Steel toed shoes and Diabetes
sonny
2,117 Posts
1) If you employee custodians, do your require them to wear steel toed shoes?
Not really related question:
2) We require certain positions to wear steel toed boots. We have an employee who has presented a note from his GP that he can not wear ANY type of steel shoes d/t his condition (Type I diabetes) I have found where there are boots available for people with diabetes and have spoken with a person with diabetes who will not go WITHOUT steel toed boots. I am thinking of writing his diabetes Doctor and asking for his opinon? Any other ideas? Would you accomodate? Have you ever run up against this?
Thanks in advance
Not really related question:
2) We require certain positions to wear steel toed boots. We have an employee who has presented a note from his GP that he can not wear ANY type of steel shoes d/t his condition (Type I diabetes) I have found where there are boots available for people with diabetes and have spoken with a person with diabetes who will not go WITHOUT steel toed boots. I am thinking of writing his diabetes Doctor and asking for his opinon? Any other ideas? Would you accomodate? Have you ever run up against this?
Thanks in advance
Comments
As for the diabetes thing, we have no experience with that. If I had that situation, I think I would offer the worker steel covers for the shoes. They're not very expensive and may be an effective trade off. I might ask the worker to discuss with his/her physician whether the cover would be acceptable.
Otherwise, it's risky to attempt to be a medical professional if you're not one. Defer to the medical professional's suggestion, and apply what you have available for your jobs--steel toe shoes, covers, or nothing if the job doesn't require foot protection. Hopefully, your foot protection is based on the need to place a barrier between the workers' feet and falling objects?? If not, why would you require a steel-toe shoe? Maybe an opportunity to review your PPE requirements for custodial care. I would not contact the physician directly, but you can put together some information, give it to the worker, and ask the worker to present it to the physician--including a check list of sorts of the job's requirements that includes steel-toe shoe as a PPE requirement.
If the worker is truly not able to wear a steel-toe shoe, you are right back to where you should review the policy, review viable alternatives, or assess whether the worker should be allowed to continue in the job--maybe for a mobility issue?
best wishes.
We have contemplated the steel covers and asked the ee to discuss with his Dr., but may put in writing as you suggest to take to the Dr. as we have already verbally asked ee to talk to Dr. and he didn't quite "get" it.
We will see what the Doctor says. . I have a long standing aversion to playing Dr. so that won't be an issue
Thanks again. .
As for putting the info in writing, we had a similar issue recently with STD. Our worker continually failed to follow through with a medical stmt for STD. We are insured, and (against my better judgment) we agreed to hold up her claim form until she got the Dr. stmt to complete the pkg before it was mailed to the ins. company for processing. My gut instinct must have gotten to me because just after Christmas I decided that we had held the claim long enough. I mailed to the ins. company without the Dr. stmt. Within a couple of days the employee complained that "we" were holding up her claim (we had never put the request for her medical stmt in writing for her share with her Dr. (except for the printed form in the claim pkg). I was able to respond (in writing) that we had mailed the documents we had and the Dr. stmt was outstanding. Likewise, as a matter of routine procedure, the ins. company did the same. You'll never guess, or maybe you will. A Dr. stmt quickly surfaced, and the claim pkg was complete.
There is something to be said for the formality of written requests!
Hope things work out for you & your company.