Employee on leave working from home

Kent · March 2004

We have an employee that will soon go out on leave for major surgery. Recuperation time will be 6-8 weeks. She will be covered under our Short Term Disability plan and FMLA. She has indicated that a couple of weeks after surgery, she would like to start working from home on her laptop. I've seen threads about requiring someone to work from home while out on FMLA approved leave is not recommended. But what about when the employee requests the option to do this. The nature of her job would allow her to do quite a bit of her work from home. Would we still need a doctor's release to show she is able to return to work, even at home?

HR in CA · March 2004

I wouldn't do it. However, if you feel strongly that the employee should be allowed to work at home, I would have a doctor's release for working at home before allowing it. I would go the extra step and provide a job description to the doctor and indicate which of the job responsibilities he/she would be doing at home. Question:

Would you then pay her hours worked for the time spent working at home or continue to pay her under your STD plan?

deniseE · March 2004

Do you have a policy regarding "remote working"?

We also just had an employee have surgery and while she cannot drive, she is able to work...so she's been doing some work from home...she's using intermit. FMLA for this...

a lot of it is trust in the employee too...

we don't have a specific policy covering this...but we should.

Kent · March 2004

I tend to agree with you. I don't think this is a good idea. Part of my question was what would our Short Term Disability carrier think about the employee working and still on leave. I would assume they would have some real questions about this EE's "disability." That would then entail us trying to break out the hours as you asked.

Balloonman · March 2004

It is not illogical to be incapacitated from surgery. i.e. being unable to travel back and forth to work........the actual physical recovery from the surgery itself. But could someone in this state be able to work on a computer say 4hours a day? Certainly. If you get the okay from the doctor, then contact the insurance company..........I doubt they would have a problem paying less in disability payments if she can work a few hours a day at home, and you pay her for that. This is what is called a win win situation. If she is the kind of person you are comfortable with, knowing she will do the work, what do you have to lose?
My $0.02 worth.
DJ The Balloonman

Beave · March 2004

Ditto balloonman. The time spent working from home would obviously not be counted as FMLA. As Balloonman said, this might be the win-win circumstance that promotes improved relationships. Do you have any union contracts that address this issue that this employee belongs to?

HRratrace · March 2004

I agree that it is a "do-able" situation, but I also think that you are setting yourself and your company up for a touchy situation...is this a precednet that you are willing to set for anyone and everyone company-wide? You can't just do it for the "good" employees. If you do it for her, then you have to be willing to do it for anyone else that may ask as well.

Don D · March 2004

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 03-03-04 AT 03:32PM (CST)[/font][br][br]I agree that it's do-able and that it's not prohibited and that the insurance company would enjoy paying her less (if in fact they allow part-day absences due to illness). It's also a fact that it will present a considerable administrative burden for you or somebody to handle, track and fuss with.

I would not do it UNLESS the employee is extremely critical to the operation and their work is largely going undone in their absence and the end result of doing this will by far outweigh the administrative nightmare.

Another thing to consider: If the employee is working half time at home, that will in effect double their available FML entitlement and you may find yourself in this mess twice as long as you anticipated.

Carey · March 2004

Yes you would still need a doctors note and I agree that I would want it to spell out what activities the employee could do and how long each day/week they could work at home. Our STD carrier allows for part-time disability, so the benefit would be reduced for the amount of pay they receive for work.

We don't have a formal telecommuting policy, but we do have a guideline that spells out what kind of positions and employees make good candidates for telecommuting. We also have an agreement that documents with the employee that the arrangement can be discontinued at any time. We consider it on a case by case basis, so I don't think you would necessarily be obligated to let anyone who wanted to work from home do it. But if you later have a similarly situated employee request it, you'd need a very good reason to deny it.

Employee on leave working from home

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