Not Required, But Necessary

Policies/Practices/Protocols

Why do you need policies? You don’t want your managers and supervisors deciding on their own how to handle employment issues. They’re not going to get it right. By the same token, you don’t want them asking you what to do every time they have to handle an employee situation either.

What’s the likelihood that the average manager or supervisor will make the right choice responding to a request for intermittent leave? Or a request for time off for religious reasons, or an ADA accommodation?

Probably zero. The typical supervisor, when faced with a request that threatens productivity, is going to say, “Are you kidding me? Time off at the busy season? I don’t think so.”

Bottom line, you need policies to tell managers and supervisors what to do, and then you need to train them to make sure they understand how to handle things, and why it’s so important to do it right. Finally, you have to monitor to be sure of compliance.

That’s important not only for the obvious reason of making sure that supervisors and managers are doing what you want them to do. It’s also necessary because consistency in enforcement is critical. If policies are not consistently enforced, it’s going to be hard to hold employees to them.

For example, one manager may give a male worker paid time off to attend a child’s school function; another manager may tell a female manager to take vacation time for the same purpose.

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The result: internal conflict, resentment, and a possible sex discrimination lawsuit.

As another example of a typical scenario, the boss says “She was fired for violating our attendance policy.” The employee’s attorney responds, “But Jimmy missed more days than she did, and he wasn’t fired.” Court’s conclusion: She was fired because she was a woman.)

Of course, sometimes, the policy is going to be simple: If X happens, come straight to HR. Many employers do this with FMLA, for example. Compliance is just so complicated with all the deadlines and notices that employers choose to have specialists handle it.

Essential Functions Not Required, But …

The other big HR concern that is “not required, but highly recommended” is job descriptions with essential functions delineated.

Although they are not required to by law, most organizations maintain job descriptions. Unfortunately, many have not taken the extra step of delineating the essential functions of the job. This step is helpful for hiring and management, but critical for ADA compliance.

The tipping point is that the ADA requires that employees with disabilities be able to perform the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodation. Job functions that have not been designated as “essential functions” don’t count as part of this accommodation process.

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Working with Essential Functions

A function may be essential in one setting, but nonessential in another. For example, if a worker spends 90 percent of his time operating a particular piece of machinery, that’s an essential function of his job. But how about for the person who operates that machine during the regular operator’s lunch hour? That might be essential if:

1. The machine has to keep running (say it’s filled with molten plastic that would congeal if it stops running), and
2. There’s no one else who can be trained to run the machine.

However, if the plant has 30 people who are trained to operate that piece of machinery, the task of running it over the lunch hour wouldn’t be essential.

The point? It’s not necessarily the percentage of time a person spends on the task that makes it essential. The setting and situation have to be taken into account as well.

In tomorrow’s Advisor, specifics for nailing down essential functions, plus an introduction to a very practical collection of ready-to-use job descriptions on CD.