Reasonable adjustments in recruitment: a bin fire
Missed, forgotten, inconsistently handled, and occasionally a tribunal claim waiting to happen. Here's why it keeps going wrong - and what we've done about it.
Ask any recruiter how their organisation handles reasonable adjustments in recruitment and you'll get one of three answers.
"We have a process for that."
"It depends who picks up the email."
"Really well, consistently, at every stage."
In over twenty years in recruitment I've heard the first answer a lot. The third answer almost never. What I've actually seen, across organisations of every size and sector, is the second - a patchwork of good intentions, forgotten emails, inconsistent actions, and hiring managers who are either told nothing or told far too much.
It's a bin fire. And it matters - for candidates, for compliance, and for the organisations who are one overlooked email away from a tribunal claim and don't know it yet.
How it usually (doesn't) work
A candidate requests an adjustment, usually via a checkbox on the application form that fires an automated acknowledgement and then sits in a workflow somewhere. Maybe it comes through informally - a note to the recruiter, or a message via the job board.
The recruiter picks it up - if they see it. They action it - if they remember to do so. They pass it on to the hiring manager - if they know what to share and what not to. They check at the next stage whether the same support is still needed... almost never.
The hiring manager then walks into the interview knowing either nothing, which leaves them completely unprepared, or everything, which is a data privacy and unconscious bias problem.
This isn't a criticism of recruiters. It's a criticism of the process - or rather, the absence of one. Reasonable adjustments in most organisations are handled by busy individuals relying on memory and goodwill rather than by a system built to get it right every time.
and goodwill is not a compliance strategy.
The case you need to know
AECOM Ltd v Mallon [2023]. If you work in TA and you haven't read it, do.
A candidate with dyspraxia wanted to apply for a role. The employer's process required everyone to create an online profile and complete a digital form. Because of his dyspraxia, he couldn't do it - so he emailed HR and asked if he could apply over the phone instead.
HR emailed back and told him the online portal was non-negotiable but offered to connect him with technology support if he got stuck.
He didn't take them up on it, he didn't apply at all, and then he took them to tribunal.
AECOM lost.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal was clear: the moment an employer knows a candidate faces a barrier due to a disability, the legal duty to investigate and make adjustments is triggered. You can't put the full burden on the candidate to fight through your process or map out the solution themselves. A proactive phone call to understand his specific difficulty would have resolved it. They didn't make it and they paid for that.
The candidate received compensation. The reputational hit was almost certainly worse.
The lesson: "we didn't know" is not a defence if a reasonable employer would have made further enquiries. Most organisations are one overlooked inbox message away from exactly this position.
The specific ways it goes wrong
It gets missed entirely. The request arrives via a channel nobody's monitoring, or gets buried during a high-volume campaign. The candidate assumes it's being handled. It isn't.
It's actioned once and forgotten. A candidate gets extra time for their online assessment. Nobody checks whether they need the same at video interview. Nobody asks before the face to face. Every round starts from scratch.
The hiring manager is told too much. The recruiter, trying to be helpful, forwards an email with the candidate's full diagnosis and medical history. None of that is the manager's business. What they need to know is what adjustments are in place for the day. Nothing more.
The hiring manager is told nothing. The adjustment was confirmed at stage one and never communicated forward. The manager walks in unprepared, the candidate's needs aren't met, and nobody is quite sure whose fault it is.
None of it is documented. When something goes wrong - and eventually something does - there's no record of what was requested, what was actioned, or who was told what. That's not just an HR headache. It's a legal exposure.
What proper looks like
It's not complicated in principle, in practice it's difficult to get right.
Every candidate needs a clear, straightforward way to request adjustments at any stage - without feeling like they're having to justify their condition to a stranger.
Standard requests - dyslexia-friendly formatting, extra time, text-only format, voice-based response options - should be handled immediately. Not when someone gets around to it. The recruiter's time should be reserved for complex requests that genuinely need human judgment.
Adjustments need to persist. If a candidate needs support at stage one, that should carry through automatically to every subsequent stage unless they say otherwise. It shouldn't rely on anyone's memory.
The hiring manager needs a proper briefing - plain English, operationally focused, nothing beyond what they need to do their job in that interview. No diagnosis. No medical history. No detail that could introduce bias before the conversation has even started.
And all of it needs to be documented. What was requested, when, what was actioned, what was communicated. At every stage.
What we've built
When we built this into Avlo it wasn't a compliance checkbox. It was one of the things we felt most strongly about getting right - because we've seen what wrong looks like too many times.
When a candidate requests an adjustment, a triage layer responds immediately. Standard requests - OpenDyslexic font toggle across every candidate-facing page, extended time, text-only or voice-based format - are confirmed and actioned instantly. Complex requests are escalated to the recruiter with full context.
Adjustments persist across every stage automatically. If a candidate flags a need at pre-interview, Avlo checks proactively before assessment and before the face to face whether they need the same again. Nothing falls through the cracks because nothing relies on someone remembering.
When a candidate with confirmed adjustments is booked for an interview, Avlo generates a briefing for the hiring manager - plain English, what's in place, what their responsibilities are. Operationally useful. Sensitive information stays where it belongs.
Everything is logged. Every request, every confirmation, every communication. A clean audit trail, automatically.
Built to Equality Act 2010 standards. Because a good intention and a busy inbox isn't a process.
Avlo is a recruitment intelligence platform for in-house TA teams and recruitment agencies. avlo.uk
Further reading on AECOM Ltd v Mallon: Blake Morgan | SA Law
