Where are all the employees? Lessons from the dance floor.

In a given year, through the courses I teach for the Manitoba Human Rights Commission and the courses I'm hired to teach in-house at various workplaces I am privileged to get to share the things I know about workplace human rights law to hundreds of people.  But, when I sit back and think about the make-up of those attending the courses, I would hazard a guess that 99% of them are managers, human resource consultants or union representatives. 

Very few people who attend my courses are employees.  Sure, there is the occasional employee who will come to my Commission courses.  Usually, it is an employee who is wanting to learn what their legal rights are in relation to a difficulty they feel they are encountering with an employer.  But, for the most part, it's just people from the employer side of the equation.  Certainly, I have yet to encounter an employee (and by that I mean non-management, non-human resources) at any of the in-house sessions I teach.

During a session on Reasonable Accommodation that I recently conducted for a very astute group of human resource consultants, a comment was made that some employees make it extremely challenging to accommodate them because they expect exactly what they want versus what the employer can reasonably provide.  That started heads nodding around the room.  So, I asked whether any of the employees in their particular workplace had received training on what their legal obligations were in the accommodation process.  The nods turned to no's. 

For the accommodation process to work as it is intended, employers and employees have to work together to come up with a solution to an accommodation need.  But, if only employers know what the law says, it leaves employees at an informational disadvantage.  Whenever inequity exists, problems arise.  It's like watching those contestants on So You Think You Can Dance and one partner knows how to tango and the other doesn't.  During their practice sessions, the two dancers are never on the same page.  One shows confidence and makes their moves effortlessly because they know what to do while the other stumbles and looks awkward, completely out of their element.  It's not until the awkward dancer is taught the proper footwork that the dancers work as a team, glide across the floor and get the job done.

So, my question to you is this:  do your employees know the footwork?  Do they have a sufficient grounding in what the duty to accommodate is all about -- for all of the "dancers" in the workplace?  Education should be a two-way street if employers don't want to encounter trip-ups on the accommodation dance floor.

I'd love to hear from you about what you do in your workplace.