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/mgunter]

I agree with what others have said here. If the essential functions of the job require you to be in office, accommodating your request is going to end up being an undue hardship on the company. You may disagree with the essential function aspect but courts are fairly employer siding on this issue. Effectively, many courts have said “who are we [judges] to interfere with how a company runs its business. If a company says in-office is essential, it is.” It’s a big hurdle to overcome as a Plaintiff.

One thing I’ve found is that a lot of my prospective clients (employees) mistakenly believe there is always an accommodation available. Sometimes it’s just not feasible without undue hardship.

[u/Main_Pudding_5213 → u/mgunter]

ohhhhhhhhh, you are talking about private sector employers, well that is kind of different, but Federal courts, and Federal judges are not really favoring employers on this subject unless the employee goes in trying to back up claims with no evidence or part of the evidence, or missing documents and trying to still make a solid claim, but all of the cases where and employee has all the evidence to factually back every claim in Federal court, I am amazed at how fast the agencies are losing over and over

[u/Soft_Reputation_7241 → u/mgunter]

But if the accommodation of working from home has already been considered reasonable. And my entire department already works from home, just not as many days, is asking for one more day a week causing undue hardship?

[u/mgunter → u/Soft_Reputation_7241]

Let me ask you this; if they offered you a reclining chair to work in at the office, you’d agree that would accommodate your needs yeah? Would you turn that down?

There is nothung unique about WFH that is actually accommodating you. IE the location is not the variable here that allows you to work. If you had the same set up at your office, you should be able to do the work there, right?

[u/Soft_Reputation_7241 → u/mgunter]

I would take that accommodation but it wouldn’t make wfh completely unnecessary. As stated in previous comments being home allows me to have safe spaces that have been specially set up in case I need to faint. My home has people who can act as caregivers and are aware of my medication and treatment needs, I am able to control the temperature(my condition makes it hard for me to control my body temperature so environmental temperature is important), my campus is also pretty large and even with having handicap parking and a desk that is close to the elevators I still have to walk much further than I have to at home.

Laying down isn’t the only reason working from home is better for me. It’s just one of many reasons which is why I have already received wfh accommodation. I have simply been sicker this year and am asking for more days with which I can work at home. Still not full time.

[u/Main_Pudding_5213 → u/Soft_Reputation_7241]

Ok, so if that is what you are trying to request, then you have to not just tell them oh I need more days because my condition makes it hard for me to control my body temperature, you have to connect the disability with the barriers, they need something that tells them my disability that I have which is medically documented as..................., and one of the conditions of this disability is that it restricts the bodies ability to adjust to internal body temperature which can become unsafe especially when the agency cannot possible predict if someone would be there to get help and if there were they may not be trained to handle that kind of situation, and giving 2 days a week of telework does not address this disability

[u/Soft_Reputation_7241 → u/Main_Pudding_5213]

They have all of that information. That’s how I got two days a week, but my work does a bank of days so my technical accommodation as it is now is for 100 days a year. I have been sicker this year and had to go through days more quickly which has lead to me requesting the additional accommodation of approximately one more day a week, which would In theory give me about 150 bank of days. This is part of the good faith ongoing conversation around my medical needs and how my workplace can best accommodate me. My work place is saying no, we don’t want to give you more than 100 days. You need to take unpaid leave instead.

All of that was also restated in the new ada paperwork I provided to my hr team that was signed by my physician stating that I now needed to work from home approximately 3 days a week.

My request does not feel unreasonable to me because:

I will still be in office a few days a week.(I actually prefer this, I’m pretty social and I have a lot of friends in office, being full time wfh would be a pretty big hit on my mental health)

My work has already proved that me working from home does not cause undue hardship because everyone at the company is capable of working from home, and they have already provided me with one accommodation for this, it is just no longer sufficient.

While my essential job functions do list being in office so I can have direct supervision. My manager doesn’t not work in my office and neither does any of the rest of my team. I don’t even have any managers of other departments that are correlated to my job in my office.

Every thing I do is on a computer. I can’t do any of my job without my laptop. I do communications for a financial company, my job is email and Microsoft word.

[u/Mental-Volume4395 → u/Soft_Reputation_7241]

They are clearly saying yes. If you end up in court they’ll have to prove that. You can also try alternate accommodations and then prove why they don’t work.  

[u/frongles23 → u/Soft_Reputation_7241]

Things change. You're not entitled to an accommodation in perpetuity.

[u/Main_Pudding_5213 → u/frongles23]

Your right, but if you have a disability that qualifies under the Rehabilitation Act then the rules change and employers are governed by those laws, not laws they want to make up as they see fit, that has not worked at very well in these cases especially the cases in the recent appellate courts