Reply to Reasonable Accommodation Abuse?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Federal agency executive here:

I see a number of RAs come across my desk. The real ones are very real and I wouldn’t wish them on anyone.

The ones that smell like bullsh#t…well, they have documentation and meet the standards my agency’s HR has set for approval.

My management position requires me to be in 5 days/week, but I hate the forced RTO of our BU employees. Morale is in the tank and the people who report up to me are all highly educated, self motivated people.

So if you can convince a doctor to give you an RA, go for it. You won’t get push back from me. I’ll support it assuming you don’t flaunt it with hard evidence that you’re faking it. If you don’t have an RA, well I have to be a hard ass on RTO.

I have not seen an RA yet for religious practices. But I will support it with minimal questions. Similarly, I have told staff to use S/L liberally and told them to not provide me with a write up about why they are using S/L. They already have to attest to the reason in our leave system and I don’t need more explanation.

Unfortunately, these are the rules of the game set by the current Administration. And I can’t hate on anyone who plays the game according to the rules they have set. So please get yourself an RA. My agency actually seems to hand out temporary RAs (30-120 days telework) easily. [/quote]

I think it is really unfair to those of us who gut it out to give a RA for cases that don’t really deserve it. That’s not good for moral. I have no issue with my colleagues who have RAs for debilitating illnesses that makes commuting a true burden or to facilitate ongoing medical care. But I would be extremely annoyed if someone got an RA for something that I cope with myself.

Also note that OP’s issue is that this woman’s RA means that she can only perform menial tasks that can be done from home due to security needs. This means the rest of the team is overworked. That is a problem regardless of whether the RA is justified. [/quote]

Executive here again: if she’s doing menial tasks that means she’s not getting promoted. If there’s an issue here - i.e. she’s doing tasks that are too low for her rated grade - then that’s a different discussion. At that point management should be looking at whether or not she needs to be demoted or if she needs to start taking on harder tasks that more accurately represent her grade level.

But none of that has anything to do with getting an RA. I have numerous GS 15s who work from home full-time on an RA and do extremely complicated work and lead initiatives commensurate with their grade level. I also have GS 8s doing more menial task from home on a full-time basis because they have an RA. The RA doesn’t play an issue in any of this.

The way my agency has it set up there’s a firewall between the RA decision process and me as a leader who oversees multiple teams and managers. In my opinion, this is smart. The employee applies for an RA to our HR division. I am informed by HR of the application and HR’s decision on the RA. HR asks me if I have any comments but at the end of the day I am not the decider of whether or not an employee gets an RA to work from home, either full-time or part-time. I prefer it this way because I can say the decision was out of my hands if anyone complains. Of course HR wants to know if I have any information about the employee and whether the need for an RA is truly legitimate and they will take that into consideration, particularly if there’s documentary evidence.

Again, please refer to my previous post: if you qualify for an RA go get it. That seems to be the easiest and most legitimate way to work from home. I think you’ll be surprised at what doctors are willing to do for patients in order to poke the eye of the federal government right now[/quote]

Manager here. One concern I have is that we're starting to see a crackdown at my agency. Clearly necessary, long-term RAs are still going to keep getting through, but many more things on the edge are getting rejected. We can't do short-term RAs anymore, and it has gotten very hard to get limited part-time or as-needed RAs for telework.[/quote]

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