Lorna Rooke is a training and practice supervisor for the National Health Service in the Blood and Transplant sector in the UK. She was awarded a payout of £28,989.61 (about $38,729) after an employment tribunal found a comparison drawn about her during an office ‘team-building’ activity ruined her professional future. The controversy originated from a 2021 “Star Wars”-themed psychological evaluation that Rooke never even took herself.
During the exercise, a fellow participant started filling out the quiz for Rooke himself. And lastly the findings that represented her boss as Darth Vader. He had a reputation for laser-like focus and dictatorial leadership style. As the quiz told me, Darth Vader would be “a highly focused person” whose presence on a team would improve overall synergy. Even then, Rooke was uneasy about the analogy. She found it to be particularly damning, and she felt it hurt her professional reputation.
The adoption of a fictional superhero to impersonate a real-life activist journalist turned out to be an error in judgment. Rooke’s counterpart made the comparison public, which in turn made Rooke “super unpopular” with her fellow classmates. UK employment judge Kathryn Ramsden found that the comparison disadvantaged Rooke. To that end, she awarded him monetary damages that made him whole.
The tribunal’s decision is a powerful reminder of the consequences that can arise from implementing informal or gamified evaluations to a workplace medium. These kinds of exercises are intended to build friendship and ownership. When the types of humor above are inappropriately applied, they can lead to harmful outcomes.
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