That is very strange in the circumstances

Thank you, that's what I'll do.

I think if i had to have a capability conversation with an employee about accuracy and they chose that moment to disclose that they couldn't see their screen properly I would want to know

• what they had done about it
• why they hadn't raised this with me earlier.

I'm afraid it would make me question their honesty, work ethic and whether they had the essential skills for the job. It is a reasonable expectation that someone doing an admin role can adjust their screen size.

I have no idea, she said it was standard practice. She said she'd consulted the citizens advice bureau, she wouldn't be making any adjustments and then I was cut out of all company systems e.g. my emails etc. All very abruptly.

I have no issues with her questioning my work ethic, but her ignoring the law.

You seem lacking in self awareness if you worked for two months without realising that your work was falling short of the standard and doing basic things to help yourself such as proofreading, enlarging work and fonts, raising the issues and proposing adjustments earlier. Who picked up that the published work had font the wrong colour? Why were you off sick? Have you worked previously? Was the meeting the first time your disability had been flagged? It sounds like a poor fit in terms of role and organisation. Maybe write this off, learn from what happened and be more upfront with the next one.

I suspect she didn’t believe you have a disability. You haven’t disclosed it until the point at which you are going to be dismissed which is clearly always going to lead to people questioning whether you are telling the truth or simply trying to avoid dismissal.

I think you have a number of significant hurdles to overcome here. Not least of which is establishing that you have a qualifying disability and that your failings in performance were as a result of that and/or that there has been a failure to make reasonable adjustments.

Unless you have a good medical paper trail it will be difficult to pursue this and it is potentially going to cost you more to pursue than you would actually be awarded if successful.

good luck though. I’m sure another employment lawyer can guide you further but it’s pointless discussing any further on this thread. Your documents need to be reviewed.

I spend my days in tribunal. It isn’t a good idea to bring a claim just to make a point or to try to teach someone a lesson unless you have very deep pockets. Costs don’t follow the event in the tribunal (so each side typically pays their own costs even if they win)

You were there for 2 months, including a holiday. Claiming you didn't have time to book an appointment with an optician in that time will get you nowhere. Even if we only look at the working time, claiming you didn't have time to use the zoom facility on a Mac (which gives you up to 40x standard size) won't wash. If you are unfamiliar with a Mac you have to search the internet to find out how to do it, but it would only take a minute or two.

A reasonable adjustment is something that removes or reduces a disadvantage related to your disability when doing your job. As far as I can see, extending probation is a red herring. I cannot see how it helps. Changing the tone of feedback is also unlikely to fly as a reasonable adjustment.

A larger screen may be a reasonable adjustment, but if the zoom feature on the Mac wasn't enough, a larger screen is unlikely to be the answer.

If you go to tribunal with a story as muddled as the one you have presented here, you will get nowhere. Even if you get your story straight, your employer's version will be very different. They will talk about an employee who was failing to meet the required standard, who had been given plenty of feedback over 2 months but still wasn't good enough and who then, when she knew she was likely to be dismissed, tried to use disability as a get out of jail free card. I'm not saying that is how it was, but it wouldn't surprise me if that or something close to it was your employer's version of events.

You may have legal cover on your house insurance. If so, you may be able to get them to pay for you to consult an employment lawyer. But that should be your next step. They will be able to advise if you have a case worth taking to tribunal.

Honestly OP you'll get nothing out of this.
You needed glasses - as do a large % of us for whatever reason. You applied for a job that required working at a laptop and typing accurately. Yet you have no glasses.
Your performance wasn't up to the required standard and you received feedback to that effect. You knew you were on probation. You tried hard to improve things and I can see that it was tough for you. However - a tribunal would see that:

• in the three months of part-time work you didn't magnify the type to help see it better or use dictate/read aloud features to make things easier.
• you didn't see an optician
• you only raised the question of reasonable adjustments/disability/anxiety in response to negative criticism and the likelihood of failing probation

They would also look at your overall performance and whether that was connected with your sight. (Were you slow/ unable to grasp things/ unpopular/unreliable? Or were you bright, sharp, on top of the role, keen to learn, help others, go above and beyond, contribute etc etc.)

As others have said - even if you were to win - which seems unlikely...... after a year or more of sheer stress and time-consuming work any compensation would be very minimal and very unlikely to cover your costs.

I wd advise you to let it go and find a job that you enjoy more with an employer that appreciates you. Good luck

Why would an employer extend a probation period 12 days into a new role? Half way or more through yes maybe but what would be the point otherwise? What difference would that have made?

what kind of reports were they, there are some where I reckon a minor typo could be critically important.

Honestly, what do you think you might get out of this even if you win? It genuinely won’t be that much.

I’m not sure why people are saying the OP won’t get much. She could get a reasonable amount and certainly into the thousands if everything else stacks up and she can establish disability. However her legal costs could also be thousands (although she may have insurance or could act in person).

A few thousand maybe, not a king’s ransom. It was a one off act of discrimination by sounds of it and she works 2 days a week.

it’s worth a punt at ACAS and they might settle even on a commercial basis but although they sound pretty shitty it’s still by no means certain she’d win a claim and for someone who already suffers from anxiety, it’s another anxiety inducing and potentially long winded process to go to ET.

Is there no ethics anymore. What has the OP actually suffered from, to be worth a pint, to chase after £000 payout? Going for the jugular just because you can shouldnt be the driving force here. It should be a compensation for some actual harm meted out and received. Many people fail probation and that should be a sign that the relationship isn't working not a chance to screw the company for whatever you can squeeze out of them.

worth a punt

The story is muddled. At one point you say you were sacked with hours of telling them. Then that you told them 2 weeks before when they spoke to you about poor performance.

Saying ‘I didn’t magnify my screen/didn’t magnify by much/didnt book an opticians appointment because I didn’t know my job was at risk’ comes across badly. It makes it sound like you were bothered about improving but would have been if you realised they were going to sack you.

The gardening leave situation is a bit odd. Is that your term or theirs? I suspect they are going to say they went above and beyond and kept paying you for a several weeks when they didn’t need to, if it’s a term they used.

You sat in the office with blurred vision and told no one? If you were aware of the problem with your vision why did you not say anything at the time or get someone to double check the report if you couldn’t yourself? You can zoom into a document to make the text larger. If you were using Microsoft there’s the speak facility.
As someone with a disability that works I don’t understand why you have not already contacted access to work. You don’t have to declare your disability but in not doing so you have not given your employer the opportunity to help you with reasonable adjustments. I could be an exception to the rule but the only time my disability is referred to is when my employer wants to know what can be done to help make sure I have everything I need to do my job to the best of my ability.

You can try to claim that

• your diabetes and anxiety amount to a disability
• your employer had knowledge of this
• they failed to put reasonable adjustments in place (monitor, time to get glasses, extension of probation)
• the dismissal was direct disability discrimination
• the dismissal was discrimination arising from a disability (errors arose from your diabetes, you were dismissed because of those errors)

Do your homework (and bring the claim in time!!) www.acas.org.uk
www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/advice-and-guidance/disability-discrimination

The whole process is fairly stressful, frankly - but I suppose you could do it with the intention of not paying for lawyers, then settling or withdrawing before the hearing.

No one here can tell you what your chances are of success without deep consideration of the entire context, eg oral or written questions by a trained employment expert. Sounds like you have a lot of hurdles here and may not come out of it well. Judgments may not be published on line in the future, but the fact of your case is public knowledge and won’t sit well for any private future employers, harming your employment prospects.

OP if you're thinking of approaching your insurers, assuming you have legal expenses cover, they will be unlikely to fund any action that doesn't have a good chance of winning enough to recover costs. Still worth talking to them if you have cover because you'll often have access to a legal helpline anyway.

I think the employer has been a bit shitty here - they could have made some reasonable adjustments - a second large screen is pretty standard kit and the op was not given enough time to make improvements after she was called out.
The relationship with this employer has broken down and it's very possible they don't like you - it's impossible for us to say why, but working somewhere you are not valued is not good for your mental health. Learn from this experience and move on. Or take them to a tribunal and move on but learn to take ownership of your condition, either choose work that doesn't require adjustments or ask for the adjustments and get a pair of glasses!

And what if she loses and the ET order her to pay the company's fees? That's always a possibility in court proceedings

Not in the Employment Tribunal. Costs would only be awarded if the tribunal viewed OP's behaviour as vexatious, disruptive, abusive or otherwise unreasonable in bringing proceedings or the way she acts during those proceedings. Costs awards in the Employment Tribunal are vanishingly rare.

Massively unlikely