Workplace Consulting
Designing accommodation processes and workplace systems that retain disabled talent.
One in four U.S. working-age adults has a disability. Yet many workplace systems still assume a narrower range of bodies, minds, and ways of working. At the same time, the ADA interactive process—the mechanism intended to secure equal access—is too often structured to evaluate accommodation requests rather than identify effective accommodations.
I work with employers on two closely connected areas: the ADA interactive process and the workplace systems that shape how work is organized.
Organizations typically seek this work when accommodation processes repeatedly stall, produce conflict, narrow too quickly to one proposed solution, or end without identifying an effective accommodation. Others recognize that ordinary policies, role expectations, and performance systems are creating avoidable barriers or generating repeated requests for individual exceptions.
My role is to identify why those patterns are occurring and help the organization determine what redesign would require.
The Interactive Process
In many organizations, accommodation processes are formally compliant but functionally unreliable. Requests stall, narrow too quickly to a single option, or end without identifying an effective accommodation. These outcomes follow from how the process is structured.
Many systems are built around evaluating a proposed accommodation rather than conducting a structured search for effective accommodations. Employees are expected to propose specific solutions before the organization meaningfully engages. Medical documentation is often used to validate those proposals, even where the relevant questions concern workplace design, operational flexibility, or how work is organized in practice.
Requests are frequently evaluated one at a time, and when a proposal is rejected, responsibility often shifts back to the employee to suggest an alternative rather than continuing as an employer-led search. This narrows the range of options considered and treats denial as a stopping point rather than part of an ongoing process.
These patterns are reinforced by broader organizational systems. Workplace policies, performance expectations, and standard ways of organizing work shape both what accommodations are considered possible and how often accommodations are needed in the first place. Where flexibility is built into how work is structured and evaluated, fewer barriers require individual modification.
Workplace Systems
Accommodation processes do not operate separately from the workplace around them.
Policies, role definitions, workflows, performance measures, and assumptions about how work should be done shape which accommodations appear possible. They also determine how often employees must seek individual exceptions in the first place.
I examine the workplace conditions surrounding the accommodation process, including expectations involving presence, productivity, communication, time, pace, and customary methods of performance.
The question is not whether every workplace rule should disappear. It is whether an organization can distinguish what is genuinely necessary from what is merely familiar—and whether its systems provide enough flexibility for disabled employees to participate, perform, and remain.
Consulting Services
Leadership Briefings
Leadership briefings are for senior leaders seeking to reduce preventable employee loss, recurring accommodation conflict, and disability-related operational risk by understanding the systems producing them.
The purpose is to clarify the central failure pattern, explain why it matters, and identify the decisions that require leadership attention.
Audits and Diagnostic Reviews
Audits and diagnostic reviews help organizations identify why accommodation processes and workplace systems are producing repeated barriers, inconsistent decisions, or avoidable employee loss.
Depending on scope, a review may examine accommodation procedures, responsibility structures, decision practices, workplace policies, role expectations, workflows, and performance systems.
The result is a diagnosis of structural failure points, priorities for change, and clearer visibility into avoidable legal, operational, and reputational risk.
Policy, Process, and Systems Redesign
Policy, process, and systems redesign helps organizations translate diagnosis into practical changes in how accommodations are identified, decisions are made, and work is organized.
Depending on scope, this may include revising accommodation procedures, clarifying roles and decision authority, improving consultation and follow-up, or redesigning workplace policies, workflows, role expectations, and performance practices that create unnecessary barriers.
The scope is tailored to the organization’s priorities and capacity for implementation.
Who This Work Is For
This work is designed for employers prepared to examine and change their own systems.
I work with leaders in Human Resources, employee relations, ADA compliance, workplace accessibility, legal and risk functions, organizational effectiveness, and executive leadership.
My work is diagnostic and advisory. I do not manage individual accommodation cases, determine the outcome of a particular request, provide legal representation, or serve as legal counsel. I examine how organizational systems shape accommodation decisions and help employers identify what process and systems redesign would require.
Speaking and Workshops
Organizations may also begin with a leadership presentation or workshop.
Making the ADA Interactive Process Work examines how accommodations are identified, how responsibility is allocated, what expertise is used, how essential functions are analyzed, and what a structured search requires. Those topics track the EEOC’s description of the interactive process as a joint effort to clarify needs and identify an effective accommodation.
Ableism in Workplace Policies and Practices helps participants identify where ordinary workplace rules, routines, technologies, and performance expectations create disability-related barriers—and distinguish necessary requirements from customary ways of organizing work.
Start a Conversation
I accept a limited number of workplace consulting engagements at any one time. To request a leadership briefing, audit or diagnostic review, or redesign engagement, please contact me.