Workplace accommodation requests are rising, and the workforce dynamics behind that growth are not going away. For HR and leave professionals, the question is no longer whether volumes will increase, but whether your organization has the policies, people, and support structures in place to keep pace as the nature of those requests continues to shift.
Three forces are reshaping the accommodation landscape right now.
- Return-to-office mandates have created a new wave of requests that sit at the intersection of operational policy and legal obligation, requiring employers to navigate competing priorities they weren’t facing a few years ago.
- Mental health needs have become one of the most common — and most complex — drivers of accommodation requests, demanding approaches that traditional processes were often not built to handle.
- And as the workforce ages, chronic physical conditions are an increasingly significant reality that HR teams can expect to manage with greater frequency in the years ahead.
What ties all three together is a single question: Is your accommodation infrastructure keeping pace? That means looking beyond process to examine policy design, manager preparedness, and the support resources available to employees navigating challenging circumstances.
Attendees will leave with practical insights across each of these areas and a clearer sense of where to focus next.
