A tech executive who was fired after a night of drinking at a team-building event before realising she had lost her hotel room key and had to sleep in a sauna was discriminated against because of her ADHD, a UK tribunal has ruled.

The complex dispute involved Shannon Burns who was recruited as vice president of engineering by AI software developer Gitpod in September 2022 after stints at major Silicon Valley companies, including Salesforce.

During the recruitment process, Burns told Gitpod about her ADHD and dyslexia diagnoses and that these conditions were accommodated at previous employers. 

Though she did not request any accommodations from Gitpod at the time of her hiring, in February 2023 Burns requested an ADHD coach as she was feeling overwhelmed and anxious about her workload. 

This request was never actioned by the company, nor did it provide Burns with a screen reader for her dyslexia, and information about her conditions was seemingly not passed up the management chain.

In March, higher-ups began to express concern about Burns’ performance, with CEO Johannes Landgraf telling one colleague that she was “not a superstar” and he would not hire her again.

At a team-building event held in Austria in April 2023, the situation came to a head when Burns and several other execs began drinking. Burns was observed slurring and crying during the event, which she says took place at a “very difficult period” in her life due to significant problems in a personal relationship and a relation was unwell.

Before going to bed, she discovered she had lost her hotel room key and was unable to wake her roommate. With no concierge on duty, and seemingly nowhere else to go, she opted to sleep in the sauna complex. The next day she kept her colleagues waiting for the departure bus after losing her iPod and iPad.

Burns later received messages from a male senior exec scolding her for a lack of professionalism after he had heard rumours she had “got too drunk and fallen asleep in the sauna room”. This was despite he and several other senior execs getting much drunker that night, according to Burns.

In June, Burns was told the incident had “eroded trust and confidence” in her and that the support and mentorship she needed was unexpected at the vice president level. She was then dismissed.

In a slack message to staff and investors announcing the decision to dismiss Burns, Johannes stated Gitpod expects its vice presidents to be “self-starters and finishers, make and meet agreements, demonstrate executive presence, be able to adapt to our written async distributed culture”. 

“Based on the expectations we’ve set and reset and the investment in supporting Shannon success, we haven’t seen enough progress to confidently believe that she can get to a place where she and git pod are both thriving in a reasonable amount of time at the VP level,” he added.

In her complaint for unfair dismissal, sex discrimination, and disability discrimination, Burns complained of a toxic culture at the company, where the drunken antics of male colleagues were treated much less severely than her supposed transgressions.

The tribunal rejected her claim of sex discrimination, finding Burns was not dismissed for being a drunk woman, but for displaying a “lack of professionalism” unrelated to her sex. The tribunal accepted, however, that while Burns had been drinking, she was not drunk during the events of that night.

Burns’ unfair dismissal claim was also thrown out as she had been employed for less than two years. Even so, the tribunal found Gitpod should have done more to investigate the incident before resorting to disciplinary measures.

Forgetfulness and higher levels of alcohol absorption can both arise from ADHD, meaning the chain of events leading her to sleeping the sauna complex was likely caused by her condition.

The tribunal also held Gitpod liable for failing to make reasonable accommodations, leading to Burns’ fragile emotional state at the work event.

“Part of the reason to dismiss the claimant was that she failed to make and meet arrangements and did not adapt to the async culture. The tribunal finds that these criticisms were due to the claimant’s disability, namely the difficulty in concentrating and complying with the written asynch culture,” the judgment reads.

“The failure to make a reasonable adjustment (by failing to provide a screen reader) affected the claimant’s performance and led to the respondent’s decision to dismiss her.”

Burns’ claims for discrimination arising from disability and failure to make reasonable adjustments were both successful. A hearing to decide compensation will take place at a later date.

While Gitpod attempted to disprove these allegations by pointing to other neurodivergent employees – and that CEO Landgraf was supposedly unaware of Burns’ conditions – CM Murray’s Emma Bartlett explains this is not an adequate defence against individual claims.

“Most employment claims for disability discrimination against neurodiverse employees arise because there is not a dissemination of information to managers about any reasonable adjustments required for the employee,” she tells IEL.

“The nature of the employee’s condition doesn’t need to be disclosed – this is inevitably sensitive personal data so should be treated confidentially – but any adjustments to an employee’s working environment should be otherwise it is meaningless to have them in place.”

Employers should be aware that making neurodivergent workers go without reasonable accommodations can make issues cascade. For example, more care should have been taken towards Burns’ anxiety, which had stemmed from her struggles of working with ADHD, Bartlett suggests.

“The adjustments should have been considered first, irrespective of whether she was in her probation period or not,” she adds.

On how to handle neurodiverse staff more generally, Bartlett says employers should “gather knowledge from the employee or a medical expert or a neurodiverse coach to understand how they can best support the employee in the workplace and what steps the employee can take to manage anything arising out of their condition”.

She continues: “Once adjustments are in place, apart from keeping them under review in consultation with the employee, ensure that relevant managers are aware of any agreed adjustments – otherwise, all of the hard work in putting arrangements in place falls away.”