Tim's Job Accommodations
This individual's job was restructured for him from an existing position within a large company. The employment specialist originally answered an ad for a receptionist position, which she was considering for another individual. But in evaluating the position, the employment specialist determined that the receptionist was having difficulty keeping up with her essential job function of answering the telephone. A marginal job task of assembling sales binders was taking her away from her work area leaving the phones and front desk unattended.
A business proposal was written and submitted
to the employer. The proposal suggested that the job task of assembling
sales binders
could be restructured
into a part-time position. The proposal specified that the employment
specialist represented a qualified worker with a disability who
could fill the position
at minimum wage. The result was that the receptionist's position was
restructured to eliminate the marginal task of assembling binders.
The company did not
need to hire an additional receptionist at a higher salary when the
part-time position was opened. The employer had the same work completed
at a lower
cost to the company while providing a competitive employment position
to the individual with a disability.
Job Task: The essential job function was to
assemble binders. Each binder held sixteen pamphlets that were stored
on shelving in the young man's workspace. The literature was stored
flat, in a horizontal position. Due to the individual's physical disability,
he was unable to pull the pieces off of the shelf without dropping
them on the floor. The other challenge was transporting the material
from the shelf to his workspace. If he put them on his lap, the brochures
usually would become crumpled or torn. If the papers fell on the floor,
he was unable to retrieve them. While these may appear to be barriers
to employment, there were actually very simple solutions.
In watching how he picked up paper, it was determined that he could
manage the brochures if they were stored in a vertical position. The
materials also were re-organized so that those he needed more frequently
were placed lower on the shelf. Those that he did not access very often
were placed on the higher shelves. A coworker assisted him when he
needed materials from the higher shelves that were used infrequently.
A rehabilitation engineer made the handy carrier on the side of his
power chair, which essentially had a spring-loaded clamp that would
pop onto the armrest. The individual could put the needed literature
down into that carrier so that it would stay in good shape in transport
from one area of the room to another.
The
next work challenge to be solved was how the workspace could be organized
to keep the sixteen pieces of literature within easy access.
The coworker had been doing this task using an folding file sorter,
which was too bulky and cumbersome In addition, the sorter took up
entirely too much space on his workstation. The solution was to create
a lazy-susan file holder, which held the sixteen pieces of literature.
This could be easily rotated on top of the desk as he could assembled
the literature into notebooks. This particular organizational strategy
was very successful and also allowed the individual to easily keep
track of which pieces of literature had been put into the binders.
Another challenge to solve was that the young man's speech was difficult to understand. This was of concern to the employer and coworkers in his immediate work area. Although, various solutions and strategies were suggested, the supervisor actually came up with the idea that was quite beautiful in its simplicity. She suggested that she would simply e-mail him different things that she needed to communicate and that he could respond in turn, using the e-mail system. And that's been very successful within his workplace over time. It also should be noted that the employer and coworkers have also become more accustomed to his speech and in fact are now better able to communicate verbally and not just via e-mail. This is probably not atypical or unusual in that as we become familiar with individuals, we become more able to anticipate what they are going to say within the context of conversations.