3 Tips For Accommodating Employees With Physical Limitations

If you own your own business or are a manager for a business, there might come a day where you employ someone who has a physical limitation or who becomes injured while working for you. To stay within the law and make work life better for this employee and your company, there are certain accommodations that you can and should make for this employee.

To help you learn what these accommodations are and how you can fulfill them, here are three tips for accommodating employees with physical limitations. 

Create A Dialogue With The Employee

As soon as you become aware of this physical limitation that an employee will be working with, you and this employee should create a dialogue between yourselves so that you can come up with appropriate solutions together. 

Throughout this process, try your best to get as much input from your employee as possible so that you can know exactly what they might be needing in order to get their job done as you need it. While you may not be able to give them absolutely everything that they might think is necessary for you to accommodate them, by getting their help in coming up with solutions, you can get closer to a point where both you and the employee will be happy with what you’re able to do moving forward. 

Consider Restructuring Their Responsibilities

Although you might have had an idea in your head as to what this employee’s role and responsibilities were going to look like, if they’re having to make adjustments due to a physical limitation, you may want to consider restructuring the job responsibilities for this specific position. 

For example, if your employee has issues with their sight, be it due to old age or some other deficiency, you may want to take the tasks where they’d need to see tiny print and give those tasks to another employee that can handle that task. Then, you could take another task from the other employee and give that task to your disabled employee so that they’re sharing the load of the work. 

Offer Them As Much Support As You’re Able

Even if you’re able to make reasonable accommodations for your employee now, there is a chance that their needs could change in the future. 

To stay on top of this, you’ll want to try to remain in communication with this employee about their needs and offer them support throughout their employment. Try to think of this employee as an actual person with a life outside of work, and consider how you might be able to make their life easier to handle both personally and professionally. 

To help you have a great relationship with your employees and keep your business operating legally, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you learn how you can better accommodate employees with physical limitations.