ADA Compliance In Action: Handling Difficult Accommodation Issues With Confidence

Are reasonable accommodation requests causing problems for your HR Department? When the ADA was last updated, the list of Major Life Activities was also broadened to include "major bodily functions".

Although the broadening of the law had some good intentions, the increase in required work and in legal cases indicates that some employees have already figured out a way to take advantage, so now a goal for employers is not only to ensure compliance with the law and provide those who are disabled with equal employment opportunity, but to not allow the "gamers" to manipulate the system to suit their own agendas.

In this must-attend audio conference, HR Consultant Natalie Ivey, MBA, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, will ensure you are current on the law - and help you manage and the evaluate the employee accommodation requests, as well as how to "push back" on requests that are unreasonable.

Learning objectives:

• Review the significant changes brought about from ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA), including the definition of what constitutes a disability
  
• Recognize the "regarded as" prong of the ADAAA and how to minimize your risk of being sued by an employee who isn’t "really disabled" but was regarded as
  
• Determine if an employee has a qualified disability - and how to document appropriately
  
• Recognize the specific challenges when handling issues involving mental disabilities such as Bipolar Affective Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Depression and others
  
• Listing – and knowing what to do about accommodation requests such as a static schedule in a rotating shift environment, the purchase of expensive office equipment, requests for excessive amounts of intermittent time of absences with ambiguous return-to-work dates
  
• Analyze the "sticky issues", such as declining employee performance, absenteeism, and unreasonable requests
  
• Assess the balancing act of providing reasonable accommodations while also managing the business
  
• Review best practices in ADA case documentation and case management