Workplace adjustments

What is workplace adaptation?

Jobs are designed for a typical person who doesn’t exist. Every real person has a height, strength, sensory capacity, age, health history, and circumstances that can make a job well-designed for most people unsuitable or dangerous for them. Adapting a job involves modifying the work, not the person, to bridge that gap: changing equipment, reorganizing tasks, adjusting the workday, eliminating an exposure, or adding assistive technology.

Adaptation is a standard preventive measure, not an exception. Law 31/1995 places it among the principles of preventive action (Article 15.1.d) and the specific measures for particularly vulnerable individuals (Article 25), for the protection of maternity and breastfeeding (Article 26), and for minors (Article 27). The Regulations for Prevention Services require that risk assessments take into account the possibility that the individual may be particularly vulnerable, and health surveillance is the instrument that provides the limitations and recommendations for adaptation.

In the field of disability, Article 40 of Royal Legislative Decree 1/2013 obliges employers to adopt appropriate measures for adapting the workplace and ensuring accessibility within the company, based on the needs of each specific situation, unless such measures impose an excessive burden. This is the transposition of the concept of reasonable accommodations from Directive 2000/78/EC.

When is it appropriate?

• Special sensitivity. When a person’s personal characteristics or known biological condition, including a recognized disability, make them more vulnerable to certain job risks.
• Return after an absence due to health reasons. When the fitness assessment after the absence establishes temporary or permanent limitations.
• Pregnancy, recent childbirth, and breastfeeding. When the risk assessment reveals an exposure that may affect the health of the worker, the fetus, or the infant.
• Aging workforce. When the evolution of abilities with age requires adjustments in physical, sensory, or rhythmic demands.
• Result of the ergonomic or psychosocial evaluation. When the evaluation detects mismatches between the demands of the job and the capabilities of those who occupy it.
• Job change. When a new team, process, or layout alters the demands placed on the person.

Types of adaptation

The measures are ordered according to the same hierarchy as the rest of the prevention: first eliminate or reduce the demand or exposure, then reorganize and, lastly, support the person.

• Technical adaptations. Adjustable furniture and equipment, mechanical handling aids, tools with less effort or vibration, accessibility software, redundant visual and acoustic signage, lighting.
• Organizational adaptations. Redistribution of tasks within the team, rotation, pace and breaks, work schedule and shifts, teleworking when compatible, supervision and support.
• Adaptations to the content of the task. Elimination of incompatible tasks, substitution with equivalent ones, adjustment of the physical or mental workload.
• Environmental adaptations. Accessibility of spaces, evacuation routes and restrooms, noise and temperature control.
• Change of position. When the adaptation of the original position is not possible or sufficient, in the terms of labor regulations and, for maternity, of article 26 of Law 31/1995.

How it is managed

1. Detection: from health surveillance, from communication by the person, from return after absence or from risk assessment.
2. Assessment: the prevention service determines the limitations and recommendations relevant to the position, communicated to the company in terms of fitness and without clinical data; the job requirements and alternatives are analyzed.
3. Design of the adaptation: with the affected person and their superior, choosing the measures according to the hierarchy and determining whether they are temporary or permanent.
4. Implementation: acquisition or modification of equipment, organizational changes, informing the team on the terms authorized by the person, training if applicable.
5. Document update: review of the risk assessment of the adapted position and registration of the measure in the preventive planning.
6. Follow-up: checking effectiveness, reviewing on the scheduled date and adjusting if circumstances change.

Consulting worker safety representatives on adaptation procedures is part of the consultation and participation obligations of Law 31/1995; the decision on each specific case is made with the interested person and respects the confidentiality of their health data.

Limits and common mistakes

1. Ask the person to adapt to the job (more effort, more caution) instead of modifying the job.
2. To resort directly to changing positions without analyzing whether the original position can be adapted.
3. Adapting without updating the risk assessment, so that the adapted position is not documented.
4. Communicate the diagnosis to the command or team; only relevant functional limitations should be known.
5. Treat temporary adaptations as permanent, or permanent ones as temporary, without a review date.
6. Invoking excessive burden without having assessed alternatives, public aid and the real cost of the measure.

Job adaptation does not replace permanent disability procedures or decisions on functional mobility or termination of contract, which have their own regulations and guarantees in the Workers’ Statute and Social Security legislation.

Regulatory framework in Spain

• Law 31/1995, articles 15.1.d, 22, 25, 26 and 27. Adaptation of work to the person, health surveillance and protection of especially sensitive people, maternity, breastfeeding and minors.
• Royal Decree 39/1997, articles 4.1 and 37. Consideration of the special sensitivity in the evaluation and content of health surveillance.
• Royal Legislative Decree 1/2013, article 40. Adaptation of the job and reasonable adjustments for people with disabilities, except for excessive workload.
• Royal Legislative Decree 2/2015, Workers’ Statute, Article 39. Functional mobility when adaptation requires a change of functions.
• Guide for the management of health, well-being and adaptation of the workplace in older workers (INSST, 2019) . Adaptation guidelines in the context of the aging workforce.

Directive 2000/78/EC establishes the obligation to provide reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities, and Directive 92/85/EEC protects pregnant workers, those who have recently given birth, and those who are breastfeeding. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, ratified by Spain, recognizes the right to reasonable accommodations in employment.