Defining what’s reasonable

What does ‘reasonable’ mean?

What does what a reasonable adjustment mean in your organisation? The key is the word ‘reasonable’.

Any adjustments should be reasonable within the business’s operations. They must also remove barriers to allow an employee to perform alongside non-disabled colleagues.

When looking at whether an adjustment is reasonable, consider the following:

• Is the adjustment adequate?
• Does it remove the disadvantage faced by the disabled employee?

This may include:

• changing the recruitment process
• doing things another way, like giving someone with social anxiety their own desk instead of hot-desking
• making physical changes, like installing a ramp for a wheelchair user. Or an audio-visual fire alarm for someone with hearing loss.
• enabling a disabled person to work somewhere else, such as on the ground floor for a wheelchair user
• changing equipment, such as providing a special keyboard if they have arthritis
• allowing employees who become disabled to make a phased return to work. This may include flexible hours or part-time working.
• offering employees training opportunities, recreation and refreshment facilities

This is not an exhaustive list. Everyone’s requirements will be different.

Budget

It’s good practice to have a central budget for reasonable adjustments. This eases line managers’ concerns about costs affecting their individual budgets.

You can get help with the costs of reasonable adjustments through Access to Work. There can be delays in Access to Work support. This can be frustrating for employees and affect productivity. In some cases you may want to use the central budget instead.