Activate Employee Protections Before Disability Symptoms Cause ‘Bad’ Behavior
For employees with a disability, managing symptoms can be a continual struggle. Particularly in the area of mental health and other “unseen” conditions, many employees with a disability feel torn between disclosing their disability and asking for a reasonable accommodation, or keeping quiet out of fear that they will be subjected to judgment or retaliation from supervisors or colleagues. This dilemma is often compounded by a suspicion that the employer will be unwilling to provide a reasonable accommodation in the first place. In fact, the most recent available data from the EEOC shows that reasonable accommodation complaints have been on the rise in recent years. While between 2006 and 2008, EEOC Charges in North Carolina alleging failure to provide reasonable accommodation comprised 21.4 percent of EEOC Charges under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), between the years 2012 and 2014, that figure trended upwards to 34 percent.[1] However, while an employee with a disability may have a well-founded suspicion that their requests will be ignored, failure to communicate with the employer risks losing legal protections. This issue is of even greater concern where the activation of symptoms of an employee’s disability may appear to violate an employer’s personnel policies or code of conduct, such as in the case of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), or Tourette syndrome, to name a few.
