Mental Health and Reasonable Adjustments – new ACAS Guidance

The new ACAS guidance (available here) covers:

• What reasonable adjustments for mental health are and examples
• Requesting reasonable adjustments and responding to these
• Managing employees with reasonable adjustments
• Reviewing policies with mental health in mind.

The guidance highlights that making reasonable adjustments can assist with the recruitment, retention and training costs of employees – in addition to potentially reducing absence and increasing productivity. It also describes the importance of employers and employees working together to agree and review reasonable adjustments, including putting together an action plan.

The guidance helpfully also provides examples of reasonable adjustments, such as:

• Changing someone’s role and responsibilities. For example, reducing the more stressful responsibilities such as phone calls and customer facing work;