Employer Obligation?

tfevergrn

We have an employee who has bad asthma which is related to Fibromyalgia. With this illness symptoms are not consistent and sensitivities change. The employee is currently real sensitive to perfumes and candles. I have several questions. Am I correct in determining that these conditions are covered under the ADA? The employee is pursuing information for me, from their doctor to confirm her condition. Certainly, you can ask that employees not use candles in the workplace, but what about wearing perfumes, colognes, etc? Privacy issues? How far can you go with this, if you ask all employees to tone it down, but it is still a problem? Do you have any other suggestions on how to handle a situation like this?

The employee has already had to leave the office once, for a couple of hours and feels they should not be docked for it(hourly), as it was not their fault they were having an asthma attack, due to the perfume and candle smells. Do we have to pay this hourly employee?

The employee does not, in anyway, want to be identified as the individual with the problem, causing potential inconvenience and complaints. The employee actually procrastinated coming to me. They geniunely did not know what to do or how to address this. At least she knew where to go to find out (good ole H.R.)

We have approximately 50 employees in our building, mostly women. Although we have some traffic of people from the outside, it is not too often. It is a typical cubicle arrangement and this employee has to interact with all departments in the building. Would appreciate some help and guidance here, this is a new one for me. Thank you in advance ...........

Margaret Morford

First, ADA does not permit her to miss time and get paid for it unless she's using sick leave, etc. A reasonable accomodation does not permit her to work less hours on a regular basis. An essential requirement of the job is that she put in the required time for the job. A reasonable accomodation might be to allow her to go home and make-up the time later in the same work week or to give her a short unpaid leave of absence to get her medical problems under control.

You may have an FMLA issue here, in that she needs to be given intermittent FMLA when she has an attack. Give her FMLA forms to take to her physician. If it's FMLA, then you handle it like any other FMLA leave. If your policy forces her to use her sick time and vacation time to cover the time she missed then that's how you handle it. If she's out of time, it's unpaid leave. Remember intermittent FMLA is the only situation where you can dock an exempt employee by the hour.

Now for the more practical. We had a person with severe allergies to perfume. His cubicle neighbor wore really heavy perfume. We spoke to her several times about it, saying that we had complaints, but never naming the complainer. By the way, she wore it so heavy that you could walk down the hall ten minutes after she did and you'd know she'd been in the hallway. We eventually moved him to the computer room (He was a programmer) to try and accomodate. We could not do anything about his having to walk through the building. We also offered him the chance to work from home when his allergies acted up. Is that an option for you?

Most important of all, have a dialogue with the employee about what might be a reasonable accomodation and document all the attempts to accomodate her condition.

Hope this helps. Call me if you would like to discuss further.
Margaret Morford
theHRedge
615-371-8200
[email]mmorford@mleesmith.com[/email]
[url]http://www.thehredge.net[/url]

tfevergrn

Thanks for your response Margaret. But should I not attempt to ask all employees to tone the colognes down?

System

Asking employees to lighten up on the smelly stuff sounds good to me. But don't identify this employee has having a sensitivity unless it's common knowledge. That could violate the ADA.

But don't jump to the conclusion that it's serious enough to be covered by the ADA or FMLA.

James Sokolowski
Senior Editor
M. Lee Smith Publishers

tfevergrn

Thank you James.....

Rockie

We had this problem frequently in our medical practice. We finally had to make it a policy in the clinical areas not to wear perfumes as we had so many patients who had pulmonary problems. But...we have also had to address it separately with individuals in the administrative areas who wear very strong perfumes. Usually,the individuals who have problems will go to the offending party without HR getting involved and let them know the perfume bothers them. I have found that many people don't realize how heavy handed they get with the perfume bottle sometimes. In new employee orientation, I advise individuals not to wear strong scents as it bothers a lot of people. Our problems have greatly diminished in this area.