Employees often view the telework option as a form of recognition. They may see it as a privilege earned through good performance. Unfortunately, they also may see the work-life perk — offered to some, but not all — as an entitlement, or worse, they may see lack of telecommuting privileges as an inequity caused by biased managerial discretion.
A trusting supervisor-employee relationship is critical for telecommuting to work seamlessly, that is, to integrate with a team’s workflow and to maintain or even potentially increase a department’s productivity. It only will effectively jell with employees whose output and performance are measurable with or without their physical presence at the office. As with most business strategies, the return on investment of telecommuting garners mixed results.
Depending on your company’s culture and work environment, you either fully endorse the concept and promote the telecommuting program as a flexible, employee-friendly work arrangement or you disallow it. Hopefully, you — as the face of the employer — do not malign it!
Plausible or misguided, the “excluded” employee’s perception, when scrutinized by EEOC, may land you in court. Be sure to have a defensible explanation at the ready.
Nowadays, the idea of a knowledge worker requesting to work from home as a reasonable accommodation for a disability doesn’t seem so extreme.
Unless, that is, a particular contemporary court gives heavy weight to previous case law on the subject, which is filled with descriptors like “unusual” and “exceptional” to describe permissible circumstances. (See next blog post.)
For more stories about the ADA and reasonable accommodations go to http://hr.complianceexpert.com.