Equality
BT Passports
2 June 2010
The BT Passport is a scheme to record the requirements of employees who have special needs that can sometimes impact on their working life.
Type of Passport
Currently within BT there are the following Passports available:
- BT Disability Passport – available to employees with health conditions that the employee believes are covered by the DDA (Disability Discrimination Act).
- BT Health & Well Being Passport – available to employees with mental health conditions.
- BT Carers Passport – available to employees who have specific caring responsibilities for someone else.
The benefits of having a BT Passport
It is a confidential and voluntary scheme that allows employees to ensure that any special needs that can impact on them in the workplace, either now or in the future, are documented. It ensures that any reasonable adjustments that are required are documented, so that if the line manager or job role changes in the future, the information is readily available. It therefore guarantees continuity of any arrangements that are required for the employee in the workplace.
It allows the employee to explain in their own words their circumstances, the difficulties they experience in the workplace and discuss the help they require in the workplace. So, management are made aware and cannot later claim they didn’t know or understand.
The employee controls the amount of information they wish to divulge, to enable the line manager to implement assistance/support through the relevant BT policy. The contents of the Passport cannot be changed without the agreement of the employee. Employees can nominate someone to support them in this process. This includes a trade union representative.
The T&FSE is very proud of this document which came into existence in 2007 largely due to the work of Nicki Coughlin, of the East Midlands branch, who identified the need for the document and worked with BT Group and CWU nationally to ensure the document came to life.
