Job Demands and Accommodation Planning Tool for organizations
The Job Demands and Accommodation Planning Tool (JDAPT) is an award-winning tool that provides practical support and accommodation ideas to help workers experiencing episodic conditions in the workplace.
About eight million Canadians live with limitations to their daily activities due to health or other conditions (Morris et al., 2019). These limitations – or disabilities – may be permanent and experienced every day, or they may be “episodic.” Episodic conditions are chronic health conditions, often invisible, that 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 organizations 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?
It is important to remember that health conditions do not necessarily lead to a disability. A disability comes about when the social and physical environment creates barriers for persons with health conditions. In the workplace, that means that support and changes or modifications to some job tasks can remove the barriers that create a disability.
The Job Demands and Accommodation Planning Tool (JDAPT) for organizations has been designed to provide workplaces and others who support workers experiencing episodic conditions with practical support and accommodation ideas that are relevant to specific job demands. It was developed and tested by research experts, people living with disabilities, community groups and workplace organizations.
How the JDAPT differs from other tools:
- It focuses on work demands rather than health symptoms or a diagnosis
- It uses a series of simple questions to identify areas of work that may be challenging for a worker
- It provides a list of concrete support ideas relevant to the job’s demands and a worker’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.
