How Does Working Remotely Impact My Reasonable Accommodations?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many Americans were required to work from home due to concerns about the safety of in-person work and face-to-face contact. Since then, many employees have continued to work remotely full-time or part-time. This raises questions about employers’ responsibilities concerning reasonable accommodations and employee rights when remote workers are no longer in an in-office setting.

Anthony Sperber, an employment attorney in Berkeley, California, says the two most common issues he saw during the pandemic were: “One, are they going to be laid off because of this, and two, if they had had any accommodations before, would those still be in place during this and or after? In other words, will this somehow reset or upset whatever they had worked out before?”

If you need legal advice concerning how remote work impacts your reasonable accommodations, speak with an experienced employment lawyer in your area.

Remote Work and the ADA

Alternative work arrangements such as telework provide additional options for many workers, including people with disabilities that affect commuting to work or performing job duties on-site. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) finds that telework is a form of reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Just because you’re doing remote work doesn’t mean employment laws no longer apply. “[Employees] essentially have all the rights that they had before,” Sperber says. Even while doing telework, you are considered to be “at work” whenever you are doing your work.

“And so if the accommodation used to be you came in to work or left at a certain time, or you were allowed certain kinds of breaks because you needed to do that, that will be true of your home work time the same way it was at the office.” Accommodation requests are applicable to hybrid work or remote work situations.

Fight for Your Employee Rights at Work

If your employer is violating your rights, you can find a top employment law attorney near you in the Super Lawyers directory who will stand up for you.

Find a lawyer today

Identifying Reasonable Accommodations

Employers must assess each accommodation request individually. They can’t give a blanket denial to employee requests. To comply with EEOC requirements, employers should:

• Engage in the interactive process to discover alternative solutions
• Objectively assess an employee’s essential job duties to determine if in-person work is necessary
• Reasonably justify any refusals to an accommodation request
• Maintain robust documentation for remote work requests

When an employer follows these steps, it reduces undue hardship and fosters an inclusive work environment for everyone.

How Remote Work Can Be an Effective Accommodation

Sometimes, remote work itself is an accommodation for workers. The Job Accommodation Network outlines several work-related barriers that telework can address, including:

• Difficulty commuting to the worksite due to disability-related reasons
• Significant difficulty dealing with workplace distractions
• Exposure to viruses or other environmental issues that would cause a medical condition to flare up with regular exposure
• Limited worksite accessibility

In short, telework programs can effectively allow employees to perform essential job functions.

Flexible Work Hour Accommodations

One common accommodation issue is working hours. Employees who were allowed to work a flexible work schedule may face companies scheduling new meetings or deadlines to keep teams connected remotely.

“If you say everybody’s got to be on an 8:30 phone call, but a mother has to be doing child care at that time, or the employee — because of a sleep problem or physical problem — has to be doing other things, and they were never in the office at that time. But now they’re expected to be, and even though it’s virtual, attendance might still be difficult,” Sperber says.

Reasonable Accommodations for Physical Equipment

Reasonable accommodations extend to physical equipment like voice-to-text systems for employees who can’t type or ergonomic standing desks for those with chronic back issues. “You had [this equipment] at work. But now you don’t have those things. What [the employer] should do, for occupational safety, is get those things to your house,” Sperber says. “Because that is the office now. So all the things that were at the office, within reason, should be at your home office so you can do your work.”

However, “within reason” is key here. A company may determine that it’s not practical or that it’s too expensive to distribute large amounts of equipment to employee’s homes. In those cases, Sperber says it’s important to engage in an interactive process where employees and employers can work out a remote work arrangement that’s agreeable to both.

Not having access to reasonable accommodations can impact an employee’s health and performance, Sperber says, so it’s important to address issues as early as possible. “They don’t want to keep plowing through something that’s not really working for them and then have, not just physical problems, but people could start having performance problems because of their work environment,” Sperber says. “And then those work-related performance problems can be used against them in their employment reviews.”

Requesting Adjustments from Employers

Remote employees can watch for a few red flags when requesting or being told to work from a home office space. “If they’re being asked to do things they hadn’t done before, and if it’s professionally outside their wheelhouse, or they’re being asked to work hours or with materials that they’re not comfortable with, they should address that so they don’t get themselves into trouble,” Sperber says.

“And certainly, any time they are having physical or emotional problems with what’s going on, they should raise those with their managers or human resources.

When To Get an Employment Law Attorney Involved

When should employees consider getting an employment attorney involved? “It’s one of those things that you can’t quite put an exact timeline on,” Sperber says. “Hopefully, people sort of know it when they get there. I would think, in general, it would be after they’ve already done their best to make telecommuting work. If their efforts are not successful or they’re being treated in a way that they think is inappropriate, and they have tried to address that problem and they still have concerns, that would be a good time to reach out to somebody.”

Visit the Super Lawyers directory to find an experienced employment lawyer in your area. For more information about reasonable accommodations under the ADA and state laws, see our overviews of discrimination law and employment law.