With ADHD affecting many professionals across the UK, it’s good business practice for you, the employer, to make reasonable changes in the workplace. These can be minor or more significant working updates to help employees with the condition work to their best abilities.
In this expert guide, we explain the ADHD adjustments at work to consider. These tactics will help you meet UK compliance laws, all while supporting your business objectives.
The importance of ADHD adjustments at work
Under The Equality Act 2010 there are nine protected characteristics. It is your duty of care as an employer to ensure you support all of your employees, such as in the instance of any neurodiverse conditions.
Alongside being a legal requirement to respect ADHD in adults and their needs, your business will also benefit from any changes you make. Advantages include:
- Improving performance, task completion, and reliability
- Lowering absence rates
- Improving workplace inclusion and diversity
- Unlocking a wider range of talent across your business
By supporting your staff you can get the most out of them, ensuring they also enjoy working for your business and commit to your long-term. A focus on business neuroinclusion is a big step toward long-term success, promoting staff retention (lowering recruitment costs in the process), and building a positive company culture.
List of reasonable adjustments at work for ADHD
There are steps you can take to support your employees with this condition. Remember, it’s good business practice to have a meeting with the specific individual to discuss their needs. This will help you determine what will work best for their situation.
However, the overall goal will involve supporting their needs and overall work-life balance. This may include ADHD reasonable adjustments at work such as:
Clarity, structure, and task support: Helping the individual to plan and prioritise their workload. You can do this with clear instructions and guidance from their manager.
- Communication support: Set clear agendas and pre-plan ahead of, for example, meetings. With clear structures you can prevent overwhelming someone with ADHD.
- Work environment changes: Individuals with the condition may have issues with noise, lighting, and movement (sensory difficulties). You can make adjustments to support them here, such as with a hybrid working model where they attend an office a few times a week (rather than every day).
- Quiet areas at work: Individuals with ADHD may have struggles paying attention and can be easily distracted by noise at work. Offering quiet rooms to work, alongside hybrid working, can further support their attention. It’s important to remember the condition leads to an inattentive and hyperactive impulsive, rather than the employee being difficult or insubordinate.
- Role design: Repetitive tasks may prove tedious for employees with this condition, or you may overload them with similar priorities. Consider rebalancing their duties to support their specific strengths to avoid frustrating them. For example, they may have strong pattern-recognition skills that would suit their role over other tasks.
- Using technology: Investing in technology to support executive functioning can be very beneficial. For example, using certain software (calendar reminders, speech-to-text, task managers, project management systems, meeting transcriptions) will help the individual manage workload to a better degree.
You can also consider our guide to effective tactics for supporting employees with ADHD. This explores how you can further assist your employees to help them succeed at your business.
