Reasonable adjustments

A. The obligation for employers to implement “reasonable adjustments” for a disabled person is set out in Section 20 of the Equality Act 2010. The Acas employment advisory service has recently produced guidance, Reasonable adjustments in the workplace, available on the Acas website. This describes the purpose of reasonable adjustments as removing or minimising disadvantages experienced by disabled people.

What is “reasonable” will depend on various factors. The Acas guidance explains that this will include the “size and nature of the organisation”, with a large organisation being more likely than a small shop to be able to afford very expensive adjustments.


Adjustments are often straightforward. They can involve physical changes to premises, including the provision of specific equipment. 


But they may also involve changes to policies and procedures. Examples include modifying performance targets, adjusting sickness absence triggers where an employee has been off work due to a disability, adjusting hours of work to facilitate a phased return and applying selection criteria under a redundancy policy discounting disability-related periods of absence.


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