Arthritis – reasonable adjustments

an article published in IDS Employment Law Brief HR Number 1077 (September 2017)

Arthritis affects around 10 million people in the United Kingdom. It can be a debilitating disease, causing the sufferer immense pain and limited movement and often affecting his or her ability to work.

If a person’s arthritis satisfies the definition of disability under the Equality Act 2010, the employer concerned will be under a duty to take steps to alleviate the effect of the condition. This feature [which is not available online that I can discover] highlights a number of cases that provide examples of adjustments that have been deemed reasonable for employers to make for employees suffering from arthritis.

I have picked out some quotes which I found helpful, or which made my blood boil!

… However, the service manager’s attitude was that if S was not 100% fit to return to full duties she should not return at all.
Ultimately awarded compensation for unfair dismissal.

By contrast, in …, the tribunal found that MS [the employer] had made reasonable attempts to redeploy C. [The employee had not cooperated with this process.]

Jobs requiring travel are often contentious as adjustments may require the expenditure of money which the employer may not be prepared to agree. For example, first class on trains or business class on planes may be seen as a perk not a requirement.

Not allocating a car parking space to allow an employee a short walk into the building where she worked was also seen as a failure to make reasonable adjustments.

And then we get the employer who argued that the employee was not unable to work without the required adjustments but was unwilling to do so.
[At this point I would have told my employer where to go but the article does not go beyond the tribunal decision that the employer was wrong not to implement reasonable adjustments.]

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Not much to cheer about here, unfortunately, but it is only the cases that made it to a tribunal that are reported. There is no information as to how many employers have made reasonable adjustments which have worked well.

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