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A travel consultant who felt 'super anxious' after being asked to have her camera on while working from home has successfully sued her employer for disability discrimination.
Laura Tait was asked to 'start with it on and to see how it went' but the request was so overwhelming she had to leave the meeting and log off.
Ms Tait, who worked from home as a travel consultant for Holiday Extras call centre, asked her bosses to do fewer calls with customers, despite around 80 per cent of her job involving them.
She then sued her employer for failing to provide a number of 'reasonable adjustments', including the 'ability to join meetings with camera off'.
The tribunal was told: On 24 August 2023 [Ms Tait] was doing a remote training session by video and asked to have her camera off as she felt 'super anxious'.
'She was asked to start with it on and to see how she went. However, she was not able to cope and so she was told that was fine and to log off.'
She was granted sick leave in October 2023 with work related stress and anxiety, and has not returned to work since.
In April 2024, Ms Tait complained she had been discriminated against because her adjustment requests had not been granted.
Her grievance was dismissed in October, and her appeal against this decision was not granted.
She was granted a limited number of adjustments that month, including having her 'camera off in meetings'.
Ms Tait began working for Holiday Extras in June 2021. But by April the following year, she told her manager that the stress of work had caused 'absences related to her anxiety'.
These kept increasing until she asked for 'emergency time off' due to 'burn out', the tribunal held in Croydon heard.
In July 2023, she told a new line manager that 'the only thing that would help her' would be to undertake more live chat and email shifts.
She was told 'she could not be scheduled more chats and emails than average due to fairness and workloads' although her bosses would try to accommodate wherever possible.
One month later that she attended a remote training session where her employer requested she turn her camera on, leading to her logging off.
On the video call incident, Employment Judge Liz Ord said: '[Holiday Extras] did not allow the requested adjustment on 24 August 2023, when they were first made aware of [Ms Tait] being overwhelmed.
'However, they did not require her to come on camera thereafter and [the COO] formally agreed to the adjustment on 4 October 2024.
'Nonetheless, we take the view that the adjustment was reasonable and should have been put in place from 24 August 2023.'
The judge added that Ms Tait was left with 'substantial disadvantages in the workplace' because of the company's failure to make reasonable adjustments.
Companies that demand employees who are 'anxious' or 'overwhelmed' to join video meetings with their cameras on could be classed as disability discrimination under UK employment law, the tribunal ruled.
Ms Tait will receive compensation which will be decided at a later date.
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