What are some examples of reasonable adjustments?

What are reasonable adjustments for a disability?

The Equality Act 2010 places an active duty on employers to make reasonable adjustments to accommodate the needs of disabled employees. This duty arises at any time before and during their the employment relationship, when the individual is put at a substantial disadvantage in comparison with individuals who are not disabled.

1. Reallocation of a duty a disabled employee cannot do
An NHS trust discriminated against a deaf applicant for a position when it failed to consider reallocating telephone work, according to the employment tribunal in Keane v United Lincolnshire Hospital NHS Trust.

2. Providing a nearby parking space for a disabled worker
An employer’s refusal to allocate a parking space near to the workplace of a disabled employee was a breach of its duty to make reasonable adjustments in Environment Agency v Donnelly

3. Swapping roles with another employee
In the EAT upheld an employment tribunal decision that swapping a disabled police officer’s role with that of another officer would have constituted a reasonable adjustment in the circumstances. Jelic v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police,

Video Transcript

Hello, my name is Mark Ferron MD of Castle Associates and what are some examples of reasonable judgments in the workplace? This is the question I put to employment barrister Nick Singer There are literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them and you could have dictation software for someone without arms. One of the most common things you see is there are attendance procedures, which basically someone might get dismissed or warned if I don't come to work and often that can affect disabled people because they often are not able to maintain a good level of attention because of their disability. So what you might do is you might not dismiss someone you would have otherwise dismissed, you may allow them to have more attention as sort of change what I called the trigger points so if the non-disabled employee is allowed 10 days off perhaps the disabled employee is allowed 20 days off. You can modify and the workplace to make sure a wheelchair can get in if somebody commits an act of misconduct and they make a very very serious mistake which a non-disabled person be dismissed for you could take into consideration their disability and not dismiss them. The examples are I say there are hundreds of them and it just depends on the fun facts.

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