SHU Disability Leave Policy

Disability leave is planned or unplanned time off from work for a reason relating to an individual’s impairment/disability.

Although in the UK there isn’t technically a legal requirement for every organisation or company to have such a policy, the Equality Act 2010 requires employers to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to the workplace for disabled staff members, to ensure that we are not put at an unfair disadvantage due to having an impairment. Disability leave is listed as an example of a reasonable adjustment that employers could implement to ensure that employees aren’t unfairly disciplined or disadvantaged, due to absence from the workplace which is disability/impairment related.

Working alongside Spark! HR has recently published its Disability Leave Policy which has been highlighted to managers, however we felt that it would be helpful to highlight the policy here as well, so that you can direct your manager to it if they are unaware. We have worked with HR to ensure that the types of circumstances that should be considered to be ‘disability leave’ are wide ranging, varied and inclusive of all no matter what your impairment is.

It’s worth having a quick look at the policy even if you don’t think it is currently something that you could benefit from, especially as it seeks to make provision to separate ‘disability related leave’ from standard ‘sick leave’ which should help to reduce instances of disabled members of staff reaching the university’s absence triggers.

Please do get in-touch with us if you have any feedback about the policy so that we can pass this back to HR (anonymously).

You can find the SHU Disability Leave policy here.

Article written by Stephanie Hannam-Swain.