Are you here to find out just what may be considered as reasonable and unreasonable in the area of ‘reasonable adjustments’?
The whole point of reasonable adjustments is that they’re for the individual and for the business.
So I can’t give you a list of reasonable adjustments that are always granted; what I can do is give you examples of reasonable adjustments which are commonly requested, needed and provided. I’m listing them to help everyone understand what reasonable adjustments are, not to say employees would have these requests actioned in every job nor by every company.
Employers, you decide what you deem reasonable or unreasonable, but you must be fair and inclusive, and you should be supportive. Employers in the UK employers must adhere to the Equality Act 2010. You must make reasonable adjustments to make sure workers with physical or mental health conditions, or disabilities, are not substantially disadvantaged when doing their jobs.
Katharine Metters, Head Consultant at Posturite’s top tip is for employers and employees to simply sit down together and talk. Your member of staff can explain about the barriers they face and the things they feel at work, and have the chance to privately discuss their situation. And employers can discuss possible options to provide support. “You tend to land up with a good compromise this way” Katharine says.
Specific examples of reasonable adjustments
- Giving a candidate advance information about who will be interviewing
- Sourcing and providing an appropriate specific ergonomic chair for support
- Installing automatic or assisted-opening office doors
- Creating an office floor guide which helps people find things in an office building
- Providing noise-omitting headphones
- Equipping your employee with Speech-To-Text software
- Changing working hours so that the commute is during a less busy period
- Equipping your employee with more than one monitor
- Allowing parking in a different space in the staff car park
- Adding sound-absorbing materials to the office décor
It's very a different situation for each kind of organisation, and each individual. These accommodations won’t be deemed to be ‘reasonable’ in every case, or for all.
Let’s look at these workplace adjustments in more detail:
1. Giving a candidate advance information about who will be interviewing
You can take away some of the anxiety and worry for an interview candidate by letting your interviewee know who they’ll be meeting. What are all their names and roles? “I've always found that not knowing who the people are who are sat in front of you is disconcerting” says enablement expert at Posturite, David Mitchell, “when really they could be very relevant to the job role you're going to be taking on. I prefer to know that beforehand, and I’m not alone in this!”.
Remember that adjustments can be offered and provided at the recruiting stage, before a job even starts.
2. Sourcing and providing an appropriate specific ergonomic chair for support
An appropriate specific chair to support an individual’s particular health needs could be a reasonable adjustment. Do you have a colleague experiencing lower back pain for example? A fully-adjustable ergonomic chair can be enormously helpful, and a DSE assessor can recommend a particular chair model or specialist chair, if required.
3. Installing automatic or assisted-opening office doors
Many people with reduced mobility, as well as wheelchair users, need automatic or self-opening doors in order to attend their workplaces and carry out their jobs. Inaccessible entrances can be a barrier to work.
4. Creating an office floor guide which helps people find things in an office building
“Several of my corporate clients are having simple office floor guides created, to display with colour guidance almost like a yellow brick road” David tells me. They help people to find the way to get to a particular location in a workplace, whether they have a disability or condition or not. This is another good adjustment to help lessen anxiety and stress at work.
Katharine Metters from Posturite adds:
“One of the great things about reasonable adjustments is sometimes we learn there's a better way of doing something. What might start as a reasonable adjustment for an individual might actually turn out to be just good for all of us.” This is a crucial point I think.
5. Providing noise-omitting headphones
For somebody who has challenges working to their best abilities in noisy office environments - perhaps if they are neurodiverse - an office headset which omits noise but does not cancel all noise can be very effective. For example, an employer could provide a Jabra Evolve2 75 Bluetooth Headset which is an ‘active’ rather than a ‘passive’ headset. This is an innovative technology which reduces and helps to eliminate background noise, yet you can hear around you. Providing employees with a quieter environment to focus and reduce distractions can be a great help.
By the way, if you’re instead looking a headset which blocks out office noise, the Jabra Evolve2 65 Bluetooth MS Stereo Headset would be a good choice and is popular in call centres.
6. Equipping your employee with Speech-To-Text software
Another example of a reasonable adjustment could be voice-activated software. Providing Dragon or another assistive technology can be beneficial to employees including people who are finding it painful to type, people with reduced mobility and neurodiverse individuals. You can arrange training in making the most of Speech-To-Text software too. It can make you more productive too!
7. Changing working hours so that the commute is during a less busy period
A workplace adjustment you might consider for an employee in circumstances such as pregnancy, mental health challenges or a physical disability could be to amend the working hours. A commute in a packed underground train could be unviable, but what if the slightly quieter hours were a possibility for your employee?
8. Equipping your employee with more than one monitor
I recently met a manager who has ADHD and finds it a game-changer for her productivity to have dual monitor screens. She focuses on her tasks, and then periodically looks at her emails on her second screen.
9. Allowing parking in a different space in the staff car park
Could you increase your company’s flexibility on who the nearest car parking spaces to the office entrance are allocated to? Try to be inclusive and remove barriers to work.
10. Adding sound-absorbing materials to the office décor
“Sounds reverberate differently in different kind of environments, so they'll bounce off hard surfaces” David Mitchell tells me. “Whereas if you put more soft surfaces in, sound is going to be more pleasant for your employees.” Get some expert help from an office furniture projects team on how to include sound-absorbing materials in your office environment.
The opportunity of reasonable adjustments
As you can see, many of these examples of reasonable adjustments could enhance the working experiences of all of us.
A human is at the centre of a request for a reasonable adjustment, and the very best employers are taking small but significant steps to make their people’s working lives less challenging, more inclusive and more comfortable.
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