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- Make certain restrictions are properly understood, relevant, and current. Many conditions change over time and people learn to work in ways that don't make their permanent impairments disabling with respect to required job tasks. Conditions, even permanent impairments, may become less restrictive over time as the body and mind adapt.
- Have a current, accurate process description and job-task analysis. Jobs, process and tasks change over time. Technology and new materials are constantly altering the very nature of particular jobs. A traditional job analysis may reveal that the requirements of a particular position are no longer restrictive. In the staircase example, the duty to accommodate disappears if the requirement to climb stairs disappears from the required process.
- Examine current work processes to determine truly required tasks. Adherents to Total Quality Management, LEAN, Six Sigma, and Business Process Re-engineering recognize the value of this sort of analysis. The results often reveal tasks that can be eliminated, addressed by new technology, or combined into simpler clusters. Eliminate a task that imposes a barrier to some and you eliminate the need for accommodation. In the stairway example, a redesign of operations may co-locate two departments on one floor thus eliminating the required task.
- Review the required tasks and the abilities collectively. Ad hoc accommodations made over time may conflict and create unnecessary requirements. Having a current, well documented list of required tasks in processes and current list of abilities (and restrictions) of staff members may allow assignment without the need for formal accommodation.
- Change restricting processes and tasks. If a required process has an inherently difficult, barrier-generating task, rather than thinking about individual accommodation, consider alternatives that lessen or remove the barrier entirely. An ergonometric consultation may generate systemic as well as individual solutions. In the stairway example, a public elevator would eliminate the restrictive process and make the workplace more accessible for everyone.
- Up-skill your staff. If a person has a restriction that is significant in their current position, identify other positions where the impairment doesn't necessitate an accommodation. We often neglect to look to more senior positions but, with some training and mentoring, a person with restrictions in a current job may be able to advance to one where any restrictions imposed by the impairment are irrelevant. Up-skilling may also allow incumbents with accommodations to become proficient with technology that can lessen or reduce the effect of any handicap.
- Group restrictive tasks into one job… (And hire appropriately for that). If several employees have similar restrictions, there may be an opportunity to eliminate the need for accommodation by combining the relevant tasks into one job and recruit appropriately for that position.
- Develop career paths with related departments, suppliers and customers. This may seem counter-intuitive but your challenge may be similar to the challenges of others in your industry supply chain and customer base. The collective employee set is likely to have overlapping skill and knowledge bases with differing physical (and mental) requirements. By developing relationships to increase new career opportunities, your department, your trading partners and employees in both may all be better off.
- Create different roles or new jobs that make sense for your company. Managers or supervisors may be doing tasks that you can be devolved and grouped into a new job. I love the example from healthcare where a senior nurse with physical impairments was able to take on many of the orientation and mentoring tasks of several supervisors.
- Foster staff resilience, mobility and flexibility. People can and do change. They learn, have changing aspirations, and even change jobs and careers. Often they need some help to do these things. Companies that have staff education and development programs create opportunities both inside and outside the firm for their staff.
Terry is an active researcher, speaker and commentator on workers compensation issues. Now retired, he was the Director of Corporate Planning and Development for WorkSafeBC. His responsibilities included environmental scanning, strategic planning and inter-jurisdictional comparisons.
Terry says of himself: I am a student of workers' compensation systems. Many years ago I discovered two things about this area. First, workers' comp and OH&S are of vital importance to people. Protecting, caring for and providing compensation to workers are important, noble and morally responsible endeavors. The second thing I learned was that no matter how much I knew about workers' comp/OH&S, there was always so much more to learn. This is an endlessly challenging area of study. My purpose, therefore, is not to lecture, but to reflect on the ideas and issues that are topical in this area... and to invite others to share in a learning experience. By adding your knowledge and insights, others with similar interests can participate in the discovery and study of this important domain.
His blog is "Workers' Compensation Perspectives".
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