Employers and others supporting workers

Supporting workers living with chronic disabling health conditions can be difficult. However, there are resources that can help by providing a focus for workplace conversations and a wide range of support strategies and ideas to think about.

About eight million Canadians live with limitations to their daily activities due to health or other conditions. These limitations – or disabilities – may be permanent and experienced every day, or they may be “episodic.” Episodic conditions are long-term health conditions, often invisible, where symptoms can re-occur, fluctuate, or worsen over time.

People living with disabilities are less likely to be employed than people without disabilities. They often have to give up work temporarily or permanently and can struggle to return to work.

Unfortunately, many employers or others who provide support to workers – such as union representatives or disability managers – struggle with knowing how to remove or reduce the barriers that can impact a person’s ability to work. They ask:

• How should we think about a worker’s needs?
• What can we do to support a worker is struggling due to a potential health condition?

JDAPT: Job Demands and Accommodation Planning Tool

The Job Demands and Accommodation Planning Tool (JDAPT) is an award-winning, easy-to-use, online tool that helps workers and those who support them think systematically about the demands of a specific job and consider a wide range of practical support and accommodation ideas that could help better manage those job demands. It was developed and tested by research experts, people living with disabilities, community groups and workplace organizations.

The JDAPT helps the user to identify the parts of a job that may be difficult due to a health condition or conditions. Once these have been identified, the JDAPT will suggest a variety of strategies, supports and workplace accommodations tailored to the needs of the worker and the organization.  As such, the JDAPT can help workers with health conditions and those who support them understand if supports or change may be needed at work and, if so, what kind of support or changes would help those with episodic health conditions work comfortably, safely and productively.

The JDAPT is different from other tools:

• It focuses on work demands rather than health symptoms or a diagnosis
• It guides the user through a series of simple questions that ask about the physical, mental or “thinking” tasks of the job, job tasks related to working with others, and the working conditions.
• It provides a list of concrete support ideas relevant to the job’s demands and a worker’s needs, which can help workers and organizations generate solutions that work for everyone’s needs.

There are two versions of the JDAPT for organizations - one to support a specific worker and the other to explore supports that may be helpful for a specific job.

JDAPT to support a worker

This version of the tool is designed to help someone identify potential strategies and accommodations for a specific worker experiencing difficulties with their job demands due to a potential health condition.

In this instance, the JDAPT should be completed by someone familiar with the worker’s day-to-day job demands and experiences. This might be a supervisor, manager, human resource professional, disability manager or return-to-work specialist.

JDAPT for a job

This version of the tool can be used to identify the important job demands for a position and how those different job tasks might be made more flexible, supportive, and inclusive for workers, which can promote worker well-being.

In this instance, it is not necessary to have a specific worker in mind when answering the JDAPT questions.

A note about privacy:

The JDAPT is available for your personal use and takes about 15 minutes to complete. It is free to use. You will not be asked for personal information, and your answers will not be saved or shared with others. You may save a copy of your answers for your own use.

There is also a separate JDAPT for workers that a worker can complete on their own. It is important to remember that workers are often reluctant to share personal health information because of concerns about negative repercussions from their workplace. Workers should be reassured that their health needs are private, and that the organization and worker versions of the JDAPT are intended to start a conversation about ways to make work more manageable. If a worker completes the worker version of the JDAPT, we recommend that they not be pressured into sharing their responses.

Free and anonymous

All ACED tools are available free of charge and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. That means this tool can be used and shared as long as IWH is credited as the source, the information is not modified, and the information is used for non-commercial purposes. Read more here.

All information entered into the ACED tools is anonymous. We do not collect IP addresses or ask for identifying information such as names or emails. The responses to DCIDE or the JDAPT are stored anonymously for 72 hours to allow for users to save a draft and return within that time. The responses are not accessed or saved and are automatically deleted after 72 hours. See here for more information on the ACED Tools and your privacy.

Communication tool for workers