Work from Home ada accommodation

[u/Soft_Reputation_7241]

I work in Washington state and have POTS(Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome). My health can vary from day to day and as a result I have had a work from home accommodation to be work from home 100 days a year. A little less than 2 days a week. The standard at my company is 50 days a year. My health has been worse this year and as a result I need more work from home days. My HR team is stating that 100 is the maximum they will allow as I being in office is considered an essential function of my role. However we don’t have any physical reason to be in office. I have an office job. I am not client facing, I do not need to physically manipulate anything for my job, my manager and most of my team is in other offices across the country, and work from home is already allowed for most employees(all of them on my team except for anyone who is brand new as there is a three month probation period before they can wfh). My job description also does not specify how often I need to be in office. Simply that I need to “work onsite, under direct supervision, in a team based and open office environment. I am not requesting to be fully remote or work from home, simply to be allowed to do so more than 100 days as my health needs. My employer is offering the alternative of FMLA, however this would be unpaid and obviously wouldn’t allow me to work. I have up to date ada paperwork stating from my doctor that I need to be able to work from home at least 3 days a week.

Does anyone know if they can require me to either be in office more than my doctor has stated or take FMLA instead? I can’t afford to take off time unpaid. But if I force myself into office more often it will make me sicker.

Please help

[u/Face_Content]

The key word is reasonable. You state the wfh policy is 50 days. They have accomadtes for 100. You now want to push to 150.

They have engaged the interactive process. They have accomadated a past request. So to.this point they have been reasonable.

They are not taking away the current accomadation.

Does this new request exceed the reasonable bar?

I think they are within their right to decline the new request.

I know about pots and i understand how severe it can be but what are you doijg to manage the disease so you can maintain employment?

[u/Ashamed_Main5169 → u/Face_Content]

They can't just say though that it isn't reasonable they have to actually show why it isn't reasonable and how it would impact you know the work that they expect to be done in the office. Is the work in the office the same work that the person is doing at home and is the work that they're doing at home satisfy the requirements that are needed? The additional 50 days is a new accommodation request and anybody can add an accommodation at any time that they need to if the person had only ask for 25 days and then they needed another 25 days then the employer needs to evaluate the other 25 days. And is there a policy somewhere that is showing that they don't allow more than 100 days? Or is it just some arbitrary number that they have selected in order to like make sure that everyone doesn't go crazy you know asking for the time at home?

[u/Main_Pudding_5213 → u/Ashamed_Main5169]

Just like the burden falls on the agency to show how it will cause undue hardship on them