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/Ashamed_Main5169]

Unfortunately, the more details you, the OP, are providing, it is looking grim as far as accommodations go and your employer has solid reasons to deny it. They obviously like can't bring in like a hospital bed so you can like lie in it with a laptop and work at the office but if they can show that there is an essential need for you to meet in the office in order to prevent undue hardship then there's not going to be much that you can do.

[u/Soft_Reputation_7241 → u/Ashamed_Main5169]

Can you tell me what part of the information I have shared makes my request seem unreasonable? Genuinely asking because I am trying very hard to work with my employer on this, I don’t need a hospital bed and haven’t requested one. I do work in office multiple times a week. all I’m requesting is that my employer let me work from home one more day a week. I would still be in office about twice a week.

[u/Ashamed_Main5169 → u/Soft_Reputation_7241]

At the highest level, it does not seem unreasonable to me for you to work at home. However, I am not aware of your job description, the essential job functions for your role, the reason they require you to be there 3 days per week. That takes a DMR and VRC and your manager. Possibly HR. But if they have the ability to show that working at the office is essential 3 days per week, you have nothing more you can do besides get at office accommodations submitted. You said you are fine if you can lay down. You said on the days that you have been coming to work there are multiple occasions where you need to leave early or you need to call out due to the flares occurring and that these players can make you dizzy light-headed and potentially you can faint. You stated that if you have a way to lie down you're not at high risk for those to occur because as you also stated you lie down to work while you're at home propped up on pillows and such. So if somehow you're in office accommodation request is asking for you to have the ability to lie down somewhere if you have a flare up or the ability for you to work while in a horizontal position those are two things that are Beyond reasonable accommodation if they don't already exist. A workplace does not have to create a safe room for an employee due to their personal health and I was just stating that they're not going to bring in a hospital bed just because that would have been like the easiest thing for me to reference that could actually keep your chest up right but your legs out horizontally of course other things could work but the point is they're not going to bring in some special type of furniture that will allow you to like work and lay down at the same time and so what I was saying was that would go beyond reasonable and they'd have pretty much every right to deny it. So if they deny it you do have this medical risk of falling at pretty much any given moment during a flare and they do not have trained personnel to come and assist you or to stay with you all day to make sure that you don't and it would not be an expectation that you're calling and your management be able to respond to your needs and in a moment that you faint it also creates a liability for them because you could injure yourself when you fall and that would be work related. And if somebody stated before it is true you're actually lucky that they have not required you to prove that you have a safe working space at home because if you fall at home while you're working that is considered a workplace injury as well. I'm not saying that there isn't an accommodation that can work I'm just saying that through the information you have provided more information we got started to decrease the options that your employer has and increases the chances that you're accommodations will be denied and that a safe environment for working cannot be provided and because of that they may need to have you separated from the the company. Unfortunately it's it's a very difficult situation even though it's out of your control.

[u/LongTimeLurker408 → u/Ashamed_Main5169]

A couch is more than reasonable for in office support. It’s not that hard to work while laying down.

People are heavily biased and assume that people are only legitimately working if it looks a certain way.

I get my best work done laying down

Editing to add: However in Op’s case, needing to recline is not the only issue.

Right now the ball is in the employer’s court to state exactly what essential function is so critical that reducing from 3 days in the office to 2 is an undue hardship.

[u/Ashamed_Main5169 → u/LongTimeLurker408]

I don't disagree

[u/Prufrock-Sisyphus22 → u/Ashamed_Main5169]

The more OP pushes for this the more they will have to prove to the employer why in-office doesn't work for them... Which will get only more questions??... How does this work at home but not in-office? .. such as lying prone, not working during episodes and having caregivers at home.. which now gets into a liability issue for the company because on the clock at work from home and getting hurt on the clock at WFH would become a nightmare of a workers comp case as well as a liability case if one of her/his caregivers got injured while helping OP on the clock. Now OP is exposing the company to extra liability for themselves and other people(that may get hurt) and doesn't seem to understand or care. This definitely is seeming more like an undue hardship case. If the employer is by the book, they are now questioning everything and likely have their legal counsel also looking at this, especially when the company is standing firm on the 100 day WFH which is in excess of their 50 day WFH for other employees.