Disability tools for managers
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Here at Weightmans, we know the number one, day to day employment law challenge our clients talk to us about is disability. Whether that be if someone is likely to be disabled, making and interpreting occupational health referrals, making reasonable adjustments, or more generally just managing sick absences. But that's not surprising as the number of disabled people in employment increased by nearly a quarter of a million last year to around 4.9 million. So it's not just the legal challenges that keep clients awake. We know it's the consequences of those decisions too. Over 185 million working days were lost due to sickness or long term absence last year. And every client knows the impact an employee's absence has on productivity, morale, just fundamentally, employee engagement. And so we know what underpins these challenges is making the right decision in the right way at the right time every time. Our employment law team here at Weightmans know that people lie at the heart of your organisation. So, where we have an issue on something like disability discrimination, the key has to be in empowering and supporting your people to not only make the right decisions, but to be confident in doing so and in owning them. So to do that, we've created a helping hand for you. Applying a design, thinking methodology, we've created innovative logic-based tools that augment managed decision making, by helping them to ask the right question in the right way at the right time when it comes to the issue of disability. Knowing that often, the issues start with the question of whether an employee is likely to have been disabled, we've taken feedback from clients, learning from real life employment tribunal claims, and have applied the years of expertise from our lawyers and developed a ground up approach that helps managers work through the key questions to answer the legal issues regarding that test of disability. This includes exploring medical conditions, the impact it has on an employee and also interpreting and evaluating medical evidence so they can reach an informed opinion. All this with a clear, fully auditable report, that tells you how and why a decision has been reached. We know when it comes to reasonable adjustments, it can often be a maze in terms of what is and isn't needed to support an employee, what can be accommodated within an organisation, and how it's all messaged and communicated back to members of staff. So building on the success of our disability tool, we've adopted a similar approach of augmenting managed decision making by asking the right questions in the right way at the right time. And in doing so, we can give your managers and your organisation the confidence to make the right decisions about reasonable adjustments, whilst maintaining your employee engagement and ultimately ensuring disabled employees are playing a full part in the world of work. To find out how we can support you with any disability related issues, get in touch with one of our employment experts who can give you a demo of the tools and answer any questions that you may have.
Helping managers make informed decisions around disability and supporting disabled employees
Disability tools for managers
With the number of disabled people in employment increasing by nearly 250,000 in the last year to an estimated 4.9 million, the challenges for businesses to comply with their legal obligation has never been more important.
The cost of getting things wrong isn’t just a financial one. Over 185 million working days were lost due to sickness or long-term absence in 2022.
Our specialist employment lawyers here at Weightmans act for some of the UK’s largest and best-known employers and work with HR professionals across all aspects of employment law. That gives us a perfect insight into the challenges of supporting and managing disabled employees.
It also means we know that when things don’t go to plan, why that is.
We know asking the right questions in the right way, at the right time, every time, can be difficult for managers. Ownership and confidence in key decisions is critical.
We have therefore created a helping hand to support and manage your disabled employees. Applying a design thinking methodology we have created an innovative, logic-based tool that augments your decision making to help you reach the right decision, in the right way, at the right time.
Our disability tools
Disability discrimination tool
A specifically designed self-service tool to help managers and key stakeholders decide whether an employee is likely to be disabled under the Equality Act. It does so by:
- Assists with understanding the legal test and principles around disability under the Equality Act.
- Enables you to overlay the facts and circumstances of a particular case to the law to reach an informed decision as to whether an employee is likely to be disabled or not.
- Supports in understanding employees’ underlying medical conditions and reasons for absence whilst empowering managers to proactively manage and engage on such issues.
- Assists you to having open discussions with employees regarding medical conditions/disabilities and lay a fully auditable paper trail both to help employee engagement and management but also in the event that a dispute arises.
Reasonable adjustments tool
Recognising that supporting and managing disabled employees is one of the key challenges for any business, we have designed a tool that augments decision making with a step by step approach to reasonable adjustments. In doing so it:
- Explores how and why an employee may be put to a substantial disadvantage by a medical condition.
- Enables you to ask the right questions in the right way around what support may be needed.
- Crucially, helps businesses understand how feasible that support may be to implement and maintain.
- Provides a clear and supportive paper trail to not only record how and why adjustments are made but to provide a record to support the employee throughout their employment.
Designed and built by our leading employment experts the tool ensures employees are treated consistently and appropriately so as to mitigate both your litigation risk and spend.
Learn how our disability tools can help you
To find out how we can support you with any disability discrimination related issues, get in touch with our employment law expert Jon Gregson who can give you a demo of the tool and answer any of your questions on this topic.
“The benefits to us are that the tool provides managers with the guidance they need at the right point in the absence process, ensuring that conditions are appropriately managed and any reasonable adjustments are considered. These are important steps in the case and having the tool there, makes sure managers ask the right questions and give appropriate consideration at the right time.”
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