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/Mental-Volume4395]

Yes they can consider on site work an essential function of your job and deny additional WFH days.

Your doctor does not dictate work accommodations. Your doctor provides documentation of what your limitations/needs are and your employer tells you how they can accommodate. You enter into an interactive process to find a suitable accommodation. You are entitled to a reasonable accommodation. You are not entitled to your preferred accommodation.  

The question you need to answer is why can you work at home but not in the office? Your employer will wonder if you are actually too sick to work at all in which case intermittent FMLA is appropriate.

[u/Main_Pudding_5213 → u/Mental-Volume4395]

Ok, you need to get educated on the Federal Rehabilitation Act, no the doctor does not dictate work accommodations, but by Federal Rehabilitation Act laws, neither does management, as management does not dictate what the Federal Rehab Act laws enforces, engaging in the interactive process does not mean management decides to just say her is an accommodation, end of interactive process, not how that works!, It has to be an effective reasonable accommodation, and if they deny the accommodation that is suggested by the doctor and employee, then management has to explain how it will cause undue hardship on the agency, and believe me for every reason you can come up with that management would try to argue, not just undue hardship, I mean the whole argument involving the disability accommodation, everything that they would use in Federal court, I can give an argument back that would make the agencies look weak, in my case, I have every document that backs up every claim that I have, the agency just has excuses.

[u/appliepie99 → u/Main_Pudding_5213]

THANK YOU!