EHRC guidance published on supporting disabled workers with hybrid working

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has published new guidance to help employers support disabled employees with hybrid working. It covers recruitment and all stages of the employment relationship and is designed to help avoid poorly implemented hybrid working arrangements that can create difficulties for disabled staff, such as being isolated from colleagues and problems with accessing necessary support or equipment. We’ll speak to a D&I specialist about the guidance and how employers should use it.

Personnel Today reports on this and quotes Commission chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner. She says the new guidance will ‘help organisations to embrace the benefits that reasonable adjustments can bring in attracting, empowering and retaining top talent.’ As the article highlights, there is a legal imperative here - the Equality Act 2010 places a duty on employers to make reasonable adjustments, meaning they must take steps to remove, reduce or prevent obstacles a disabled worker faces. As Baroness Faulkner puts it, the guidance ‘provides practical tips and advice produced with the assistance of industry bodies and experts so employers can ensure they are complying with equality law.’

So, let’s hear more about the guidance and how it moves us forward. Earlier I caught up with disability expert Amy Hextell who joined me by video-link from Birmingham to discuss it:

Amy Hextell: “The guidance is helpful for employers. We're seeing lots of employers, despite lots of hybrid working patterns having arisen as a result of the covid pandemic, we're still getting lots and lots of queries about hybrid working and adjustments from our employer clients. So the guidance is helpful. I think that one of the things that it highlights, and something in particular that I'm discussing with clients at the moment, is the fact that hybrid working, or remote working, is quite often seen as the solution and the adjustment in itself to support disabled people to remain in work but I think what I would caution is that, whilst that may be the case, it can also create difficulties, and create the need to make adjustments as well, if employers have a hybrid working approach in place. Certainly one of the other things to be alive to is that where we are making an adjustment, or we are putting in place hybrid working across our workforce, we need to be mindful of the issue of proximity bias which is where if you're not seen you're not kept in mind, and therefore you may be disadvantaged when it comes to opportunities and engagement. So that's certainly something that I think is worth employers being cautious of, it's something that I'm talking to employers about at the moment, and it's something that the guide, although not expressly, I think, to me, when reading it, bought home a little bit. I think the other thing I would say in respect of this is that the guide is helpful in just prompting employers to have a think about the way in which hybrid working can disadvantage those people who have disabilities. Whilst for many it can be a real advantage, particularly for those with physical disabilities where traveling to a workplace may be difficult, there is a concern that with hybrid working here's less opportunity, I suppose, for employers to recognize where disabled employees may be experiencing disadvantage and whilst the duty to make reasonable adjustments arises only where an employer knows that there is a disability and disadvantage, it also arises where an employer ought reasonably to have known and so what the guide encourages, and what I was would encourage, and I'm advising my clients to do at the moment, is to ask the question. If we've got employees who are disabled, they're working from home, or working in a hybrid or remote way, ask the question about whether there is anything about the way in which our hybrid working arrangements cause difficulty or disadvantage because then at least we're on notice of the need to make adjustments to it.”

Joe Glavina: “Just moving on now to practical steps that HR might be able to take, I guess it will be around reviewing recruitment practices and your current hybrid working arrangements.” 

Amy Hextell: “Lots of our clients, at the moment, on our advice and with our support, are carrying out disability adjustment audits, essentially, which is going back around the loop, really, looking at those people in your organization who may have disabilities in respect of whom adjustments are already in place and just checking whether those adjustments are still fit for purpose. I think lots of employers will have had adjustments in place before hybrid and remote working became the norm, essentially, in certain sectors, and they won't have been updated to reflect the fact that hybrid working may create additional challenges for those people with disabilities. So what we're encouraging employers to do is to speak to their employees, ask them whether their hybrid working arrangements are causing any particular challenges or disadvantages, whether there's anything that they enjoy about hybrid working, or anything that they don't, and looking at things that perhaps aren't quite so obvious. So, things like equipment and facilities are fairly obvious things that you can provide, you know, headsets and computers and all of that sort of thing that you can provide, chairs for working from home, but actually the less obvious things are things like how people may engage in hybrid meetings, for example, and the etiquette around that which, again, may cause particular disadvantage to some people with some disabilities. So, there are more nuanced things such as that, or such as the need to work in a particular hybrid pattern, which lots of employers are talking to us about at the moment, which may cause disadvantage in and of themselves. So carrying out a disability adjustment audit is a way that you can refresh, you can not only demonstrate that you're meeting your legal requirements to make reasonable adjustments, but it is also a way in the wider picture of wellbeing and engagement with colleagues. It's a way to embrace that, really, and check that we are not just letting people work from home, or in a remote way, without having proper regard for their needs, particularly those who have disabilities.”

Joe Glavina: “A number of clients have told us that disability allyship initiatives have worked well in the business. What is that, Amy?” 

Amy Hextell: “Disability allyship, a bit of a mouthful, is something that we're increasingly seeing amongst our clients and something that certainly our equality law team and Brook Graham, our diversity consultancy, is supporting clients with and advising clients to get on board with. We’ve seen allyship, particularly in relation to LGBTQ+ networks and rights in the workplace, and it works in a similar way where colleagues who perhaps don't share a disability or a particular health condition with others are wanting to learn more about those conditions, wanting to learn more about the challenges, but also, not just challenges, but also the great things about experiencing a particular health condition or certain type of disability, the positive things about that. Just wanting to learn more about the condition, about what working life is like for that individual, and then providing support, being a bit of a champion for that person, standing up for disability rights in the workplace. It's something we're seeing lots and lots of and I think disability in general, as something to be aware of in the workplace is on the increase. There's lots of talk still around neurodivergence and how that can be a helpful attribute within the workplace but also the need, obviously, to make adjustments where necessary where those people are put at a particular disadvantage. But we're also seeing lots of talk from the new Labour government in the UK around potential for mandatory disability pay reporting and the collection of diversity data. Lots of big employers of ours have already been reporting on a voluntary basis in relation to that, but it may be that we see more movement on that in the months to come which, again, just heightens disability on the agenda for the workplace and, in that regard, I think disability allyship programs, or support, within workplaces is absolutely something that we're likely to see more of, and something that the top employers are thinking about already.”

That guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission was published on 5 September and is called ‘Supporting disabled workers with hybrid working’. We’ve put a link to it in the transcript of this programme for you.

Supporting disabled workers with hybrid working: Guidance for employers | EHRC (equalityhumanrights.com)