Disability Contacts

sharonm

We have an employee who has been out for a considerable amount of time due to a medical condition that ended up requiring surgery which caused even more time on disability. Some time ago, the employee's manager gave her an Informative Contact to alert her that her disability time was running out. Informative Contacts are not considered "disciplinary" but simply to "inform" an employee. The issue now is that the employee has had to go out for additional surgery approved by our Medical Dept., but her manager gave her a "Corrective" contact when she returned telling her that her disability time has been excessive. Our Policy Department supports this saying that a record trail must be established in case the company has to eventually medically discontinue her. Is it right to give an employee who is out due to medical conditions beyond their control corrective contacts?

System

Besides your company policies, you need to consider whether she qualifies for additional leave under the ADA or FMLA.

There are checklists of legal issues to consider in our book HR Quick List. Click below for free sample sections on "An employee has an attendance problem" and "You think an employee might be disabled." Be sure to click on the blue boxes, which link you to more resources (most of them free).
[url]http://www.hrhero.com/hrquicklist.shtml[/url]

James Sokolowski
co-author, HR Quick List