We welcome the European Commission’s Guidelines and good practices on reasonable accommodation at work released 31 May. The guidelines have been released as part of the EU Strategy on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and we appreciate that they were developed in close consultation with the European disability movement.
Why are the guidelines important?
The guidelines help clarify how reasonable accommodation can be offered to workers with disabilities. Reasonable accommodation n adaptations to a workplace, tasks or working conditions to enable a person to do their job with fewer barrier -is already guaranteed in EU law thanks to the Employment Equality Directive from 2000. However, the understanding of what reasonable is and how to provide it is generally lacking across the EU. This means that persons with disabilities are too often denied their right to reasonable accommodation at work.
The guidelines are an important step to fulfilling our long-standing demand to the European Union to better explain how this right to reasonable accommodation works in practice.
How do the guidelines add clarity
The guidelines clarify, among other things:
- What counts as reasonable accommodation for workers.
- How employees and employers can get support (including financial support) in putting reasonable accommodations in place.
- How cost-effective solutions to reasonable accommodation can be found.
- How reasonable accommodation can support an ageing workforce.
- The benefits that employers can expect for offering reasonable accommodation to their employees.
The guidance also gives concrete examples from across Europe of how reasonable accommodation can be offered in different cases, and for people with various disabilities. It gives examples of how to offer reasonable accommodations based on:
- Providing assistive technology
- Offering personal assistance at work
- Adjusting the workspace (including teleworking)
- Flexible working time
- Flexible task arrangements
More information
- Guidelines and good practices on reasonable accommodation at work
- For questions, please contact Haydn Hammersley, EDF’s Social Policy Coordinator