Tracking reasonable adjustments: what good looks like
Ryan Hoare · Founder, TryMosaic · Last reviewed
This guide is part of our complete guide to managing reasonable adjustments.
Tracking is not the same as recording
Recording captures what was decided. Tracking is the ongoing part: is the adjustment actually in place, is it still working, who is responsible for it right now, and when will someone check. An organisation can have immaculate records of decisions and no idea whether any of those decisions were ever implemented.
The four fields every tracked adjustment needs
- Owner. A named person responsible for putting the adjustment in place and keeping it working. Not a team, a person. Unowned adjustments are the ones that lapse.
- Status. Requested, agreed, in place, under review, or ended, with the date of each transition. The gap between agreed and in place is where employees lose faith in the process.
- Implementation date. The day the adjustment actually took effect, evidenced by something concrete: equipment delivered, rota changed, software installed.
- Review point. A future date when someone checks the adjustment still fits. Roles, teams and conditions all change; an adjustment agreed two years ago may now be the wrong one.
Where spreadsheet tracking breaks down
A spreadsheet can hold all four fields, and for a very small organisation it may work for a while. The failures are structural rather than cosmetic.
- Nothing fires. Review dates in a spreadsheet are text; nobody is reminded when they pass.
- Access is all or nothing. Anyone who can open the file can read every employee's health context, which is difficult to square with UK GDPR rules on special category data.
- History is editable. A cell can be changed with no trace, which weakens the record precisely when you need it to be strong.
- Ownership decays. The spreadsheet's own owner changes jobs and the tracking stops, usually without anyone deciding to stop it.
What makes a tracked record defensible
If an adjustment dispute reaches a tribunal, the tracking record shows whether the employer followed through. A defensible record has dates applied by the system rather than typed in afterwards, shows who did what at each step, and cannot be silently rewritten. It also shows the reviews: an employer that agreed an adjustment and then checked on it twice a year is in a very different position from one that agreed it and never looked again.
Handling the handoffs
Most tracking failures happen at handoffs. The employee gets a new manager who knows nothing about the adjustment. The team moves buildings and the equipment does not move with it. Good tracking treats these as events: a manager change should surface the adjustment record to the incoming manager, with the employee's consent, without the employee having to disclose everything again from the start.
This guide is general guidance, not legal advice. For advice on your specific obligations, speak to an employment law specialist or ACAS.
If you are evaluating vendors, book a short TryMosaic demo and put the questions above to us first.
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Frequently asked questions
What does tracking reasonable adjustments involve?
Keeping each adjustment's owner, status, implementation date and review point current over time. Recording the decision is the start; tracking is making sure the adjustment is actually in place, still working, and reviewed when circumstances change.
Can we track adjustments in a spreadsheet?
For a handful of adjustments it can work briefly, but spreadsheets have no reminders, no fine-grained access control, and an editable history. The tracking usually stops when the spreadsheet's owner changes role, and the record is weak evidence if a decision is challenged.
How often should adjustments be reviewed?
Set a review date when the adjustment is agreed, and review sooner if the employee's role, team, manager or condition changes. The important part is that the date exists and something fires when it passes.
Who should own an adjustment?
A named individual, usually the employee's line manager, with HR able to see that ownership exists without reading the detail. Adjustments owned by a team or by nobody are the ones that lapse when people move.
What happens to tracked adjustments when a manager changes?
The record should follow the employee, surfacing to the incoming manager with the employee's consent, so nothing has to be renegotiated from scratch. Manager changes are where informal tracking most often loses adjustments entirely.
Published · Last updated · This guide will next be reviewed by .
TryMosaic is the system of record for workplace adjustments under the Equality Act 2010.