Hi, communication is critical in our working environment for safety reasons. we have appointed a new mber of staff who is profoundly deaf during interview established that person has an implant and she can hear clearly. now reporting that they feel alingated as unable to hear colleagues due to need for all staff to wear face mask.
we have priced for mask that is see-through over mouth to support lipreading but these are more than double the cost of ordinary ones which isn't financially sustainable due to the quantity that we get through. Is this an acceptable reason for not making this adjustment? would appreciate some advice from others who may have been
in similar situation.
thank you
Hi
Suggest asking Disability Employment Adviser at your local Jobcentre about this - there may be the possibility of help with the problem - and even if there isn’t, you’ll have demonstrated that you’ve tried your utmost to make adjustments. Ultimately whether or not they are ‘reasonable’ would be a Tribunal’s decision and depend a lot on eg how deep are the pockets of the employer and how much the additional cost and overall impact on employment costs etc - very fact specific
It might be appropriate to risk assess whether simply removing face masks when communicating with this member of staff is adequate.
Assuming a vaccinated working population and no other risk factors (i.e. you're not in a healthcare environment or dealing with a current outbreak), and with government directions on the wearing of masks increasingly relaxed as new data concerning the severity of the dominant strains of coronavirus are understood, it may be that this is all that's required.
'Reasonable adjustments' are not something fixed. What is reasonable is up to the company to decide depending on its own resources finances and so on.,
If having decided that the company cannot stand the increased financial costs of different facemasks, you need to to decide if you could stand in front of a tribunal and convince them that your company just could not afford to buy them.
thank you all for you advice it is much appreciated and will take onboard your comments we are mental health so lots to consider to support member of staff.
Jackie
