Size and significance are not the same thing. Think of a newborn baby. When my daughter came into the world, she was only a tiny little thing. Yet, it was the most significant moment of my life. Day by day she develops, she grows, she blossoms. This happens not in great leaps, but in small steps. The gains are marginal. It is in these margins that the magic happens. That is where gold is found.
Columnist – Gareth Ceidiog Hughes
This principle does not change as we reach adulthood. Small margins are relevant to pretty much all aspects of human endeavour, and this is no less true when it comes to measures that help disabled people. What is needed in many cases is not enormous change, but a willingness for organisations to make small but meaningful adaptations.
From my own perspective as an autistic person, this means enabling flexibility and removing unnecessary burdens. For example, the office can be taxing on me from a sensory perspective. It’s also an environment in which I have to mask (hide my autistic traits) heavily, which is a tiring and sometimes exhausting activity.
Therefore, it is helpful for me to be able to get up, leave the office and go for a walk when I need to have a breather and relieve some of the tension that has built up. This is precisely what I did in my last job, and it made a real difference. It helped me protect my wellbeing, conserve my energy and meant I was far more productive. My employer benefitted because of this, and very little effort was required from them to make it happen.
Unfortunately, too many employers do not have open minds regarding reasonable adjustments. There are plenty who would view these short breaks as ‘slacking’ and the granting of them as the awarding of a special privilege. HR bureaucracies and the managers that inhabit them can be terribly rigid in the way they operate. Enabling the kind of flexibility that many disabled people need goes against the grain to an extreme degree. Control freak managers are more likely to try to micromanage, than to enable flexibility. They are more likely to construct and maintain unnecessary barriers than remove them.
Because of this, ensuring reasonable adjustments are in place for disabled workers is not so much the norm, despite it being the law of the land that they be provided. A fundamental change in attitude is required within many organisations to ensure it becomes standard practice. Indeed, a greater openness to enabling small adaptations for disabled people among employers would be a radical transformation. In an awful lot of cases, removing barriers is easy. It’s persuading employers to do it that’s hard.
