Employee w/hip problems--might get hurt?

Paige

A supervisor just called asking about the following--we have a 60 year old cook. She is currently on a lifting restriction--can't lift over 25 pounds--non-work related. Lately she's been having problems with her hip and has been to the chiropracter for treatment. Two employees reported to this supervisor that they saw the cook almost fall on 2 different occasions. The supervisor is asking--"Can we do anything? I don't want something to happen to her here at work." (She may be carrying something hot, fall, and burn herself.)

I explained several things.
1) There's risk of anyone getting hurt here at work--we don't necessarily want it to appear that we are singling her out.
2) If she comes to us saying she is disabled, then we need to see if it does fall under ADA and if she can work with accomodations.
3) If we TREAT her as though she were disabled, she would fall under ADA.

Am I going in the right direction here? Is there anything else we can do? How DO you treat employees that you THINK may have problems performing their job and don't want them to get hurt? What if her doctor places her on restrictions, but she doesn't abide by them?

Again--this is all non-work related.

Hatchetman

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 06-18-02 AT 02:03PM (CST)[/font][p]Go back to square one...

How frequently do employees fall? And what happens if they do? Is she ascribing the near falss to any medical condition?

That is what you need to deal with unless yo have specific information that the hip is causing a problem on the job.

You could have said, "gee the emplyee is 60 years old and almost fell twice" -- and the response would be the same. Connect the dots of the specific condition to a limitation to perfomr the duties, if there is a problem like that occurring. Otherwise, it seems to me, you're leading yourself into more problems.

If there is a documented performance problem that she claims to be medically related then handle it on that basis. Or, it is reasonable based on actual knowledge that she has a medical conditon that prevents her from performing all of the duties of her job competently, then deal with that. But right now, it seems as if the manager is being "paternalistic", which I understand but dont' agree with, in this situation.

If there are restirctions the doctor places on her, they are not up for her to violate, simply becuase any responsibilities that are inconsidstnet with those restricitons, wouldn't be assigned to her. You would be entering ADA territory (to determie if she is ADA-qualified, at least). The restircitons really are placed on the employer, not the employee.

Don D

Hatchetman has a thoughtful analysis and good points. I do disagree with the last comment, though. We have quite a few people at any given time with work restrictions. The restrictions determined by the doctor are reviewed by the employer to see if they can be accommodated: how reasonable is it to have somebody else do the restricted piece of the job and how much of the job do the restrictions equal,is the analysis. If it can be accommodated and somebody else can pick up the slack, if there is any, the employee is advised that the employer agrees to the restrictions and is admonished to follow the restrictions stated. It then becomes MUTUAL responsibility. The employee is responsible for working within the restrictions and the employer is responsible for ensuring that the total task can be done while observing those restrictions. The employer is not there to continually monitor or police whether the employee is staying within the restrictions. Either party can inadvertently or purposefully violate the agreed upon restrictions, but, they remains a mutual responsibility.

Hatchetman

Don, what I meant by my last sentence in my first post was that in reality, it's up to the empolyer either to set up the job so that the restrictions are met -- for example, no lifting over 25 pounds -- or not to have the employee do the job...I agree with your assessment on the responsibilities of the employee and employer on work restrictions. I was trying to reinforce the concept that the employer is really in control of the situation at the beginning and what it does goes along way to enforce the restrictions or not.