Employment

Reasonable adjustments in the workplace

An employer has to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to avoid disabled people being put at a disadvantage compared to non-disabled people in the workplace. This might mean for example, adjusting working hours or providing special equipment to help do the job.

Recruitment

An employer who’s recruiting staff may make limited enquiries about your health or disability.

You can only be asked about your health or disability:

• to help decide if you can carry out a task that is an essential part of the work
• to help find out if you can take part in an interview
• to help decide if the interviewers need to make reasonable adjustments for you in a selection process
• to help monitoring
• if they want to increase the number of disabled people they employ
• if they need to know for the purposes of national security checks

Applicants may be asked whether they have a health condition or disability on an application form or in an interview. Consideration has to be given as to whether the question is one that is allowed to be asked at that stage of recruitment.

Redundancy and retirement

The selection process for redundancy must be fair and balanced for all employees. An employee cannot be chosen for redundancy just because of a disability.

Employer cannot force employees to retire if they become disabled.

Find more information at the Equality and Human Rights Commission.