Highlights
- ADA compliance requires balancing employee accommodations with your business’s operational needs.
- “Undue hardship” is assessed case-by-case, considering factors such as cost, business size, and operational impact.
- Simplify your HR workload with EPAY‘s customized solutions, allowing you to focus on creating an inclusive workplace. Request a demo today.
As an employer, you are responsible for creating an inclusive workplace while running your business efficiently. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) requires reasonable accommodations for employees with disabilities. But what happens when doing so becomes an undue hardship for your business?
The concept of undue hardship recognizes the need to balance an employee’s right to reasonable accommodation with the employer’s ability to maintain business operations. It allows employers to decline accommodations that impose a significant difficulty or expense.
However, defining and applying undue hardship, especially within a diverse hourly workforce, can be challenging. This article sheds light on the EEOC’s guidelines so that you can make informed and compliant accommodation decisions.
ADA Compliance: The Basics
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities in all areas of employment.
To comply with the EEOC and ADA legal requirements, you must adjust your operations to support individuals with disabilities.
Examples of reasonable accommodations include:
- Modifying work schedules
- Providing assistive technology
- Making physical changes to the workplace
- Adjusting training materials or policies
- Reassigning an employee to a vacant position
However, the EEOC recognizes that making accommodations cannot be allowed to strain your business unnecessarily.
What Is Undue Hardship?
Undue hardship weighs the act of accommodating individuals against the literal costs of doing so. As an employer, you should be able to carry out reasonable accommodations to help disabled employees do their job without inviting in greater adversity for your business.
The concept of undue hardship isn’t about avoiding accommodation altogether. It’s about ensuring that accommodation is reasonable and doesn’t place an excessive burden on your business. The EEOC assesses undue hardship on a case-by-case basis, considering factors such as the cost of the accommodation, the size and resources of your business, and the impact on your operations.
According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), any individual with disabilities you decide to hire must possess “the knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform the essential job functions with or without reasonable accommodation.” If they can’t perform all the required functions to some degree, your operation is not required to make significant changes which jeopardize your business. After all, keeping employees in ill-suited positions could not only lead to setbacks for your business – it could potentially endanger the individuals themselves.
How to Decide Whether an Accommodation Creates Undue Hardship
The ADA mandates that most employers with 15 or more employees provide reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. But determining whether or not a reasonable accommodation poses undue hardship depends much more on the position your employee holds and the environment they work in.
To determine whether an accommodation request poses undue hardship, you must consider the following factors:
- Nature and cost of the accommodation
- Financial resources of the facility, number of employees employed, and impact on resources, roles, and responsibilities
- Impact on the facility and day-to-day operations of the business
In addition to these factors, you should also:
- Examine the difficulties an employee with disabilities has performing their essential job functions,
- Check if reasonable accommodations for the employee’s disability are formally dictated or required under the ADA,
- Review how the employee’s disability affects their ability to perform their essential duties if an accommodation is made (for example, changing job tasks, providing reserved parking, improving accessibility within your work site, or allowing scheduling flexibility),
- Determine whether making significant modifications and/or restructuring your employee’s job undermines the position to the point of no longer resembling its original purpose or fulfilling its essential duties for the success of your business,
- For more information on carrying out a reasonable accommodation process, see SHRM’s complete How-to-Guide for processing an accommodation for your employee compliantly.
Finding Alternate Accommodations
As an employer, you should always engage in an interactive process with the employee to explore alternative accommodations that might be less burdensome. Documentation is crucial; keep records of all discussions, assessments, and decisions related to accommodation requests. This ensures transparency and demonstrates your good-faith effort to comply with the ADA.
Lighten Your HR Workload
Ensuring ADA compliance, particularly regarding providing reasonable accommodations and assessing undue hardship, requires attention to detail and a thorough understanding of legal requirements. And this can be hard to achieve when you’re burdened by extensive administrative HR tasks.
At EPAY, we help businesses simplify and lighten their HR workload with customized and flexible solutions. Our Human Capital Management platform is designed to accommodate the most complex work environments and hourly workforce needs. By optimizing your HR workload, you free up more time for focusing on accommodating your employees, ensuring compliance, and cultivating an inclusive work environment.
Request a personalized demo today and see how EPAY can transform your HR operations.
