Accommodations and Adjustments to Reach an Untapped Workforce

Episode 16: Accommodations and Adjustments to Reach an Untapped Workforce

Welcome to reimagining HR with Trina Sunday, the rule breaking podcast

Trina Sunday: In this episode, I’m talking about what are reasonable accommodations and adjustments that you can make for someone’s employment. We’ve got people talking about mandates to return to the office. We have HR teams grappling with what is appropriate flexibility, and I’m unpacking what we can learn from the legislation around what we should do for our disabled workers and where else the opportunity lies. We’ve got an untapped workforce out there, and adjustments and accommodations just might be the key. Welcome to reimagining HR with Trina Sunday, the rule breaking podcast where we challenge our thinking and our current people practises. This podcast is for time poor HR teams and business leaders who are feeling the burn, lacking laughs and not feeling the love. I’m trainer, your host, and I’m here to cut through the B’s, explore different ways of thinking and create high impact HR functions because happier, healthier organisations are better for our people and our bottom line. So if you are keen to flip traditional HR on its head, hit the follow or subscribe button. So you’re the first to know when new episodes drop. I’m here to help and also to shake things up.

An inclusive and diverse workplace helps businesses attract and retain diverse talent

So let’s get started. I’m spending a lot of my time listening patiently to HR leaders who are facing a tough time with a tight labour market and the impacts of under-resourcing on employee wellbeing and productivity. But at the same time, many organisations are talking about mandating a return to the office. That will be a whole other episode shortly. However, it’s got me reflecting on the flexibility and adjustments that remote works provided, which has made employment more accessible for diverse groups of employees such as disabled workers, and how those principles might be relevant across broader groups of current or prospective employees. And then my brain being my brain, I keep going down a rabbit hole about why we have adjustments and accommodations policies and how those principles could fuel way more opportunities for attracting and retaining a skilled workforce. And while disabled workforce is where this starts, it’s certainly not where it ends. But it turns out that this rabbit hole is expansive, and so should be our thinking in such a competitive labour market.

Disability is a form of natural human diversity, right? Like almost everyone will experience disability in their lifetime, and the experiences can be vastly different, even within a single diagnosis or a label. Disabled people often fall into different social identity buckets, meaning that the disability is often a highly intersectional experience. So if you are a woman, a woman of colour, a woman of colour who happens to have a disability, the intersectionality and the impact of that is greater. And as it stands, people with disabilities are the largest and fastest growing minority group in the world. And with only 53% of working age people with a disability in the Australian workforce, there’s a large untapped talent pool that you can hire from this year, helping your business to overcome the current skill shortages and experience the many benefits of hiring a diverse workforce. The unemployment rate for disabled Australians is around 10%. That’s more than double the national average. I mean, how hard is it to tap into more diverse talent? And why should we? Besides being a good human right, it builds a reliable workforce.

So, according to the Australian Human Rights Commission, improving employment outcomes for people with disability provides significant benefits to workplaces, the economy, the community and, of course, individuals themselves. And the research has shown that workers with disability have higher rates of retention and fewer occupational health and safety incidents than those without a disability. But it’s also really largely about discovering untapped potential. By employing people with disabilities, businesses can access a diverse range of skills, talents, qualifications. For example, research that the Harvard Business review did reveals that autistic people possess higher than average abilities in the recognition of patterns, memory, mathematics, all skills that are highly sought after in the tech space and many other sectors. But the other benefits are also around improving company culture and overall morale. Like an inclusive and diverse workplace, it helps businesses attract and retain candidates from a diverse talent pool. And there was a Deloitte study that was on radical transformation of diversity and inclusion and they were specifically looking at the millennial influence and they found that 83%. I think 83% of millennials are actively engaged at work when they feel that the organisation fosters an inclusive culture. And that’s compared to just 60% being actively engaged if the organisation does not foster inclusivity. So the more inclusive your workforce, the higher retention of your younger workers. Right. But it’s also about better supporting customers and the community.

So by having a workforce that represents the world we live in, where, for example, in the disability space, one in six people live with a disability, then businesses can attract, retain and provide enhanced services and solutions to their customers’ needs. Like, it’s all about innovation and fresh ideas. No more pale and stale things. But imagine now that I’m not only talking about disabled workers, I mentioned the outcomes. Reliable workforce, untapped potential, improved cultural morale, better support for customers in the community. But imagine now that our inclusion diverse workplaces were better at providing adjustments and accommodations to support, say, women experiencing menopause, couples navigating a really highly emotive and personal fertility journey, veterans with so much service to give outside of the military, those securing employment after incarceration, the sandwich generation who are caring for young families, plus their parents, working parents who are generally,  trying to navigate a 1950s school system that’s built around stay at home moms, adults who have received a late diagnosis of adhd, many of who are women and also happen to be working parents.  we’ve got older workers experiencing ageism, we’ve got migrant workers, especially refugees or asylum seekers, or those experiencing family, domestic or sexualised violence. There is a widening gap between those wanting employment and those who are able to get it or keep it, but there’s also a widening gap between the workforce we need and the workforce we’re able to get. So something needs to change and I feel like there is a massive opportunity here.

One significant way organisations can remove workplace barriers for disabled people is by providing accommodations

So, for disabled workers, the huge gaps are driven by the numerous barriers that disabled people face when entering the workforce. Right, and many of these restrictions are related to ableism, defined broadly as,  discrimination or social prejudice against disabled people in favour of non disabled people. And that ableism introduces many conscious and unconscious biases, or biases, depending where you’re tuning in from, in the hiring process and the employee experience. But we all carry similar biases to any group that doesn’t look like us. And one significant way that organisations can take action to help remove workplace barriers for disabled people, but other marginalised groups as well, is by providing accommodations and adjustments. And recently I’ve heard HR teams who have contacted me or in different forums who are seeking insights into a whole range of individual policies, policies on things like menopause. Not a how to guide, but how do we better support women in our workforce who are going through menopause?  support through fertility treatment, flexible work, which is often written around working parents. But we know that there’s more who need it,  our neurodiverse workers and family, domestic violence. And I’ve done a whole podcast episode on that. But what if we took the principles we look at for providing reasonable accommodations and adjustments for disabled workers and we just wrote one policy to address that and I know that one that I’ve seen is Macquarie in Canada. They’ve done just that and I’ll include a link in the show notes. Actually,  there will be many references that I’m drawing on today that will be in the show notes, so do go to the website to grab them all. But the Macquarie example, while it’s still a bit clunky, it’s a really good example of how they have taken what was a,  disabled worker philosophy,  for one of a better term, and broadened that to look at how do we better meet the individual needs of our workers and make reasonable adjustments and accommodations so that everyone here can 100% fulfil their role and thrive in their employment, which is going to help productivity. Right. Those adjustments, those accommodations is about that person being able to step up and work in a way that’s better for them, that gets you better outcomes.

Employers should offer reasonable workplace accommodations and adjustments for disabled workers

And so it might be language that you’re not really familiar with, but I mean, what are reasonable accommodations and adjustments? So workplace accommodations and adjustments are modifications, basically, or changes that are made reactively for an individual. So ordinarily that’s been someone with a disability, but on an as needed basis to provide equal employment opportunities, basically to individuals. Again, legislated mostly around those with disability, but at their core, they’re intended to help employees receive the support necessary to perform 100% of their essential job functions. And many of your organisations would have offered reasonable workplace accommodations and adjustments for disabled workers, I hope, team, I hope, because it’s legally legislated across many of the various countries where reimagine HR has collaborated, for example. So the UK, the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, predominantly less so in Asia. But accommodations and adjustments are pivotal to breaking down barriers to employment and retention among the disabled community. But we know that diversity inclusivity can help drive innovation and productivity and ultimately is going to make you more attractive as an employer of choice.

And, we know that one significant way that organisations can take action to remove workplace barriers for people is by providing accommodations and adjustments, tweaking things, being a bit flexible, and helping meet people where they’re at so they can show up and do the work. And so examples are things like improved physical accessibility in the workplace. So if it was a disabled worker, that might be around wheelchair accessible restrooms, for example, but there might be a whole range of physical accommodations that might be necessary. And certainly we’re seeing a lot of that coming under the spotlight with our neurodiverse colleagues. Job restructuring. So that’s another adjustment where we might modify some essential or marginal job functions, tweak it a little bit so people can meet where it’s at, but it’s not about changing the whole job, right. And I think that’s where there’s some fear that comes in, but it’s also about access to products or equipment or software. So sometimes that’s things like screen readers or speech to text software.

Other accommodations or examples might be a flexible work schedule,  or the ability to work remotely or having a reduced expectation of in office time. In western countries, the legislative requirements aren’t markedly different, to be honest, in the United States, companies are,  only required to provide reasonable accommodations to disabled employees. And while these laws improve disabled people’s access to the workplace, the requirement that companies only provide accommodations that are deemed reasonable, which is usually defined by a non disabled person, has often perpetuated inequities. For example, many companies did not consider remote work a reasonable accommodation until much of the non disabled workforce was required to work remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, Australia’s disability Discrimination act,  prohibits indirect discrimination, which has been interpreted as a requirement that employers provide reasonable adjustments to disabled employees. In the UK, they legislate the duty of employers to make adjustments for disabled employees in any situation where a disabled employee is placed at a significant disadvantage compared to a non disabled employee. And I guess currently there’s around 45 countries, from what I can see, that have anti disability discrimination laws and other disability specific laws and culture amp seems to be leading the way in this work, and they’ve come to realise that offering reasonable accommodations isn’t enough. Through conversations with and feedback from the disabled campers, they realise the necessity of creating an intentional process around accommodations and adjustments that removes the friction and the fear that often comes with asking for them. And Aubrey Blanche Sheriano is the head of equitable ops for culture amp and she posted about their progress recently on LinkedIn and it’s just prompted me to explore the principles more broadly when looking at creating more equitable organisations. And by more broadly, I mean, how do we provide this really great practise and good thinking beyond just our disabled workforce? What are the accommodations and adjustments and what can we be looking for?

And in 2022, culture amp formally launched their global accommodations and adjustments policy. But up until that point, they’d followed compliance requirements, the legislative stuff that I was talking about in each of the regions where they had employees specific to that region, but they lacked an overall documented process, like many of us, I’m sure. And if you feel like you’re smashing it out of the park in this regard in terms of accommodations and adjustments, then I’d love to chat more and learn more about what you do. But in order to provide a more equitable experience for all campers, culture amp um developed a global policy. The new policy and the process aim to create a more inclusive environment where employees can readily and efficiently ask for and receive the support they need to reach their full potential at work and I think that is something that we can aspire for for all of our employees. Right? And their global accommodation. Adjustments policy was designed around three key principles beyond compliance, that it would be privacy forward and camper driven. So the first one, I guess, is beyond compliance. After researching regional disability laws, culture amp chose the most progressive of each local law to apply to their global accommodations and adjustments policy.

For example, while Australian campers under Australian regulations had to undergo a probationary period before asking for accommodations, under the new policy, campers in any region can ask for accommodations as soon as they accept their offer.  They also don’t require a formal medical diagnosis of a disability to start the accommodations process because given historical barriers to access to diagnosis for marginalised groups, it wasn’t always possible. So they don’t require that campers share specific information about their disability, including what their disability is. And I can see huge parallels with this when I think about neuro inclusivity and supporting victim survivors of family domestic violence. The second principle was around it being camper driven. Right? So culture amp allows campers to determine the appropriate accommodation or adjustment with support from people partners, so HR and people leaders, their managers, and they don’t prescribe the solution for an employee. However, they do provide resources to help campers to determine what kind of support they might need. They also include resources about regional services that are available through local or state governments, wherever their people are working, and for disabled workers, resources such as the job accommodations network. Jan is incredible, and the website in itself is worth a visit.  I mean askjan.org what a great website name. And we’ll include some other resources in the show notes that can help employees to disclose or not to disclose, that is the question, and this is a really common one, and we’ve got some resources about that.

To be inclusive of neurodiverse employees, we need to upskill our HR teams

And it leads into the third principle that culture amp are looking at, and that’s privacy forward.  At Culture amp,  all of the information about accommodations is shared only with campers who need that information to do their job, and they store it in private medical files in their hrIs. And the restrictions on sharing information about accommodations even extends to a people leader who is only looped in on a needs to know basis. And that approach has some really strong links with what I’ve shared from employees with lived experience of family domestic violence in a previous podcast episode. And they’re all really solid examples.  These principles are very solid. Compliance shouldn’t be driving us. Compassion should be. We need to make it human centric,  let those who are living it decide what they need and privacy being at the forefront. I don’t want every Tom, Dick and Harry knowing all my personal stuff around baby making, raising, loss or menopause. It’s something that we need to consider in the processes that we build, especially from a HR perspective. And so there’s some tips, right, some tips for what equitable accommodations are,  that we could put in place, because we want to make sure that based on the experience that we have, and also some of what we’ve learned through culture amp and some of the research into what’s being done globally in this space, we want to make sure that we can create and implement new policies around accommodations and adjustments that are going to work. So,  drawing on all of those influences, it’s about helping to move beyond simple compliance and towards meaningful inclusion for every employee. So,  don’t require a formal diagnosis. Not every employee is comfortable disclosing their disability. Simplify access, make asking for support as easy as reaching out to a HR rep that easy. But if we’re going to do that, we need to upskill those HR reps, right? Trust your employees, partner with your employees and their care team to understand and meaningfully accommodate their needs. Get creative about it,  like think outside the box in terms of how you provide the support your employees need and how you communicate information around your policy.

For example, consider presenting policy information in multiple formats. To be inclusive of neurodiverse employees, we need to upskill our HR teams on accommodations and equity. So that means encouraging partnership between HR and DEI teams. Diversity, equity and inclusion and hold training on disability, inclusion and inclusion of other marginalised groups or employees who find themselves in cohorts who are not always represented and communicate and normalise the policy. We have to communicate often about it, make sure it’s in all of our presentations, onboarding sessions, all of our hands on meetings. And from a HR perspective, our own education and capability is paramount. While diversity, equity and inclusion is experiencing some backlash, as a function or the terminology at least, we need to use our knowledge, experience and influence to continue to drive positive change for our employees and the organisation. But we need to understand it if we’re going to meet people where they need us the most. Otherwise we’re going to miss the mark. So hearing from those with lived experience is paramount and doing deep dives into topics that we are unfamiliar with is the key. So if you have any areas, I can probably help in terms of having a deep dive and a conversation into that. So if there’s topics you want us to explore, do let us know.

Working with indigenous workers has taught me a lot about accommodations and adjustments

And I guess from my own sharing and where I’ve had some humbling experiences that have made me level up as a HR leader and a HR practitioner,  even though I hadn’t had kids yet, I really thought I was supportive of working parents and mums returning to work when I managed large teams. Then I had a kid and I realised how inadequate my support had been. I just didn’t understand it, not fully. And the flexibility I thought I was giving it wasn’t enough. I didn’t understand the emotionally taxing cycle that mums especially found themselves in when they were leaving their small children and returning to work. It was all about the process, the hours,  the logistics, more than that emotional space. And it’s not my fault I didn’t know any differently, but I now coach people to do that better.  when I work with my coaching clients and HR leaders to understand who they are and I also help them understand the segments of their workforce who are ah least like them. And then we work to diversify their networks, contacts and interactions with those who have had different life experiences. To them, storytelling is everything in HR and to be honest, we’re really shit at it. But also through my pro bono work on the 100 Women Grants committee and my board role for the Centre for Women’s Economic Safety, I’ve had some insights into family domestic violence as a societal issue. It’s an issue for all of us. However, really understanding coercive control and economic abuse and hearing directly from victim survivors about what they need from their employers has been incredibly humbling. And my new knowledge has tested everything I believe about policies and procedures, to be honest, and how adaptable our practises need to be if we are truly helping people in their time of great need. And two things I know for sure, the person who is in it knows most what they need, and if you meet that need, you will have a loyal employee that will give back to you in spades. A caution with that though, because we need to go into it expecting nothing in return. You go in and you do it because you’re a good human and the rest of it will follow. We can’t make people earn back what we might have given them as an accommodation or an adjustment to help them be able to fulfill their work requirements.

Another example for me is when we had the voice referendum in Australia and I knew that I didn’t know enough and so I immersed myself in content from reconciliation, I was challenged and grew immensely. In workshops with Danny Ford, I reached out on LinkedIn to expand my networks with indigenous Australians and to be honest, I received a lot of racist backlash in response. But I’ve done a lot of work over the last ten years and my early education has not helped me in terms of my understanding of Indigenous Australia, the lands that were never ceded and where we sit as a country somewhat divided with inequitable experiences of what it’s like to live in this awesome place. And even though I’ve grown a lot in the last decade, even prior to that,  I was in some of the most senior HR roles in organisations where I was overseeing indigenous employment traineeships, aboriginal engagement strategies, reconciliation action plans and a whole range of other initiatives that I knew absolutely nothing about, which would be fine, not really. But if I knew then what I know now about education, diverse networks and listening to lived experience. So I’ve grown a lot in the last ten years and I think we need to be vulnerable in acknowledging what we don’t know. I don’t know it all, but I will be the first person to call it out. But it’s then about taking deliberate action to address the gap, right, the knowledge gap. And how can I lead accommodations and adjustments for indigenous workers when I don’t know what it means to be indigenous and I don’t know what indigenous workers might need for them to be able to do their best work and to reach their full potential at work. So if our approach follows principles that lets our workers take control, then the outcomes are likely to be more positive. And,  the same goes for neuroinclusivity.

In all programmes, events and consultancy projects that I’m delivering through reimagine HR right now, I’m having discussions about neurodiversity and how our people practises might need to change to accommodate the needs of our neurodiverse workers. There is an appetite for learning in this space, but more alarmingly, I’d say it’s that people are more peckish than hungry for the knowledge. And HR needs education. People leaders need education and all, while those, some with late diagnosis, are learning at the same time. So if we reimagined how we could make accommodations and adjustments, we would likely increase the adoption and utilisation. To be honest, I think that’s what scares management the most. They hear bespoke, individualised or customised, and they think of higher costs and greater work. Internal empowerment is key in this. Once you have an enterprise wide approach you’d want to deepen the integration and normalisation of accommodations into ways of working that it’s not just an exception, it’s a conversation that’s happening all the time, but that involves enhancing our,  HR teams technical specialisation and deepening our people, leaders, education and improving guidance for employees to grow their confidence in accessing these supports. But if we upskill ourselves and we empower our marginalised workers or those who need accommodations to be able to do their best work, and we use the principles rather than arduous prescriptive processes, we will have a progressive accommodations and adjustments programme that might help us find the untapped workforce we’ve been looking for. Imagine that. Before you go,  I would really encourage you to check out the show notes for this episode on our website at reimaginehr.com.au we have drawn on a lot of resources for the chat that I’ve had with you today and there are lots of tools, lots of resources, lots of research examples and policies that we’re going to include. So all of the links are there. So check it out and if there’s anything you want to chat more to us about, you know where to reach us.

Thanks for tuning in and leaning in to this week’s episode as we look to reimagine how we show up for our people, organisations and community, reach out to us via our website at reimaginehr.com.au with your HR horror stories or suggestions of people you’d love to hear from or topics you want to explore.

 It’s all about people, purpose and impact and we are here for all of it. 

Until next time, take care, team.