Conflicting Access Needs at Work: How to Balance Reasonable Adjustments Fairly

One of the hardest parts of neuroinclusion is that support is not always simple. Sometimes one employee needs a quieter, lower-stimulation environment, while another works best with regular verbal collaboration. One person wants cameras off in meetings to reduce overload, while another relies on visual cues to communicate well. One colleague needs more predictable routines, while another needs flexibility because rigid structure makes their work harder. This is where many managers get stuck: what do you do when access needs appear to clash?

That is a much better question than “whose needs matter more?” and it is also a much stronger search topic for employers, HR teams and managers than the original title.

The first thing to say clearly is that conflicting access needs are normal. They are not proof that inclusion has failed. They are proof that workplaces contain different people, with different bodies, minds, roles and pressures. The CIPD’s neuroinclusion guide argues that neuroinclusion requires a people-centred, flexible approach rather than one-size-fits-all assumptions, precisely because needs vary from person to person. The same principle runs through Acas guidance on neurodiversity and reasonable adjustments, which emphasises discussing needs individually and agreeing adjustments together rather than relying on generic fixes. 

Two people share a moment of connection as they hold a black paper heart together, symbolizing unity and affection.

The second thing to be clear about is that there is usually no perfect universal solution. Accessibility is not about making every environment identical for everyone. The UK Government’s accessibility guidance describes accessibility as enabling people to do what they need to do in a similar amount of time and effort, without being excluded by poor design. That wider framing is useful because it shifts the focus from “Can we make one setup suit everyone?” to “How do we design work so fewer people are excluded by default?” 

In practice, the biggest mistake employers make is trying to solve conflicting needs with a single blunt rule. For example, insisting that everyone must hot-desk, everyone must keep cameras on, everyone must communicate mainly in chat, or everyone must work in a busy open-plan environment. Blunt uniformity often creates more conflict, not less. The more useful route is to ask which parts of work genuinely need to be standardised, and which parts can be flexed without damaging service, fairness or team function. Acas’s guidance on asking for reasonable adjustments frames adjustments as a collaborative discussion, where the employer understands the situation and agrees support with the employee. That process matters even more when multiple needs are in play. 

A good starting point is to separate core business requirements from accidental habits.

Some things really are essential. A role may require certain response times, in-person presence for particular tasks, or reliable handover structures. But many other features of work are simply habits dressed up as necessity: constant background music, unnecessary open cameras, vague verbal briefings, unstructured brainstorming, or the assumption that one communication style suits everyone. The Health and Safety Executive’s best-practice guidance says managers need the right skills, knowledge and behaviours to support disabled workers appropriately. That implies a more thoughtful management approach than simply enforcing norms because they are familiar. 

Once you strip away the non-essential habits, it becomes easier to solve competing needs practically.

Take the common example of noise. One neurodivergent employee may be highly distracted or distressed by constant conversation, while another may work best through talking ideas out loud. The answer is usually not to declare one person “the difficult one”. It is to redesign the environment or workflow: quiet zones, collaboration zones, booked meeting spaces, noise-cancelling options, remote focus time, clearer rules about interruptions, or different times for collaborative versus concentrated work. Acas lists examples such as quiet working spaces and noise-cancelling headphones in its neurodiversity adjustments guidance, while autism employment guidance also highlights practical workplace changes to reduce sensory disadvantage. 

Or take meeting preferences. One employee may find cameras-on meetings exhausting or dysregulating. Another may depend on facial cues and visual presence to process communication properly. A rigid all-on or all-off rule can disadvantage someone either way. Better design might mean circulating notes in advance, using agendas, making use of chat and captions, allowing people to come on camera only when speaking, or separating discussion from decision-making so information is not lost. Again, the solution is not pretending needs never conflict. It is recognising that better meeting design reduces the pressure on any one feature to carry the whole interaction. The Civil Service accessibility guidance on inclusive design makes a similar broader point: inclusive products and processes work better when accessibility is considered from the start, rather than added reactively later. 

This is where reasonable adjustments are sometimes misunderstood. They are not supposed to guarantee that every person gets every preference all the time. They are meant to reduce substantial disadvantage. GOV.UK’s disability employment review reiterates that employers’ obligations around reasonable adjustments come from the Equality Act 2010, and Acas guidance focuses on understanding the situation and agreeing workable adjustments together. That means fairness is not sameness. It is about whether the employer has taken practical steps to remove avoidable disadvantage in a proportionate way. 

A very useful rule here is: solve for the barrier, not the label.

If one employee says, “I’m autistic, so I need X,” and another says, “I have ADHD, so I need Y,” the manager can easily get trapped in label-based bargaining. The better question is: what is the specific barrier each person is facing? Is it noise, unpredictability, visual overload, verbal overload, unclear information, switching costs, social ambiguity, time pressure? Once you name the barrier precisely, solutions often become more flexible. This also fits the way many neurodivergence-at-work toolkits frame support: not as a checklist by diagnosis, but as understanding how context affects performance and what adjustments remove friction. 

There is also a cultural piece to this. Competing needs become much more explosive in workplaces where support is treated as scarce, secretive or special. If employees believe accommodations are favours handed out reluctantly, then every difference can start to feel like a zero-sum contest. By contrast, when organisations normalise accessibility, publish adjustment processes clearly, and train managers well, requests are less likely to become personalised or adversarial. The government’s Inclusion at Work panel report argues for improving diversity and inclusion practice through better evidence-based approaches and stronger organisational capability, which is highly relevant here: mature practice reduces friction before it becomes conflict. 

This is one reason Divergent Thinking’s workplace assessments matter in practice. Where needs are starting to clash, a structured assessment can help shift the discussion away from personality and towards concrete workflow, environmental and communication changes. The goal is not to choose winners and losers. It is to identify what is getting in the way and redesign the work more intelligently. For many teams, that is far more effective than relying on managers to improvise in the moment.

Another helpful principle is to think in terms of layers of support.

Layer one is universal design: clearer agendas, written follow-up, flexible formats, quieter spaces, predictable processes, accessible documents. These changes often help many people at once and reduce the number of individual conflicts. Layer two is team agreements: for example, designated focus hours, rules around interruption, when chat is appropriate, or how cameras are used. Layer three is person-specific adjustments where needed. The more work you do at layers one and two, the less likely it is that individual adjustments will feel like they are in direct competition. This layered approach is consistent with the wider thinking in neuroinclusion guidance from bodies like CIPD and Acas, even when they use different language.

It is also worth saying that sometimes the right answer is not compromise in the middle. Sometimes two genuinely conflicting needs mean the work itself must be differentiated. One person may need a different seating arrangement. Another may need a different communication route. Another may need a different pattern of meetings or handovers. Managers often think fairness means one identical rule for everyone, but in accessibility work that is often the least fair option. The Business Disability Forum regularly emphasises operational barriers and the importance of disability-aware practice in real environments; the same lesson applies internally in workplaces too. 

So what should managers actually do when competing needs arise?

Start with:

• What is the specific barrier for each person?

• Which needs are genuinely in conflict, and which only look that way because the process is badly designed?

• Which aspects of the work are essential, and which are habits we could change?

• What can we trial?

• How will we review whether the trial works?

That trial-and-review mindset is often what prevents conflict from hardening into grievance. If people can see that their needs are being taken seriously, tested fairly and reviewed thoughtfully, they are far more likely to engage constructively.

The deeper point is this: neuroinclusion is not the absence of tension. It is the ability to handle tension fairly, thoughtfully and practically.

If your organisation wants help navigating that in real teams, you can explore Divergent Thinking’s workplace assessments, browse the Divergent Thinking blog, or look at the wider Divergent Thinking neuroinclusion offer. The goal is not to pretend everybody needs the same thing. It is to build workplaces that can hold difference without turning it into avoidable conflict.