Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

How you work

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 (ie 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