What this is
What is a workplace adjustment?
What is a workplace adjustment?
A workplace adjustment is a change to how, when or where someone works so they can do the job safely, for any underlying reason — a medical restriction, pregnancy, youth, disability, or a need the worker has simply flagged themselves. It covers the change itself: the task, the hours, the equipment or the pace. The reason for the change is deliberately left out of this record.
How is this different from an occupational health referral?
An occupational health referral establishes what a worker can and cannot do and why, and that assessment sits in a medical file with restricted access. This record only holds what was changed as a result — the adjustment itself — so operational staff who need to apply it never need to see the clinical reasoning behind it.
Who decides whether an adjustment is permanent or temporary?
The manager records the choice, but the form expects the worker to have been consulted first. A temporary adjustment carries a review date; a permanent one still needs periodic confirmation that it continues to work, because a job, a site or a team can change even when the underlying need hasn't.
Scope
When is a workplace adjustment record required?
This record is one step in a larger programme. Using it for work that belongs to a neighbouring template — or skipping the register it's supposed to feed — produces adjustments nobody can find six months later.
Use this template when
- A specific, identified need has already been established — by occupational health, a risk assessment, or the worker themselves
- A concrete change is being made to a job: the task, the hours, the equipment, the pace or the supervision, not just a discussion about one
- The change needs to be visible to whoever schedules shifts, not only to the person who agreed it
- You are running the Vulnerable and Temporary Workers programme and the adjustment needs to feed the register that keeps it visible
- A previous record — an occupational health opinion, a risk assessment, a pregnancy assessment — already exists and this is the practical response to it
Do not use it for
- Young Worker Risk Assessment, which assesses the additional risk to workers under eighteen, covering inexperience, awareness and prohibited tasks — the assessment that identifies the need, not the record of what was changed.
- New and Expectant Mother Assessment, which assesses the workplace for a worker who is pregnant, has recently given birth or is breastfeeding — again the source assessment, not this response to it.
- Temporary and Agency Worker Review, which reviews induction, training and supervision parity for short term staff generally, rather than one individual's adjustment.
- Vulnerable Worker Register, which holds every adjustment currently in force across the site — this record is the individual event, the register is the standing list.
- Anything outside KnowSafe, which belongs in the workspace that owns that process.
Compliance mapping
Which ISO 45001 cl.8.1 requirements does this satisfy?
Each clause below maps to the section of the form that actually produces the evidence for it, not the section that mentions it in passing.
| Clause | Requirement | Where it lands |
|---|---|---|
| ISO 45001 cl.8.1.2 | Eliminate the hazard or reduce the risk through the change itself before relying on supervision or behaviour to make it work | The adjustment |
| ISO 45001 cl.5.4 | Consult and involve the worker affected by the decision, not just notify them once it has been made | The adjustment |
| ISO 45001 cl.8.1.3 | Plan and manage the change so it is implemented as intended, including who else needs to know | Making it work |
| ISO 45001 cl.7.5.3 | Control documented information so it is available to those who need it and protected from those who don't — the functional change without the medical reason | Header |
| ISO 45001 cl.9.1 | Monitor whether the control remains effective at a determined interval, rather than assuming it still holds | Review |
| ISO 45001 cl.5.3 | Assign responsibility and authority for the roles that keep the adjustment live — the manager who signs it off and the worker who confirms it still works | Review |
| ISO 45001 cl.8.1 | Plan, implement and control the process end to end, from the status that routes the record to the point it's closed | Header |
What it does not cover
- Worker Involved In Deciding It marked 'No', which means the adjustment was imposed rather than agreed, and is the first thing scrutinised if it's ever challenged.
- Covers All Shifts And Relief Cover marked 'Partly' or 'No', which means the adjustment only holds for the regular team and lapses whenever cover changes.
- Recorded In Vulnerable Worker Register marked 'No', which means the adjustment has no route back into view once this individual record is closed.
- Adjustment Description carrying a diagnosis or medical term, which means the record now holds exactly the information it was designed to keep out.
- Review Date passed with nothing entered in the Review section, which means nobody has confirmed the adjustment is still doing what it was set up to do.
Global
Workplace Adjustment Record requirements by country
A workplace adjustment is a legal duty in most of the jurisdictions this library serves, not a discretionary courtesy — the wording differs, but the obligation to act on an identified need does not.
Equality Act 2010, s.20–21
A statutory duty to make reasonable adjustments
An employer must take reasonable steps to remove a disadvantage a disabled worker faces, and failing to do so is itself unlawful discrimination — this record is the evidence that the duty was actually discharged, not just discussed.
Americans with Disabilities Act, Title I, 42 U.S.C. §12112(b)(5)(A)
Reasonable accommodation unless it causes undue hardship
Employers must engage in an interactive process with the worker and provide an accommodation unless it imposes significant difficulty or expense — narrower and more litigated than the UK standard, which is why the consultation field on this record carries particular weight.
Employment Equality Directive 2000/78/EC, Art.5
A harmonised duty transposed into national law
Member states must require employers to take appropriate measures for disabled workers, but the remedy and the definition of disability vary by transposition — check the local statute before assuming UK reasoning transfers directly.
How to complete it
How to complete a workplace adjustment record, step by step
The form is straightforward to fill in. The judgement calls are what happen around it — decisions a reviewer can't see just by checking every field is populated.
Worker Involved In Deciding It defaults to whichever answer looks better. The honest test is whether the worker could describe the alternative considered and rejected — if not, 'Consulted' is doing the work of 'No'.
Permanent Or Temporary looks like a simple classification, but marking an adjustment permanent removes the review date that forces anyone to revisit it. The right call is to ask what would actually change if the job, the site or the equipment changed under the worker — if the answer is 'nothing needs to move', permanent is defensible; if it isn't, it should stay temporary with a date.
Team Informed Appropriately balances two failure modes: share nothing and relief cover doesn't know what to do differently; share the reason and the record leaks medical information it was built to keep out. Brief the task change, never the diagnosis.
Recorded In Vulnerable Worker Register is easy to tick 'Yes' to and easy to leave for later. The defensible sequence links a live entry before the status here moves to Complete — otherwise the register, the document an auditor actually checks, is guaranteed to lag behind.
What auditors find
Most common workplace adjustment record findings
The same handful of gaps recur across sites running this record. None of them are hard to fix once they're visible.
| Finding | Clause | What fixes it |
|---|---|---|
| Adjustment agreed verbally weeks before the record was raised, with Date and Time set to the write-up rather than the event | ISO 45001 cl.7.5.3 | Raise the record at the point the need is identified, even in draft, and correct dates rather than back-fill them from memory. |
| Adjustment Description names the medical condition instead of the functional change | ISO 45001 cl.7.5.3 | Move the diagnosis to the occupational health file, use Source Of Need for the category, and rewrite the description as an instruction: what the person does differently now. |
| Night shift or relief supervisors unaware an adjustment exists for someone on their team | ISO 45001 cl.8.1.3 | Treat Covers All Shifts And Relief Cover as a required brief: confirm it with the named relief supervisor before marking it Yes. |
| Adjustment fixed by the manager with the worker informed rather than consulted | ISO 45001 cl.5.4 | Record the alternative considered and why it was rejected, not just the outcome — that's the evidence Worker Involved In Deciding It is meant to produce. |
| Review Date set on creation and never revisited | ISO 45001 cl.9.1 | Route Review Date through whatever reminds a manager to act — a scheduled task, a register alert — rather than trusting it to be remembered. |
| Record marked Complete with Recorded In Vulnerable Worker Register still 'No' | ISO 45001 cl.8.1 | Block completion until the register entry exists; the two should close together, not the record first and the register 'eventually'. |
Case in point
Case in point: an adjustment that survived the form but not the roster
A packing line worker was given a task change and a reduced pace after an occupational health referral, agreed with her regular supervisor and logged as Complete the same week. The record scored well: consulted, trialled, equipment provided, supervisor informed. What it didn't capture was that the arrangement had only ever been explained to the day shift.
Six weeks later a relief supervisor covering nights rostered her onto the standard line, unaware anything had changed — the adjustment record sat in a system he'd never opened, and the register entry that should have flagged it had never been created. The near miss that followed was minor. The gap it exposed — Covers All Shifts And Relief Cover marked Yes without ever asking a relief supervisor — was not.
The template
The template, field by field
The form exactly as it installs. Every field, option, score and conditional rule is editable, and the links to other templates come with it.
4 sections
- Reference
- SAF-154
- Archetype
- Record
- Record ID
- WAR-2026-000
- Scoring
- Adjustments in place
- Direction
- High is good
- Singleton
- No
- Basis
- ISO 45001 cl.8.1
- Links
- Links Restrictions, Occupational health
- Tags
- Vulnerable, Adjustment
- Sections
- 4
- Fields
- 33
- Follow up fields
- 0
- Repeating sections
- 0
- Links out
- 2
Header
14 fieldsRecord ID*
Auto sequence. Format WAR-2026-000.
The record's own ID. Other templates point at this value.
Status*
Drives who this goes to next.
- Planned2 pts
- In progress2 pts
- Complete3 pts
- Deferred0 pts
- Open0 pts
- Closed3 pts
- Overdue0 pts
Date and Time*
Completed By*
Site*
Site ID*
Format SITE-000.
Links to FDN-001 Site ID
Area
The area within the site.
Exact Location
Drop a pin for anything hard to find.
Worker*
Person ID*
Format PER-0000.
Links to FDN-003 Person ID
What Changed, Not Why
This record holds the adjustment so it survives a roster change or a new supervisor. It deliberately holds no medical information.
Source Of Need*
Occupational health advice, medical restriction, pregnancy assessment, young worker assessment, disability, or self identified need.
Source Record ID
Immediate predecessor record
Permanent Or Temporary*
- Temporary with review date3 pts
- Permanent1 pt
The adjustment
6 fieldsAdjustment Description*
Adjustment Type*
Equipment, task change, hours change, environment, supervision, or communication method.
Cost
Most adjustments cost very little. Recording it helps the next request get approved.
Worker Involved In Deciding It*
- Yes3 pts
- Consulted2 pts
- No0 pts
Trialled Before Confirming
- Yes3 pts
- No1 pt
Effective From*
Making it work
6 fieldsSupervisor Informed*
- Yes3 pts
- No0 pts
Team Informed Appropriately*
What they need to do differently. Nothing about why.
- Yes3 pts
- Too much shared0 pts
- Nothing shared1 pt
Covers All Shifts And Relief Cover*
- Yes3 pts
- Partly1 pt
- No0 pts
Equipment Provided
- Yes3 pts
- Not needed3 pts
- No0 pts
Training Given Where Needed
- Yes3 pts
- Not needed3 pts
- No0 pts
Recorded In Vulnerable Worker Register*
- Yes3 pts
- No0 pts
Review
7 fieldsAdjustment Still In Place
- Yes3 pts
- Partly1 pt
- No0 pts
Working For The Worker
- Yes3 pts
- Partly1 pt
- No0 pts
Review Date*
Manager*
Signature*
Worker*
Second Signature*
SAF-154 · record IDs look like WAR-2026-000 · Links Restrictions, Occupational health
Open in KnowellaRun it with agents
From a document you fill in to a programme that runs itself
The form is the easy part. Keeping the adjustment visible past a roster change, and keeping the medical reasoning out of a record that doesn't need it, is the work that actually slips.
Holds the adjustment record against the site's risk assessments and the Vulnerable Worker Register, and flags an adjustment that's gone Complete without a matching register entry.
Keeps the occupational health referral and its clinical detail in a separate, access-controlled record, so this one can stay functional without ever needing to hold the reason.
Tracks the training a task change or new piece of equipment actually requires, and confirms it was delivered before the adjustment is marked as working.
Coordinates the crew across shifts, checks a review date against the calendar before it's missed, and holds every write for your approval before it touches a record.
This template lives in KnowSafe — safety and compliance. Incidents, hazards, permits, inspections and the critical controls behind them.
Meet KnowSafe→Glossary
Workplace Adjustment Record definitions and key terms
- Reasonable adjustment
- A change to work, equipment or environment that removes or reduces a disadvantage a worker faces because of a disability, pregnancy, age or other protected characteristic, without which the worker would be at a substantive disadvantage compared with others.
- Occupational health
- The clinical function that assesses what a worker can and cannot safely do, and why. Its findings inform an adjustment but are held separately from it, under stricter access control than an operational record needs.
- Relief cover
- Any supervisor, team leader or worker filling in for the person who normally holds a role — the point in a roster most likely to lose an adjustment that was only ever briefed to the regular team.
- Vulnerable worker
- In this library's usage, any worker who needs additional consideration for a defined, non-permanent or ongoing reason — youth, pregnancy, disability, a temporary contract, or a language barrier — rather than a clinical or legal category in itself.
- Documented information
- The ISO management-systems term for anything a system requires to be created, controlled and retained — including records like this one, which must be available to those who need it and protected from those who don't.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about workplace adjustment record
Does this record replace an occupational health referral?+
No. It records the practical result of one — what changed about the job — while the referral itself, and the clinical reasoning behind it, stays in the occupational health file with its own access controls.
What happens if the worker disagrees with the adjustment offered?+
The record should reflect that: Worker Involved In Deciding It exists precisely to distinguish an adjustment reached with the worker from one imposed on them, and a disagreement is evidence the process needs to go back a step, not evidence to omit.
Why is there a Cost field if most adjustments cost very little?+
Because the pattern of small, cheap adjustments is itself the argument for approving the next one. A register of costs mostly under a few hundred pounds is a stronger case to a budget holder than an assumption that adjustments are expensive.
Does a permanent adjustment ever need reviewing again?+
Yes. Permanent removes the forced review date, not the need to occasionally confirm the adjustment still matches the job — a role, a site layout or a piece of equipment can change even when the worker's underlying need hasn't.
Who should be able to see this record?+
Whoever needs to apply the adjustment day to day — the direct supervisor and relief cover — without needing to know why it exists. That's the entire design intent behind separating this record from the medical file.
What links this record to the Vulnerable Worker Register?+
Every completed adjustment record should produce or update one entry in the register, which is what makes the adjustment visible to anyone checking the site's overall exposure rather than one individual's file.
Keep going
Related templates and programmes
Industries this is written for
Programmes this belongs to
Used together in Vulnerable and Temporary Workers
Agency Labour Provider Assessment
Assesses an agency for how it screens, trains, inducts and supervises the people it sends
Return to Work Programme Plan
Sets out how the site brings people back to work after injury or illness, covering triggers, roles, timescales and the duties that are actually available
Young Worker Risk Assessment
Assesses the additional risk to workers under eighteen, covering inexperience, awareness and prohibited tasks
New and Expectant Mother Assessment
Assesses the workplace for a worker who is pregnant, has recently given birth or is breastfeeding
Temporary and Agency Worker Review
Reviews whether agency and short term workers receive the same induction, training and supervision as permanent staff
Language and Literacy Assessment
Assesses whether safety critical information reaches people who do not read the site language fluently
More in Vulnerable Workers
Young Worker Risk Assessment
Assesses the additional risk to workers under eighteen, covering inexperience, awareness and prohibited tasks
New and Expectant Mother Assessment
Assesses the workplace for a worker who is pregnant, has recently given birth or is breastfeeding
Temporary and Agency Worker Review
Reviews whether agency and short term workers receive the same induction, training and supervision as permanent staff
Language and Literacy Assessment
Assesses whether safety critical information reaches people who do not read the site language fluently
Vulnerable Worker Register
Holds the workers who currently need additional consideration, with the adjustment in place and its review date
Written and reviewed by
Siddarth Singh
Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Knowella
Certified Safety Professional and industrial and systems engineer with more than a decade inside food supply chain, freight and manufacturing operations. This page was written against the current text of the standards it cites, not against secondary summaries of them.
- Certified Safety Professional (CSP), Board of Certified Safety Professionals
- MBA, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
- MS and BS, The Ohio State University, Industrial and Systems Engineering
- Six Sigma Black Belt
Sources and last review. Reviewed 16 August 2026 against:
- ISO 45001 — Occupational health and safety management systems, cl.8.1 Operational planning and control
- ISO 45001 — cl.5.4 Consultation and participation of workers
- UK Equality Act 2010 — s.20-21, duty to make reasonable adjustments
- US Americans with Disabilities Act, Title I — 42 U.S.C. §12112(b)(5)(A), reasonable accommodation
This page is general guidance, not legal advice. Confirm requirements with your jurisdiction’s regulator.