Many employers have discovered that successful telework arrangements can provide high levels of flexibility and employee satisfaction. And, as a new fact sheet from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission points out, you may be required to consider telework as a reasonable accommodation for disabled employees.
Modifying Telework Programs
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) doesn’t require you to offer a telecommuting program to all employees. But the EEOC says if you do offer such a program, you must allow employees with disabilities equal access to it. You might also have to waive certain eligibility conditions—such as requiring employees to work for you a certain period of time before they can telecommute—or otherwise modify the program for disabled employees.
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Evaluating Requests
Even if you don’t have a telecommute program, you could still have to consider telework as a reasonable accommodation. According to the EEOC, to determine whether telework is an appropriate accommodation for a disabled worker, you should engage in an interactive process with the individual. This means talking with the employee about whether working from home might be a reasonable accommodation. You should also assess the job requirements to determine whether the job can be properly performed at home (see below).
You don’t have to allow an employee to work from home more than the disability requires. The arrangement may be one day a week at home, two half-days, or every day for a certain period of time. For example, an employee might telecommute for a few months while recovering from a disability-related surgery.
Also, keep in mind that you don’t have to offer a telework program as an accommodation if another accommodation would be equally effective. This is true even if the employee specifically requests a telework accommodation and would prefer to work at home. However, if working from home is the only effective option for an employee with a disability, you will have to consider this accommodation.
Job Assessment
The EEOC suggests the following process for determining whether telework is a reasonable accommodation:
- Review essential job functions. Essential functions or duties are tasks that are fundamental to performing a specific job. Although you aren’t required to remove any essential job duties so that an employee can work from home, you may have to remove or reassign some minor job duties if these are the only things that would interfere with a telework arrangement.
- Determine which duties can be performed at home. For some jobs such as food servers, cashiers, and truck drivers, the essential duties can only be performed in the workplace. But in many other jobs some or all of the duties can be performed at home.
- Evaluate feasibility. Consider whether you can effectively supervise an employee working from home and whether any job duties require the employee to use equipment or tools not available at home. Also weigh whether the job requires face-to-face interaction and coordination with co-workers and/or in-person interaction with outside colleagues, clients, or customers. If that’s so, look at whether meetings can be conducted effectively by telephone and information can be exchanged through e-mail. Also, evaluate whether the employee must have immediate access to documents or other information located only in the workplace.