Recording and reviewing adjustments – Tailored Adjustment Plans and Passports

It is important to keep a formal record of adjustments agreed with your employees. This should be reviewed frequently to ensure that the adjustments in place remain effective for everyone. This resource outlines the process of review.

Keeping records of adjustments

You should check your organisation’s policy or process on how best to record adjustments and whether there is a formal template to do this. If not, you could use Business Disability Forum’s Tailored Adjustment Plan, sometimes known as a Passport, as a starting point. See below for more information.

You can then use this record as the basis of reviewing with the employee on a regular basis how the adjustments are working and any further changes that are needed.

It is important to remember that this is a living document. Despite the name, a Passport should not mean that the adjustments recorded are set in stone. Adjustments, and what is reasonable might change because the of the individual’s own circumstances – including their disability or long-term condition – or the needs of the business.

A Tailored Adjustments Plan or Passport should be used as a framework for regular conversations about adjustments and not a means of avoiding such conversations and regular reviews.

How to review whether an adjustment is working

Changes may be needed if:

• An adjustment that has been agreed is not quite right for the individual or not working effectively at removing or reducing the barrier the person is experiencing. Remember that different solutions work for different people. An employee may not necessarily know what is right for them or all the options available at the outset, and so expert advice may well be needed.
• Another additional adjustment is needed. Many disabled employees need two or more adjustments, not just one.
• The employee’s condition fluctuates or has developed or changed in another way.
• The employee’s other personal circumstances have changed for example, they have acquired caring responsibilities.
• The needs of the business or the role has changed.

Remote workers and hybrid workers

The way in which most people – if not everyone – in the organisation works may have changed since March 2020. For example, more people may be working from home permanently or for a few days a week in a hybrid fashion. The adjustments and ways of working implemented during the pandemic will need to be reviewed regularly to ensure they still work for the individual, team and organisation.

Employers and managers should, however, avoid issuing blanket directives stating that everyone must return to the workplace for all or some of the week. If working from home is a reasonable adjustment, disabled employees should be allowed to continue to work this way. If the person was a productive and effective worker from home during the pandemic, it might be difficult to argue that the adjustment of working from home is unreasonable. See ‘What is ‘reasonable’?’ above to help you decide what is reasonable.

What to do if an adjustment needs to change

You should discuss with the employee what changes might be needed and why and make sure these are recorded once agreed.

Remember that most adjustments are likely to be simple, effective and low or no-cost. However, sometimes the circumstances are such that the suggested adjustments are not practical or effective. In these cases, this should be recorded, with evidence as to why, and other solutions identified, up to and including redeployment as an adjustment. You can use the reasons set out earlier – cost, practicality, effectiveness, Access to Work – to evaluate whether a revised adjustment is reasonable or not.

If you are not sure, you should escalate the decision to a senior manager or HR adviser, as the law says that organisations cannot justify a ‘failure to make reasonable adjustments’. That means your organisation needs to be certain that the adjustments are ‘unreasonable’ before rejecting them. You can use Business Disability Forum’s decision form or your own organisation’s form to record this.

Tailored Adjustments Plans or “Passports”

A ‘Tailored Adjustments Plan’ – sometimes known as a Workplace Adjustments (WPA) Passport – is a living record of adjustments agreed between an employee and their manager.

These essentially guarantee that an employee can take their adjustments with them if they move to a new role within the organisation or if their manager changes (either permanently or if working on a new project, for example). However, they are not fixed – adjustments should be reviewed regularly and changed if necessary.

Tailored Adjustments Plans can be a very useful way to:

• Provide employees and their managers with a structure for discussions about workplace adjustments
• Ensure that conversations about the adjustments and whether they are still effective for both parties happen regularly
• Ensure that the employee and manager have a record of what has been agreed.
• Minimise the need to re-negotiate adjustments each time the employee changes jobs, is re-located, or assigned a new manager within the organisation.
• To plan for when an employee is unwell or needs additional support because of their disability or condition. Sections of the passport are designed to inform the people manager what to do when the employee (for example) becomes mentally unwell or has a seizure, and how to keep in touch if the employee needs to go off sick.
• Who to contact if the manager is unable to get in touch with an employee who is away from work.

Download our template Tailored Adjustments Plan below.

Carry on the conversation

Passports should encourage conversations between managers and disabled people and not be a reason to avoid those conversations.

Passports or Tailored Adjustment Plans (TAP) are sometimes viewed as a way of removing the need to “have the conversation again” about adjustments. However, precisely the opposite is true.

A Passport or TAP should be used as a starting point for regular conversations about adjustments to ensure that they are still effective for both parties. If everything is going well, the conversations might be very short – but they still need to happen regularly.

Remember that adjustments are not set in stone. Although adjustments can often move with an employee between teams, sometimes an adjustment that is reasonable in one context or team will not be reasonable in another.

Adjustments – how well they are working, whether any more are needed – should be a regular part of catch-ups between employees and their manager.

What managers should do while adjustments are being implemented

One of the biggest issues around implementing workplace adjustments is the time taken for them to be put in place once agreed.

As a people manager, you may have limited ability to influence this. Therefore, it’s important to plan for adjustments as early as possible. This makes this review process a vital part of the process.

Remember, that even though you might not be able to implement some adjustments yourself, you must keep checking that others who need to act are doing so in a timely fashion and keep updating the individual on progress regularly.

The responsibility to ensure adjustments are implemented still sits with you. You cannot delegate that to anyone else or assume that the disabled person is being kept updated by anyone else.

Scenario – Travel to work

The context

Raj works for a large firm of accountants as an accounting employee. He has always been a quiet but conscientious member of John’s team.

Earlier this year plans were announced for the firm to move to a more central location with very limited parking, but the new office has good public transport connections. The firm want to promote more sustainable and greener living, and so want to encourage everyone to drive less.  John has heard a number of grumbles from staff unhappy about not being able to drive to work anymore but no one has made any serious complaints.

John is therefore surprised that Raj, of all people, should have asked to see him about the loss of his parking space.

Raj’s concerns

At the meeting Raj says he needs to drive to work and have a parking space at the new office. Raj reluctantly tells John he has colitis, a medical condition that means he must be able to access toilet facilities at short notice.

Raj has worked out where he can stop to use a toilet if he drives from his home to the new office. Using buses, local trains and trams is impossible as it will take him longer to get to work, and they do not have toilets.

Raj reveals he has had the condition for some time but has been too embarrassed to talk about it and has never needed to before.

John’s response

John decides that Raj doesn’t need to see an occupational health advisor as he already has a good understanding of the barriers he is facing and adjustments that might help.

John and Raj meet to agree:

• Raj will be allowed to continue to drive to the office and will have a parking space reserved for him on days when he cannot work from home. John agrees this with Facilities Management.
• John will ensure Raj is assigned only to clients who can offer parking at their offices so he can drive there.

No one else on the team will be told about Raj’s medical condition.

Handling a team reaction

When Raj’s colleagues learn that Raj will be allowed to drive to the new offices, John receives complaints about the unfairness of this. The clients who can offer parking facilities also tend to have better offices and this too causes resentment as Raj’s colleagues often have to work in cramped, uncomfortable client offices.

Raj becomes increasingly uncomfortable around his colleagues’ resentment and so he and John agree they should be told Raj needs a parking space as an adjustment for a disability but that they will not be given any details about its nature.

A wider view of adjustments

John decides to speak to each member of his team individually and to ask them if they too have any particular needs the firm should take into consideration. He makes it clear to everyone that he will treat them all fairly and will be as flexible and accommodating as is reasonable.

• One member of the team asks if he can work compressed hours so that he can take Fridays off to prepare to collect his children, whom he has at weekends.
• Another asks if she can start and finish work a little later so she can still drop her elderly father at his day centre before catching the bus into work.

John is able to accommodate both of these requests and the rest of the team appreciate this flexibility.