Beyond Essential Functions: The Role of Job Reassignments in Accommodating Employee Disabilities
Imagine for a moment that you are the HR Manager for a company with many physically demanding jobs. One of your employees submits a doctor’s note prohibiting her from lifting anything over 25 pounds. Mindful of your obligations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), you check to see if the lifting restriction will prevent the employee from doing her job. Unfortunately, after checking the employee’s job description and talking with her supervisors, you conclude that lifting is a key part of the employee’s job (in legal terms, an “essential function”), and there is nothing practical that can be done (in legal terms, no “reasonable accommodation”) to allow her to perform her job. When you tell the employee that she cannot return to her job, she asks if there are other positions available within the company that she can be transferred to. You say you’ll look into it, but when you start asking around, things get complicated. There are a handful of open positions in other departments, but the job requirements are different and some of the positions already have applicants who seem better qualified. None of the positions have exactly the same pay as the employee’s warehouse position, so she would either be getting a raise or a demotion. What should you do?
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