Have you been asked or recommended to make reasonable adjustments for an employee with a disability? This blog will examine what reasonable adjustments are, what is reasonable, and how to manage changes.

Before we discuss reasonable adjustments, we first need to understand what a disability is. The Equality Act 2010 supplies this definition: “a person is ‘disabled’ if they have a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on their ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.” ‘Long-term’ means that the condition must last, or be likely to last, for more than 12 months, or is likely to last for the rest of the life of the person affected.

Employers have a legal obligation to understand the barriers a disabled employee is experiencing and must put adjustments in place to seek to address or support the employee with their difficulties. 

What are Reasonable Adjustments?

Reasonable adjustments are changes that organisations can make to ensure individuals with disabilities are not placed at a disadvantage compared with colleagues who are not disabled.  Contrary to common misperception, they are not ‘perks’, or something to give a disabled person an unfair advantage or an ‘easy ride’.

Adjustments can be made to employee’s workplace, their working arrangements, the provision of equipment, services, or support, and/or finding a different way to do something.

General examples of reasonable adjustments include:

• Allowing a person with a disability to have some flexibility in their working hours, such as working part-time or starting and finishing later;
• Moving a person with disability to a different location (e.g., a site closer to their home, the ground floor or allowing them to work from home);
• Moving furniture, widening a doorway or providing a ramp so that a person using a wheelchair or other mobility aid can get around comfortably and safely;
• Redistributing some minor duties (not inherent requirements of a job) that a person with disability finds difficult to do;
• Allowing a person with disability time off during working hours for rehabilitation, assessment or treatment (e.g., physiotherapy or psychotherapy appointments);
• Supplying additional training, mentoring, supervision and support;
• Purchasing or modifying equipment, such as speech recognition software for someone with vision impairment, an amplified phone for a person who is hard of hearing, or a digital recorder for someone who finds it difficult to take written notes.
• Making changes to tests and interviews so that a person with disability can demonstrate their ability to do the job.

What is Reasonable?

When making adjustments, the key is that they need to be ‘reasonable’; what is reasonable depends on each situation. When deciding to make an adjustment the employer should consider the affordability, whether the change is practical to make, would it actually remove or reduce the disadvantage and could it possibly harm the health and safety of others.

Making reasonable adjustments should be done in consultation with the employee; this can be done at the induction stage or if the need arises during employment, have a conversation during a 1-2-1 meeting.  An Occupational Health referral may be beneficial, as they may be able to make recommendations for consideration.  What the employer might consider to be practical and beneficial might not be perceived that way by the individual, so keep the lines of communication open. What may have worked in the first instance might now not be a good option, as conditions may change over time.

How to Manage Reasonable Adjustments?

Having a disability and approaching your employer about it can be anxiety-inducing experience, so managers should be keen to collaborate with their staff to ensure they feel comfortable and able to approach them. As mentioned before, managers can use the induction process or regular 121s to have conversations around reasonable adjustments. The aim of those conversations should be to listen and fully understand what the individual is asking.

Consider the reasonableness of the request: is it affordable? Is it practical? Are you able to think of equally suitable alternatives? Will it be seen as fair and reasonable to the broader team? When you have a well-rounded and considered answer, go back to the employee and follow up your decision-making in writing and ensure the employee is in agreement. Aim to set regular review dates to determine whether the adjustments are still effective or not, should they no longer be useful, create alternative agreements and adjust.

The original and any subsequent agreements should be retained on the individual’s employment file in line with GDPR requirements. Should there be a change in management, the incoming manager should be made aware of the adjustments and what support has been given already, this will ensure the employee doesn’t have a break in support.

ACAS have recently reviewed their guidance on the subject which can be found here.

If you would like to discuss how ViewHR can support you in making reasonable adjustments, please get in touch for an initial discussion.