Do you take this work seating arrangement?

When my friend remarried earlier this year, she swapped the big white wedding for an intimate ceremony under the Greek sun, followed by a large, lively garden party on their return, complete with a Greek food van parked outside. Why? Because she couldn’t face the fraught task of bringing a blended family together, least of all the dreaded seating plan.

Listening to her bemoan everyone’s requirements – her parents wanting to sit as far from her ex’s parents as possible, the best man demanding to sit with his partner rather than at the top table, and Auntie Sarah asking for a seat at a table with plenty of legroom – it struck me how similar the duty to make workplace reasonable adjustments is to trying to create the seating plan for a very complicated wedding.

An employer’s first thought might be much the same: where do I even start? And, overwhelmed by the task of trying to keep everyone happy, the response might be “nowhere”.

Employers must consider all staff requests, says Donna Reynolds

The Equality Act 2010 imposes a duty on employers to make reasonable adjustments to remove or reduce a substantial disadvantage faced by disabled job applicants, employees or former employees.

Reasonable adjustments can include finding a different way to do something, changing working arrangements or providing equipment, services or support.

For example, like Auntie Sarah, an employee with mobility problems is placed at a substantial disadvantage by the limited room to move caused by the location of their workstation. A reasonable adjustment might be to move their workstation.

An employer can’t simply receive an employee’s request, look at the existing arrangements and respond, “We can’t accommodate that.”

It needs to ask: Why do they need to sit there? What problem are they trying to address? Is there another workstation that would work? Can we rearrange or reduce the number of workstations? What happens if we move someone else? Is there another way of achieving the same outcome?

Just like a wedding seating plan, there may be more than one possible solution, and this is a key point about workplace reasonable adjustments. An employee might say they need to work at a specific workstation on the other side of the room, but complying with the duty to make reasonable adjustments is not a duty to agree to a specific request. It is a duty to remove or reduce the substantial disadvantage.

The employer might decide it is important to have the team sit together and it can achieve that and remove the substantial disadvantage by reconfiguring the workstations to allow more room for the disabled employee.

As with organising a wedding, the starting point is not “How do I make everyone sit exactly where I want them?” Nor is it jumping straight to “no”. The better starting point is asking: “How do I create seating arrangements that work as well as is reasonably possible, taking account of the substantial disadvantage faced by this particular employee?”

Many employers fail to do this and inadvertently breach the duty. My friend may have thought she had found the perfect solution by changing her wedding plans, but even she faced family fallout over her choice. Employers rarely have the option of avoiding the issue altogether.

Careful thought should be given to how the table is set, because the RSVP might arrive as a grievance or an expensive tribunal claim.

Donna Reynolds is Legal Director, Kennedys​