Case 2 - Food processing operative develops neurological condition – making reasonable adjustments

Key points

• Employee in food processing job develops a motor nerve condition.
• Employer is concerned that an employee is a risk to herself and others but does not know how to proceed.

Meena works in a food-processing unit and part of her job requires her to use knives to de-bone meat. She develops a motor nerve disorder and her employers, with little knowledge of the condition, are concerned that her condition puts herself and others at risk. The employer feels that she may injure herself when using knives and that she might be a risk to others when handling trays of hot food. The employer advises Meena that she may not be able to continue in her role, because of the health and safety issues. They suggest that she should be moved to less dangerous work.

What are the issues?

Meena’s employer is very concerned about the effect of her condition on her ability to do some parts of her job. They feel it would be better to take the dangerous tasks out of Meena’s role to ensure her safety. However, the employer has not considered a number of questions:

• Have the general risks to all employees been assessed and either prevented or adequately controlled?
• Does her condition create an increased risk to her health and safety or the health and safety of others?
• If it does, can these risks be prevented or adequately controlled through normal health and safety management?
• If not, what reasonable adjustments could be put in place to prevent or adequately control the residual risks?

What is the right approach?

The employer in this situation should first of all ensure that all the risks have been assessed and managed regardless of Meena’s disability – it may be that appropriate changes to the work equipment and environment could significantly reduce the risk and take the issue of the disability completely out of the equation. The Health and Safety Executive, for example, suggests that hazards in meat cutting can be managed by providing knife-proof arm guards and gloves for the non-knife hand as well as knife-proof aprons. These would protect all workers from a risk that is significant for both disabled and non-disabled workers.

Assuming that the employer has fulfilled its general obligations to manage health and safety, the specific risk assessment might look at how, or if, Meena’s impairment has affected her safety. The risk assessment might find that, because her condition was fairly benign, or that she had ample warning of any occasional mobility problems, it did not create a significant health and safety risk. The employer might conclude that it should revisit the risk assessment at regular intervals to check that the situation had not changed.

Finally, the risk assessment might indeed show that there was a risk to health and safety – for example in handling the hot trays of cooked food. In this case, the employer might conclude that a reasonable adjustment could be put in place to overcome the safety issue. Possible adjustments might be to buy in new equipment that automates the process – so that she no longer has to handle the hot trays manually – or to allow a colleague to do the manual handling duties of the job. The employer might even be able to apply for financial assistance through the Government’s Access to Work scheme to cover the cost of new equipment.