“What if a reasonable adjustment sounds unreasonable?”

The questions managers ask me about neurodiversity – Part 6

I think we need to admit something when we talk about reasonable adjustments. Sometimes, when you first hear what somebody is asking for, your immediate reaction might be: “Really?”

Perhaps an employee says they can’t work in the office if colleagues wear perfume. Someone needs people not to eat particular foods near them. They want the lights changed, a different desk, advance notice of meetings, their camera off during online calls, or to work from home because the office environment is overwhelming.

If you’ve never experienced the barrier they’re describing, some of those requests can sound excessive. You might find yourself wondering how they manage supermarkets, public transport, restaurants or the rest of everyday life. You may think, Surely everybody finds noise distracting? I don’t particularly like strong perfume either. We can’t reorganise an entire workplace around one person’s preferences.

I don’t think managers should be ashamed of having that initial reaction. But I do think we need to be careful about what we do with it, because our instinctive judgement about what is “reasonable” is inevitably influenced by our own experience of the world.

If perfume gives me a mild headache, I may interpret somebody else’s request through that experience. If I can tune out background noise, recover quickly when plans change or tolerate bright lighting even though I don’t particularly like it, I can easily assume somebody else is experiencing roughly the same thing and simply coping with it less well.

That’s where we can get into trouble.

Your experience tells you about you

This connects directly to the first article in this series: “But doesn’t everyone struggle with that?”

Perhaps they do. But not necessarily to the same extent.

One person might find an office light slightly irritating. Another may experience significant sensory overload, headaches or difficulty processing information under that lighting. One person may dislike the smell of somebody’s lunch. Another may find a particular smell so overwhelming that they become nauseous and cannot concentrate.

From the outside, both people are experiencing “a smell” or “a bright light”. The impact can be completely different.

That doesn’t mean we automatically agree to whatever somebody requests. It means our own reaction – “That wouldn’t bother me very much” – isn’t particularly useful evidence when we’re trying to understand what is happening for them.

Before we decide whether an adjustment sounds reasonable, we need to understand the barrier it is intended to address.

The need and the adjustment aren’t the same thing

This is probably one of the most useful distinctions I can give managers.

Imagine somebody says:

“I need nobody to wear perfume in the office.”

That’s a proposed adjustment.

It isn’t the need.

The need might be that exposure to strong fragrances causes a significant sensory or physical reaction that makes it very difficult for them to work.

Once we separate those two things, the conversation becomes much easier.

Instead of immediately deciding whether it is reasonable to tell 40 people they can no longer wear perfume, we can explore what is happening. Are all fragrances a problem or particular ones? How close does the person need to be before they are affected? Is the issue constant or worse in particular environments? Where is their desk? Is ventilation relevant? Are there particular parts of the building where the problem is worse?

Only then can we start considering possible solutions.

A fragrance policy might be appropriate in some circumstances. Moving desks might solve the problem in another. Different working arrangements might help somewhere else. There may be several options that neither the employee nor manager thought of when the conversation began.

This is why I often say: don’t argue about the adjustment before you’ve understood the barrier.

“But they asked for it, so don’t we have to do it?”

This is another place where managers can become nervous.

An employee uses the words “reasonable adjustment”, and suddenly the manager feels that saying anything other than yes might be discriminatory.

That’s not really how reasonable adjustments work.

Under the Equality Act 2010, employers have a duty to make reasonable adjustments where a disabled person would otherwise be placed at a substantial disadvantage. Whether a particular adjustment is reasonable depends on the circumstances, including things such as whether it will remove or reduce the disadvantage, how practical it is and the resources available. ⁠UK Government guidance on reasonable adjustments for disabled workers

Acas recommends discussing adjustments with the employee and considering alternatives if a particular suggestion is not reasonable. ⁠Acas guidance on reasonable adjustments

That means an employee doesn’t necessarily get to dictate the solution. But neither does the manager get to dismiss the underlying barrier simply because the first proposed solution seems difficult.

There is a conversation in between.

And that conversation is where most of the useful work happens.

Sometimes the apparently strange adjustment makes complete sense

I recently read about an employment tribunal case involving a hotel worker with ADHD. The headlines focused on the fact that she had been required to work in a former cupboard, which is the kind of detail that understandably attracts attention.

But when you look beyond the headline, the case is much more useful as an example of what can happen when an employer focuses on a problem without properly exploring the barrier and possible alternatives.

The employee had difficulties that included concentration and completing payroll-related work, and the tribunal considered the support and working arrangements that had been provided. The judgment discussed possible alternatives including appropriate training, a suitable quiet workspace, additional time and homeworking. The tribunal found failures in relation to reasonable adjustments, alongside other claims.

The point for me isn’t that a quiet workspace is always the answer for somebody with ADHD, because of course it isn’t. Nor is it that working from home must always be agreed.

It’s that “they can’t concentrate in the office” shouldn’t immediately become either “then they can’t do the job” or “fine, put them somewhere away from everybody else.”

There are questions in between.

What is affecting concentration? What does the task involve? What happens when they try to complete it? Is it noise, interruptions, switching tasks, lack of training, anxiety, the physical environment or something else? What alternatives could we try?

Reasonable adjustment is supposed to involve thinking.

What if the adjustment affects everybody else?

This is where this article overlaps with the previous one.

Some adjustments genuinely do have consequences for other people. If somebody asks for colleagues not to eat at their desks, other people may need to change established routines. If someone needs a quiet environment, that may affect where colleagues can hold conversations. If somebody needs significant predictability, that may influence how work is planned.

We shouldn’t pretend those impacts don’t exist.

But there’s a difference between impact and inconvenience.

Sometimes people will need to change how they’ve always done something, and that doesn’t automatically make the adjustment unreasonable. “We’ve always done it this way” isn’t a particularly strong reason to continue creating a barrier for somebody.

On the other hand, if an adjustment places a significant and ongoing burden on other employees, creates a competing access need, prevents essential work from being completed or introduces another serious problem, we need to understand that too.

This is why I keep coming back to the same three things: the individual, the team and the job.

What does this individual need in order to work effectively? What does the adjustment mean for other people? What does the job genuinely require?

The answer isn’t always going to be obvious.

Trial it

I think managers sometimes imagine that agreeing to an adjustment means making a permanent decision that can never be revisited.

It doesn’t have to.

Some of the best adjustment conversations I’ve seen have involved people saying, in effect: “We don’t know whether this will work, so let’s try it.”

Perhaps someone works from home for two days a week for the next six weeks. Maybe the team changes where meetings happen. Perhaps instructions are provided in writing, a different shift pattern is tested, the employee moves desk or a particular task is organised differently.

Then you review it.

Did it reduce the barrier? Can the employee perform the work more reliably? Has it created any unexpected problems? Is it sustainable? Does something need tweaking?

A reasonable adjustment isn’t successful because everyone agreed to it in a meeting.

It’s successful if it actually helps remove or reduce the disadvantage.

Sometimes we need specialist help

There will also be situations where neither the manager nor the employee knows what the answer is.

That’s okay.

Occupational health, Access to Work, workplace needs assessments and specialist neurodiversity support can sometimes help translate “this is what I’m struggling with” into practical options that can be tried at work.

I think that’s particularly important when somebody has spent years simply coping. They may know that the workplace is exhausting or that certain tasks repeatedly go wrong without being able to explain why.

We shouldn’t expect every neurodivergent employee to arrive at a meeting with a perfectly formed list of reasonable adjustments.

Equally, managers aren’t expected to have encyclopaedic knowledge of every possible adjustment for every neurodivergent person.

This is something you can work out together.

Reasonable doesn’t mean “sounds reasonable to me”

Perhaps that’s the biggest shift.

When somebody proposes an adjustment that initially sounds unreasonable, try not to make the first conversation about whether you’re going to say yes or no.

Ask what is happening.

What barrier are we trying to remove? How significant is the impact? When does it happen? What would the proposed adjustment change? Are there other ways of achieving the same thing? What impact would those options have on the team and the job? What could we try, and how will we review it?

You may still conclude that the exact adjustment requested isn’t reasonable.

But hopefully you’ll reach that conclusion after understanding the problem rather than because the person’s experience didn’t make intuitive sense to you.

Because sometimes the adjustment that sounded ridiculous when you first heard it becomes completely understandable once you understand the barrier.

And sometimes it still isn’t the right solution.

That’s why the conversation matters.

This is the sixth article in my series, The questions managers ask me about neurodiversity, where I’m exploring the difficult questions I hear in real workplaces and training rooms. These aren’t questions I want managers to be frightened to ask. They’re questions I think we need to get much better at answering.

Next: “I asked what would help and they said, ‘I don’t know.’ What am I supposed to do with that?”