Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

Types of workplace adjustment

Find out about workplace adjustments. The right adjustments will be specific to the individual's needs, their role and where they work. It is possible for two people with similar impairments to have different needs, meaning workplace adjustments may differ.



Where you work

Find out about our remote working policy and how to assess working locations for accessibility. 

Remote Working Policy

The University introduced a remote working policy in September 2021. Remote working is the practice of an individual performing all or part of their role from home or, in some instances, another suitable non-University workplace. Under the policy all roles are designated into one of three categories:

  • Campus based – where the role requires the employee to be on campus or a University site for 80%-100% of their time
  • Hybrid – where the employee works a blend of remote and campus based working with at least 50% of their time spent on campus
  • Remote based – where the role is not based on campus and the employee would work on campus for less than 20% of their time

If you need to change your working location or the percentage of your time at each location from the standard category then you are able to request this as a workplace adjustment. This is covered in section 5.2.3 of the policy. In some cases it may not be practical to make the adjustment requested but there must be good evidence of why this is not possible due to the business need.

For staff who are working in hybrid roles it is important to identify and implement the adjustments they need in both of the locations where they work. Some hybrid workers may require an adjustment to become a permanently remote worker or a campus based worker. However you should not force this decision to reduce the need to make adjustments in two locations.

Location on campus

Most staff who work on campus (either as a campus based worker or a hybrid worker) are allocated accommodation within their School or Directorate. If your location on campus creates a barrier then you should explore this as part of your workplace adjustment.

The barriers a location presents can cover a range of things and managers must consider all of these. Barriers to consider include but are not restricted to:

  • the structure of the building
  • fittings and fixtures including doors, toilets, lighting, noise levels, heating and ventilation
  • furniture
  • emergency evacuations and alarms (See guidance on Health & Safety fire safety for personal emergency evacuation plans (PEEPs) and deaf messaging service (DMS).

You will also need to consider other parts of the campus apart from the main workbase where an individual will be expected to access.

Your manager will explore how to remove barriers within the existing location. If there are no practical or effective options to remove the barriers then they will consider alternative locations.



When you work

Our Flexible Sussex objective is to become an organisation that is flexible by default to ensure we are inclusive in everything we do. Providing a truly flexible working environment is a key part of achieving that ambition. A key driver behind our offer to consider flexible working requests is related to accessibility. Flexible working is a very common effective and affordable workplace adjustment.

See our flexible working procedure, and guidance for staff and managers on how to use the procedure. There's also a handbook on the different types of flexible working available.

Managers can tailor approaches within the handbook to provide an effective workplace adjustment.



How you work 

Find out about our formal policy and procedure and different ways of working. 

Formal policy and procedure

One form of workplace adjustment is to make a change to the way our policies and procedures are used for a disabled staff member. For example the remote working policy means that the assumed working location is determined by the category assigned to a role. This means that all staff in the same role will work in the same way (such as on campus, remotely or in a hybrid of both). A workplace adjustment for a disabled staff member may mean we over-rule the assumed location for the role to allow them to work in a location that removes barriers for them.

Other examples include changing rules on who can attend a meeting to allow support staff to attend alongside a disabled person, arranging and supporting personal emergency evacuation plans (PEEPs) for disabled staff that differ from the emergency evacuation plans for other staff and allowing assistance animals into buildings and/or meetings.

Ways of working

Teams develop ways of working and a workplace adjustment may be a request to allow a team member to do things differently. Often the request will require the whole team to do things differently. Such requests offer opportunity to managers and teams to consider how they work and whether changes can be accommodated and indeed whether they could be beneficial for customers and other team members. Common workplace adjustments about how somebody works could be:

  • reorganising the layout of an office
  • when and where meetings are scheduled
  • providing more clarity about what is expected of all attendees to meetings and sharing agendas in advance
  • delivering a service through a different channel
  • design of documents. 



What you do 

A common workplace adjustment can be removing some of the duties from the role.

In most roles there are a range of assumptions in relation to infrequent or ad hoc duties. A workplace adjustment may be to remove this expectation from the post holder. Even though the duty is minor or infrequent it is important to make this formal agreement to avoid any disadvantage if the requirement arises at short notice or creating an area of uncertainty if the situation should arise.

There may be an aspect of a role that is covered by a number of people, for example, covering the reception for enquiries on a rota. A workplace adjustment may be to remove the employee from the staff covering the rota. If this causes workload issues for remaining team members it may be possible to reallocate workload across the team.

It is important to remember that the workplace adjustment is to address a barrier for the disabled staff member that does not exist for other staff. These types of workplace adjustments are not a route to changing the grade of an individual or reducing the hours of employment through minor adjustments to the role.

The issue of reasonableness for these types of changes will only be relevant where it means a significant change to the role in terms of what the individual does or removing one element that accounts for a significant proportion of the workload of that role.



Auxiliary aids

Providing extra or specialist equipment (referred to as auxiliary aids under the Equality Act) is a common workplace adjustment. The equipment needed eg IT hardware and software, ergonomic furniture will depend on the individual and their role. Many disabled people will already know what the right equipment is from previous roles or similar situations out of work and are able to support their line manager in identifying the equipment they need. Where this is not the case, our occupational health providers can make recommendations.

As well as provision of aids the workplace adjustment can also include engaging with auxiliary aids that a disabled person uses, eg assistance animals.



Auxiliary services

Auxiliary services cover provision of someone else to assist the disabled person, such as a reader, a sign language interpreter or a support worker. It also includes engaging effectively with people providing these services.



Support

In addition to the direct support provided by auxiliary aids and services, a workplace adjustment may be to provide indirect or different forms of support. This could be through provision of training for the disabled staff member that is different to the standard training for employees in that role. It could be training relating to the auxiliary aids and services to make sure that they provide an effective adjustment. It could also be support for rehabilitation and mentoring.

Support can also cover training for people working with the disabled staff member to help them work effectively together and create an inclusive environment.