Copyright Forbes
The workplace needs assessment is a critical lever in making inclusion operational; where the needs for disability adjustments are weighed against the flexibility in the role and business. The result should be a workable plan which allows the disabled person to deliver their role to the same performance level as their peers, and their career to thrive. They should be about ambition and growth. In reality, they are vague, impractical and can cause more conflict than they solve. What is going wrong? Here’s three problems and three solutions for businesses who want to do the right thing. Problem and Solution One: What Is Reasonable? Reasonableness is assessed by the balance between the demands of the role (for example safety and standards), the flexibility in the environment, the resources of the employer AND the needs of the employee. Reasonableness is for the employer to determine unless overruled by a Court of Law. It is not easy to balance these needs and find a win-win. Too frequently, workplace needs assessments take place online, a brief interview with a disabled employee resulting in a tick list of bland platitudes, that skim the surface. This is then presented to an unwitting manager, who may or may not understand how to deliver. I’ve seen things like “make sure you give clear instructions” – who is deliberately not being clear? This instruction is too vague to be useful, an example of the problem. We also have adjustment ideas that have become standard requests, such as laptops for writing notes, noise cancelling headphones and quiet spaces provided. But where these compromise safety or do not exist in practice - for example emergency services or safety critical roles - there can be a sense of unfairness. Unreasonable adjustments recommendations do not help anyone. The employee has had their expectations unduly raised. The employer feels constricted and that if they challenge, they will be at legal risk. We have created a problem. The solution to this problem is to include employers in the formulation of adjustments. Best practice involves consultation with both stakeholders and a plan to compromise to which both parties agree. If this is not possible, it becomes a complex case and needs to be escalated to employee relations and a more specialist professional. No good will come from issuing a report with recommendations that are unworkable. Problem And Solution Two: One Size Does Not Fit All Employers need to exercise judgement and nuance and consider each case individually. Blanket policies against home working, for example, are potentially discriminatory if applied to all roles in the company. I’ve recently seen a case where the employee and their manager have been working contentedly on a remote basis for four years, with no difficulties in performance, yet a workplace needs assessment was required to counter a new, draconian policy. Yes, society went too far on remote work after the pandemic. Yes, remote work compromises team performance, work life balance, junior career development but these are all “on average”. On average doesn’t apply to disabled people, we have specific needs, and we are adept at making them work. Employers need to consider the implications of policy changes to disabled employees; a flurry of money being spent on expensive assessments to counter such thoughtlessness is unnecessary and could have been avoided in this case by giving managers discretion over how they manage their teams. And that’s to say nothing of the demotivating effect of general disregard towards the individuals. The solution here is personalization in the workplace, manager discretion as step one. We can escalate to workplace needs assessments if a compromise isn’t obvious, and when we do this we need someone with more insight, more experience and better ideas that the general day to day. Which leads me to problem three - the increasing use of under qualified and generalist staff being expected to make recommendations that have legal implications. Problem And Solution Three: Who Is Qualified? A workplace needs assessment is a complex piece of negotiation. It requires more than an awareness course. You first need to understand the functional task components of workplace performance. For example, if you have an individual who is struggling with time management, you need to be able to unpick if that is actually literacy based, or a confidence in saying no. They require different things – you would offer assistive technology for a literacy issue and coaching for lack of confidence. It’s not a surface tick list where a disability connects neatly to a set of predetermined tools or techniques. And to repeat, the assessor needs to be able to balance the needs of the individual against the risk and responsibility of the role. A recent employment tribunal report found that a woman being paid £120,000 per year was recommended “regular breaks” as an adjustment. At this level, one would expect the employee to manage their own time and, if they cannot, a better recommendation would be coaching or co-coaching with a manager to find ways to strategize and communicate around workflows. It is a nonsense to expect a senior leader to be responsible for a professional adult’s break times when they have absolute discretion themselves. It is infantilizing. The tribunal judgement highlighted that the report was not useful, and I would add that it is sadly quite typical. We need assessors who will go beyond ticklists and will take the time to think about what this person realistically needs to retain, and thrive in their job. Qualifications in workplace needs assessments are hard to come by. There are no nationally regulated courses, but a minimum of degree level qualification in occupational psychology, occupational/vocational health, human resources management or employee relations would seem prudent. One has to consider how one would defend the implementation in a court of law. “Well Your Honor, we asked Steve who worked in accounts to take this on because he has an Autistic niece and is really passionate about inclusion and then we just did what he said” – this is not going to go down well. Even employing companies who profess specialism requires some basic checks as to who is delivering, supervision, safeguarding, benchmarking. Employers have legal obligations to do due diligence and not just follow advice blindly. The solution to this is to review example workplace needs assessments before you buy. Do they make sense to you? Does their process include triangulation between employee needs, employer resources and role requirements? How do they handle disagreements? Escalating, Avoidable Costs As neurodiversity awareness hits its peak popularity, more and more are coming forward for workplace needs assessments because they can’t get basic common affordances and flexibilities from employers. Adjustments for non-visible disabilities are more often challenged and disparaged as “favours” or someone being “fussy”. A lot of what we are seeing is unnecessarily combative and legalistic, when it could be resolved with stronger conversations around performance if managers were confident. Workplace needs assessments are the pain point that sits between an employee losing their job or turning a corner and succeeding. But in many cases, they are avoidable. Managers who take the position that an employee is probably trying their best and might need some specific instruction, accommodation or equipment to hit peak performance don’t need as many workplace needs assessments. Businesses who want to leverage disabled talent and unlock productivity and performance would do best to start by investing in manager competence, and tools to support everyday analysis of functional task performance. Many disabled people want to be at work, we want to thrive, we want our managers to expect high performance from us. Most adjustments cost less than the assessment. We need a better business process for connecting people to strategies and a better service when the first line responses don’t work.
