Employers for Change is a programme of the Open Doors Initiative, funded in Ireland by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. At OHAC, we were delighted to join the Employers for Change podcast, to share insights on how reasonable accommodations can enhance inclusion in the workplace. In this episode, our Managing Director, Eoin O’Herlihy, joins Mohamed to explore practical approaches that support employees with disabilities. The conversation challenges common misconceptions and highlights how inclusive practices can positively transform organisational culture.
Transcript
(0:09) Welcome to the Employers4Change podcast. My name is Mohamed Sahid Kamara. (0:17) Employers4Change is a programme of The Open Doors that dedicates to helping businesses (0:22) of all sizes navigate the world of disability inclusion and confidence.
Through engaging (0:29) conversations with experts, dynamic organisations, and inspiring individuals, we will tackle (0:37) common misconceptions, explore reasonable accommodations, and dive deep into the latest (0:43) technology, policy, and best practises that can transform your company’s culture. Today, (0:50) I’m joined by Eoin O’Herlihy from OHAC Access Consultancy to discuss how reasonable accommodation can (0:58) aid the inclusion of individuals with disability in the workplace. Owen, can you please tell (1:07) my audience a bit about yourself? Yeah, thanks very much, Mohamed.
Delighted to be here. I (1:12) have been involved in accessibility for over 20 years, and I have lived experience of when my (1:18) mother had a stroke about 20 years ago since she acquired a disability. So that’s how I first got (1:24) involved in the whole area of access.
So since then, I’ve been kind of passionate about making (1:31) society more accessible and inclusive for people with disabilities. And I did some research in the (1:37) area around accessibility, and then I worked with the National Disability Authority for about four (1:40) years. And in 2007, I set up an Early Access Consultancy.
So, we’re a consultancy and training (1:46) provider in all areas of accessibility. So, we work in the built environment, we work at working with (1:52) companies making, trying to make their services accessible. We work with employers to ensure that (1:57) their workplaces are disability inclusive.
And we do a lot of training and awareness. So, we do (2:01) things like disability awareness training, we do technical training for HR departments, (2:07) we work with facilities managers to do training on making the built environment accessible. (2:11) And then we work with service providers to ensure that when they are looking at their services for (2:17) customers with disabilities or visitors, that the whole visitor experience is accessible.
So, what (2:21) we what we’re trying to do at OHAC is, I suppose, look at every touch point that someone with a (2:29) or an organisation, so it can be a government department, it could be a public body, it could (2:34) be a private company, and try to ensure that they address accessibility. So, I suppose we’re, (2:39) we’re a firm believer that accessibility goes across everything you do within an organisation. (2:44) And we want to try and support organisations to, I suppose, make changes in all aspects of (2:49) accessibility.
So that’s a little bit about what we do, and what we’re about and how we (2:55) got set up and stuff like that. This is an incredible journey you’ve been through, (3:00) and so inspiring from what you’ve been saying. And in this context, what does reasonable (3:06) accommodation in the workplace means for people? Can you please break down for those who have no (3:13) clue? Yeah, no problem, I suppose.
And I suppose it’s kind of; it sounds very technical and very, (3:19) you know, you know, people kind of say, well, reasonable accommodation is sometimes like (3:23) scary word. But I suppose, look, reasonable accommodation in the workplace is about making (3:27) adjustments or modifications for people with disabilities, to enable them to bring their (3:31) whole selves to work and to be able to, I suppose, participate within the workplace. (3:36) And I think it’s about making sure that every part of the job is accessible or does (3:41) allow for accommodations.
Accommodations can be as small as, you know, having a sign language (3:46) interpreter for meetings, or ensuring that notes are sent out in advance of a meeting for people (3:52) to maybe they may need more time at the meeting to, to get up to speed with what’s going on. (3:58) So it’s about things like, you know, sending out, sending out meeting notes in advance, (4:03) or it could be someone if they have a bad back, it could be providing an ergonomic chair. (4:07) Someone may have dexterity issues with their hands, so it could be providing a larger keyboard, (4:11) or someone may have a visual impairment and may need a screen reading technology and stuff like (4:16) that.
So reasonable accommodations, as I said, are modifications and adjustments to the workplace (4:20) to allow people who may have accessibility barriers to bring their full selves (4:25) to work and allow them to fully participate within the workplace. (4:29) I think that is a very good description of reasonable accommodation and it will boil down (4:35) the brain for those who cannot understand it properly. But like, from what you’ve been saying, (4:41) there is also a report from NDA that also mentioned that reasonable accommodation can sometimes don’t (4:48) cost a penny, you know, with this and your experience in working with businesses, (4:55) how crucial is it for businesses in Ireland to understand and implement reasonable accommodation (5:01) into their policies? I suppose from a legal point of view, it’s, you know, you have a legal (5:06) requirement.
And I think we’re not talking about legal requirements today. You said it nicely, (5:10) Mohammed, that it can cost nothing. And I think it’s about culture change and culture change is (5:17) looking at things like the importance of equality, diversity, inclusion within the workplace.
(5:21) And we see that in all aspects of society, that it’s changing massively. So, by shifting the (5:26) culture or changing people’s attitudes towards accessibility or inclusivity within the workplace (5:32) for people with disabilities, that doesn’t cost anything. It just costs a change of mindset, (5:36) a change of how people think about how we integrate people with disabilities and so on.
(5:42) But most reasonable accommodations can be done with very little cost. So, it’s all about things (5:47) like training and awareness. So, making people aware of the, you know, the accommodations that (5:53) people need.
So, let’s use an example. So most line managers within the workplace, (6:01) if someone with a disability comes to them and says, look, I need the following reasonable (6:05) accommodations by sitting down with that person and having a policy or procedure in place, (6:10) and by the line manager having an understanding of what the policy and procedure is in place, (6:14) it’s going to be very easy for that that that line manager to implement the change. (6:19) The problem is that the line manager is unaware that there is a policy in place.
They’re unaware (6:24) that there is a procedure in place. And that’s where the real challenges challenge comes, (6:29) because they don’t actually know that, you know, the HR department have these policies (6:33) or practises in place that can accommodate a person really easy. So, I think that’s, you know, (6:38) by changing or moving away from the legal side of things and moving over towards the (6:44) cultural side of things, then and I suppose enhanced diversity, but enhanced inclusion (6:50) within the workplace, it costs very little.
It’s changing the mindset is the real, real cost. (6:55) And that doesn’t cost anything. You know, people don’t realise that attitudinal barriers are the (6:59) biggest barriers faced by people with disabilities, whether it’s in a visitor experience, whether it’s (7:04) in customer services or within the area of employment.
How are we going to overcome those (7:09) attitudinal barriers? Education and awareness, buy in from the top leaders, like leadership (7:15) commitment to accessibility, changing people’s mindsets, employee resource groups around (7:21) accessibility. But, you know, if we talk about what are what are crucial elements for businesses (7:26) to understand and implement reasonable accommodations, awareness, raising and training (7:32) will be the key, one of the key things, but also having the right policies and procedures in place. (7:38) So we go back to the example of the line manager.
If the line manager has undergone training, (7:43) if they’re aware that the policies and practises and procedures are in place, it’s much easier for (7:48) them to do their job and it’s much easier for them as a result to provide the reasonable accommodations. (7:53) So I’m looking at your area of expertise in designing accessibility for businesses to (8:02) be able to implement this accommodation for individuals with disabilities. What development (8:10) or trends do you foresee that will enable employers to really implement reasonable (8:17) accommodation for people with disabilities in the workplace? I think there’s about five or six (8:22) trends at the moment that are really important.
And one of them we’ve just talked (8:27) about is the increased understanding and awareness. So, the importance of training (8:31) and development. So, you know, we have a HR department, particularly our people in talent (8:36) department.
In particular, they’ll have a learning and development person who’s responsible for (8:41) learning and development within the organisation. So one thing we would say to companies or (8:45) organisations is identify what what what accessibility training requirements that are (8:51) required as part of the learning and development programme. So, for example, disability awareness (8:55) training, we’ve already mentioned more tailored training for the HR department around (9:02) one about disability awareness training.
But the second thing about how do you create that (9:06) disability inclusive workplace recruitment, disclosure, retention, reasonable accommodation, (9:12) performance management. So having more technical training for HR departments. But it’s not just (9:18) the HR department.
It could be the, you know, the IT department who are responsible for websites. (9:23) It could be the facilities management team who are responsible for the real estate or the built (9:27) environment. Or it could be leadership.
You know, leadership need training around changing their (9:33) attitudes, which you just mentioned, or improving the culture within the organisation, becoming that, (9:38) you know, fully inclusive employer. So that’s one area, I think, learning and development (9:42) or training and awareness. But awareness raising could be things like one hour CPDs at lunchtime (9:47) or a town hall or, you know, bringing a guest speaker in to talk about the barriers faced (9:52) within the workplace.
So there’s lots of ways you can create that training and awareness. (9:55) I think the second area would be the role of employee resource groups, which I’ve already (9:59) mentioned as well, in that we you know, there’s a lot of equality, diversity, inclusion is a (10:05) major area that has allowed us to enhance accessibility. So we’re finding now that we’re (10:09) working with companies that that have set up an employee resource group around accessibility, (10:15) but are unaware of how they can make change.
So they’re unaware about what they should be doing (10:20) to, I suppose, embed accessibility within the organisation. (10:24) But they, I suppose, are the voice of people with disabilities representing their company. (10:28) So they should be working, you know, liaising with the HR department.
And we can talk about (10:31) that in a few minutes, if you like. I think the use of technology and the use of assistive (10:37) technology is going to is going to make a massive, is making a massive impact for, (10:42) I suppose, for people with disabilities within the workplace. So technology is becoming so (10:48) advanced, like, you know, your use of your computers, your mobile phones.
You’ve got so (10:54) much new software out there that can assist people with disabilities within the workplace. (10:58) I think the advent of flexible working arrangements, so we now have hybrid working, (11:04) we’ve allowed people from working from home. That’s had a massive impact, again, for people (11:09) with disabilities.
You know, if the bus may be very, public transport may be very busy from (11:14) 8 to 9 o’clock. But having those flexible working arrangements where someone can come in at 9.30 (11:18) or come in at 10 o’clock, or they can work from home two days a week. The other area which we (11:23) haven’t really talked about is the whole area of support services and networks.
So, you know, (11:28) 10 years ago when I was working in accessibility, we didn’t have employers for change. We didn’t (11:34) have any best practise toolkits or guidelines around making the workplace accessible to meet (11:39) the needs of people with disabilities. Now we can go, you know, we can do our research and we can (11:44) find various national and international toolkits around making workplaces accessible to meet the (11:49) needs of people with disabilities within the workplace.
We’ve lots of good guidelines. We can (11:54) go on LinkedIn and find five podcasts or five workshops that are happening tomorrow around (11:59) creating disability inclusive workplace. So I think the advent of the support services like (12:07) your own organisation has been really beneficial for people with disabilities.
And my one (12:12) recommendation I have when I do my training is I point people in the direction of employers for (12:16) change, employability. I provide them with guidelines and resources that are out there. (12:21) Maybe it’s a UK guideline or it’s an Irish guideline, but we just need to get the information (12:26) out there.
There’s so much information there. It’s just getting it out there. And I think then we’ll (12:30) have future trends on legal frameworks and policies and stuff.
We’re seeing, you know, we (12:35) point people to like the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. Again, they have good (12:40) information on their website to support employers around meeting legal requirements like the (12:45) Employment Equality Act, reasonable accommodations for employers, or the Equal Status Act, reasonable (12:50) accommodation for customers and service providers. So lots of different changes from, you know, (12:57) training and development, technology, flexible working arrangements.
And then I suppose, you (13:02) know, organisations like yourselves, employers for change, but also organisations like the Irish (13:07) Human Rights and Equality Commission who are who have got lots of resources and supports there as (13:11) well. I’ve just been enjoying you flowing through and in this conversation, you’ve already answered (13:19) some of my questions. But one thing I get confused about is some businesses try to (13:29) implement diversity, equality and inclusion without recognising disability inclusion.
(13:40) So I know you’ve already mentioned some best practises for businesses, but how do we combine (13:49) inclusivity and accessibility to best match in providing reasonable accommodation? Because (13:56) these two things cannot go without each other. If the workplace is inclusive, then people with (14:03) disabilities will be able to find it more easy. So how do we get a match between these two? (14:11) Yeah, again, really important, I think, accessibility employee resource groups are (14:16) accessibility in the agenda of equality, diversity and inclusion is often forgotten.
(14:21) And we’re only seeing now that organisations are really saying, well, you can’t address equality. (14:27) And you can see this. You can’t address equality, diversity and inclusion if you don’t address (14:31) accessibility.
So what we would recommend organisations to do is have what’s known as (14:36) an access champion or in the public sector might be an access officer. They have a legal requirement (14:41) in the public sector to have an access officer. What is the access officer? What is the access (14:45) champion? They’re a point of contact to people with disabilities, maybe for customers, but for (14:51) also in the area of employment.
But the role of that access champion is to facilitate accessibility (14:56) within the organisation. And it’s all aspects of accessibility. It’s the HR.
It’s the built (15:01) environment. It’s the procurement. It’s the learning and development.
It’s the information (15:06) provision, customer services. We can go on. OK, but what we would say to organisations is, OK, (15:11) you have this access champion.
You then need to set up what’s called an accessibility team or (15:18) an accessibility steering group. And the idea of that is you bring people in from different (15:22) departments or from different departments within your organisation. You bring someone from HR.
(15:27) You bring someone from health and safety. You bring someone from corporate services, from (15:31) marketing, communications, from information provision. So you set up a team that’s (15:36) representative of the organisation.
You then provide them that team with training and awareness. (15:40) So training and awareness about what really is accessibility about? What is universal design? (15:46) What are the key pillars to create that inclusive workplace or organisation? And then you benchmark. (15:53) So you benchmark the organisation based on national, international good practise.
And you say, (15:57) OK, we’re looking at we’ll take the HR department as one example. So you go into that HR department. (16:03) You find out what policies, practises and procedures to have in place.
Do you have a (16:07) policy around reasonable accommodation? What what policy do you have around recruitment, (16:12) retention? You know, what supports do you provide? How do you how do you collect your data around (16:16) meeting the needs of employees with disabilities within the workplace? And then you report back (16:20) into the main access group and you say, well, we don’t have we we have the following in place, (16:24) but we need to do the X, Y and Z in order to to bring ourselves in line with good practise. (16:29) And then you roll out a plan. And basically you’re saying, well, the organisation then has a (16:34) three-year action plan on how they can improve accessibility in all areas.
So, as I mentioned, (16:39) HR, the built environment, the customer services, the procurement, the information provision. (16:45) So that we that’s direct steps we would recommend. And what’s really important here is they’re (16:49) looking at national, international good practise, not just looking at minimum standards.
(16:53) OK, and that’s one way separate to that access champion and access group. You have your employee (16:58) resource group and that’s like your consultative group that’s actually feeding into your main (17:03) group, telling you what the challenges are faced by people with disabilities within the workplace. (17:07) So you’re getting first-hand experience from your employees about the challenges that are faced.
(17:11) And then you report annually to management on how the plan is working out. So I should have (17:17) mentioned at the start that you have to get the senior leader buy in, in order for your access (17:22) team to be fully successful and stuff like that. So there’s lots of different ways.
So if kind of (17:27) summarise that you have your point and access champion, you set up an access team, you benchmark (17:32) against international, international good practise, you find out where you are and then you put it, (17:38) you put a policy and a plan in place and then you start to implement that plan. But you always (17:42) report back to management on how you’re doing, because it allows them to see where they are (17:47) based on international good practise and then the importance of the employee resource group. (17:52) So they’re going to drive change because they’re going to be, you know, in a positive way, they’re (17:58) going to drive change because they’re going to be saying to the access team, look, these are the (18:03) challenges we’re currently faced with in the workplace.
How can we, how can we put policies (18:07) or processes in place to improve them? But they’re also going to create an awareness within the (18:11) organisation about the importance of accessibility and they’re going to have, you know, town halls (18:16) around accessibility and stuff like that. They may have a charter, you know, they have a charter (18:21) about what the employee resource group. So they’re basically a sounding board for the organisation, (18:28) but they’re also driving the change, as you mentioned at the start, like we can’t have (18:32) equality, diversity and inclusion if we don’t address accessibility.
So that’s kind of what (18:37) we would recommend. So you’ve got a, you’ve got a system in place within the organisation to (18:41) address accessibility and you’ve an employee resource group who’s advising you, supporting (18:45) you to implement the change as well. Thank you very much for breaking down this difficult concept (18:51) of bringing these two things together.
So before we round up, let’s look at misconceptions. (18:59) What are some common misconceptions businesses have about accessibility, reasonable accommodation? (19:08) Again, I think one of them would be that employers think that reason accommodations only need to (19:13) be applied for when, when the employee isn’t actually employed or it only needs to be done at, (19:20) you know, during induction of a new employee and stuff. But reasonable accommodations, (19:24) it has to be carried out through, throughout all stages of a person’s employment.
So that, (19:29) that includes, that includes recruitment and interviewing. It includes when someone’s going (19:34) for training. It includes when, when, when people, when there’s an internal event being (19:38) organised within the company, you need to provide reasonable accommodation.
So, I suppose one (19:44) misconception is that people think that reasonable accommodations is only at the, you know, when we, (19:49) when we hire someone with a disability, we’ll ask them, do they have any reasonable accommodations? (19:53) And we take a box and say, yes, we’ve done that. But it’s actually, I think it’s really important. (19:57) And that’s a legal requirement that at all stages of employment, you must address reasonable (20:01) accommodations for employees with disabilities.
The other thing I think is that people don’t (20:07) understand is that it’s all types of employees. It’s part-time employees, it’s full-time employees, (20:13) it’s contractors that you may have in on a six-month contract under the Employment (20:18) Equality Act. It’s all different types of employees that are under the requirements (20:22) of the legislation.
So, you must address that. What final message will you have for the audience (20:28) and how can they get in touch with you in terms of designing accessible workplaces? (20:36) I think my final message is that, like, by addressing the needs of employees with disabilities (20:44) and also by addressing, I suppose, welcoming customer services or visitor experience, (20:49) you’re enhancing the accessibility and usability for everyone. So, I think that is one of the final (20:54) messages I would give.
The other message I would give is that for employers, it’s, you know, it’s (21:00) a no-brainer because, you know, you’re attracting a wider pool of talent. It’s going to enhance the (21:06) diversity and inclusion within your business, but it’s also going to, you know, we can give (21:11) lots of statistics to say that it’s going to increase your productivity. So it’s going to (21:15) benefit the company massively by addressing this whole area of meeting the needs of employees with (21:21) disabilities, not just from the needs of your employees, but also from the company is going to (21:26) benefit in the long run, increased turnover, increased productivity, you know, as I said, (21:31) attracting a wider pool of talent and stuff like that.
And I suppose the second message, (21:36) final message I would give is striving towards best practise, not just legislative requirements. (21:41) So organisations that we work with and do, who do it well, they’re always trying to achieve best (21:47) in class because they want to, not just to be best in class, but because they know of the added (21:53) value that it’s going to bring to them, not just to them as well, but to their employees as well. (21:58) So, you know, there’s so much information out there.
It’s trying to find, trying to distil (22:04) that information down to what is best practise, but always strive towards best practise would be my, (22:09) you know, a universal design approach and so on. So, there are the two last messages I would give (22:14) you in relation to contacting ourselves. And I think what we, what we, what we strive to do is (22:22) create frameworks and strategies for companies so that they can improve their all aspects of (22:26) accessibility, as I mentioned, and we can support those companies then throughout that journey (22:31) while making improvements, providing the training for the employee resource groups, (22:35) providing the training for the access teams and access champions and stuff like that.
(22:38) We have a website and we’re currently redoing it at the moment. So, it’s www.accessconsultancy.ie. (22:46) So that’s our website. Our landline number is 014151285, but you can contact us through our (22:55) website, www.accessconsultancy.ie. The Employers for Change podcast is a programme of the Open Doors (23:04) Initiative, funded by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration, and Youth.
(23:11) To stay informed, you can subscribe to the Open Doors podcast and follow Employers for Change on (23:16) all social channels. My name is Mohammed Sahib Kamara, and until next time, bye-bye.