Workplaces in Canada have made important gains in their understanding of, and approaches to, disability support and accommodation. Despite improvements, new issues continue to emerge and challenge the people involved in providing workplace disability supports.
That’s according to findings from a recent study at the Institute for Work & Health (IWH), based on interviews with support providers including managers, human resources professionals, disability management professionals and labour representatives across Canada.
The study was designed to understand the provision of disability support from the perspectives of those working on the frontline—the ones handling and managing accommodation requests.
In contrast to many studies that have focused on office environments, the team leading this study deliberately recruited workplaces from across a broad range of business sectors and types. This study was also one of the first to examine organizational support for workers with diverse physical, mental health and cognitive conditions.
As lead researcher Dr. Monique Gignac presented at a recent IWH Speaker Series webinar, in general, support processes are improving. Study participants spoke of greater efforts on the part of employers to increase accessibility and to improve the timing, responsiveness and trust in the disability support process.
But disability support provision is changing, said Gignac, scientific director and senior scientist at IWH. “It is really growing in complexity, volume and the diversity of requests.”
New challenges in implementing support are arising. “And these challenges are often related to organizational and worker perceptions and expectations,” she added.
Below are some of the themes the study team heard related to the new challenges:
1. Complexities around supporting worker mental health and wellbeing
Although requests for mental health support do not often make up the majority of the workload, they are increasing in volume, diversity and complexity.
Workplaces are now getting support requests for a broader range of issues—from burnout to substance use, from common mental health conditions to neurodivergence. This could reflect the growing awareness in society about diverse psychological and cognitive conditions. That’s something to celebrate.
But on the flipside, we heard that support providers face challenges related to workers pathologizing or medicalizing everyday stress, self-diagnosing, and seeing disclosure as an automatic license to stop doing certain job tasks. We also heard about workplaces experiencing a knowledge gap around supporting workers who are not neurotypical or addressing substance use and suicide—issues that were always there but seldom brought forward in the past.
2. Fully remote work as a flashpoint for questioning support processes
Fully remote work was noted as helping employers accommodate staff with health-related mobility issues, hire talent from diverse parts of the country and improve worker retention overall. But remote work was also reported as challenging as it can lead to workers experiencing social isolation and getting rusty in some of their interpersonal skills. At the workplace, it can also erode a positive team atmosphere and close-knit work culture, participants noted.
But beyond its positive and negative effects, participants spoke of fully remote work as a flashpoint in conversations about disability support. The question of whether to provide fully remote work was often leading to broader discussions about an organization’s responsibility to provide reasonable accommodation versus the worker’s preferred accommodation or job arrangements.
3. Implementing a disability process: Enhancing accessibility while formalizing accommodation processes
Many workplaces have been moving away from seeing disability as a medical issue, one that needs doctors’ notes for validation. Rather, they’re formalizing support processes to improve accessibility and reduce the need for individual accommodation requests. Formalizing accommodation processes is also a way to help organizations ensure consistency, for example when managers lack accommodation experience. But formal processes often run counter to the flexibility that individual requests often require. Also, the growing volume of requests often strains employers’ capacity to provide support. Despite greater employer awareness and improved processes, resource constraints and implementation challenges continue to confront support providers.
4. Interpersonal dynamics: The need for shared accountability and an ability mindset
The final theme centred on shared accountability for disability support and a mindset among all parties that focused on ability. A positive change noted by study participants is improved collaboration across diverse groups, including HR, disability management and unions. Some workplaces also reach out to family members and community groups as part of their efforts to support workers with language barriers.
However, an issue that’s becoming more common is a sense of entitlement among workers—an assumption that they should get certain types of accommodations or that some of their tasks should be assigned to someone else. As well, co-workers sometimes perceive unfairness or unequal treatment when they aren’t provided with similar accommodations. At the same time, certain worker groups continue to experience inequities in support, such as new immigrants who may fear job loss if they come forward about their health-related limitations.
Gignac offered a few recommendations for each of the four themes in her presentation. More education can offer a way forward, she said. Workers may need a better understanding about organizational resources, support processes and expectations. Support providers may need more education about supporting workers with mental health difficulties, substance use and neurodiversity. Also, greater attention needs to be paid to practical implementation challenges to improve accessibility while balancing needs across diverse groups. And efforts need to continue to bring groups with different roles together to improve the timing and responsiveness to disability support requests
The study also highlights the need for deeper discussion, at all levels, about how expectations about support is changing, Gignac added. “I don't think there's going to be easy answers with this research, but we need to really understand it and to have more of these discussions about support access and worker and employer rights and obligations. It's time to bring more of this out in the open.”