Description

An employee hands you a doctor’s note. Another asks to work from home. A third keeps snacks at their workstation, even though food isn’t allowed there, and tells you it’s for a medical condition. What do you do?

For most managers, the honest answer is “panic, then call HR.” In this 60-minute webinar, you’ll learn what the Americans with Disabilities Act requires of you as a manager. We’ll cover who the law protects, how to spot an accommodation request even when nobody calls it one, how to run the interactive process, and when you can legally say no. You’ll leave with a practical checklist and a clear idea of which mistakes put your company in front of a lawyer.

Learning Objectives:-

• What the Americans with Disabilities Act is, which employers it covers, and why your state may cover even smaller businesses
• The three ways an employee can qualify as disabled, and why temporary, episodic, or medication-controlled conditions can count
• How the ADA protects both job applicants and employees, and whether you have to hire someone with a disability
• How to handle medical paperwork, and where to find free sample forms
• Why medical information has to stay confidential, and who actually needs to know
• How to approach mental health disabilities, such as anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder, and physical health disabilities
• What reasonable accommodations look like in practice, from schedule changes to assistive technology to leave
• What the interactive process is, how to run it, and why you need to document every step
• Whether you have to accept the accommodation the employee asks for, and when you can say no
• What to do when an accommodation conflicts with a work rule, such as no food at workstations
• Why employees don’t have to use “magic words” to request an accommodation, and when your obligation to act begins
• Whether you can fire someone with a disability
• Whether you have to let disabled employees work from home, what recent court decisions say, and why your job descriptions matter
• The most common mistakes managers make, and how to avoid them
• How the FMLA and the ADA work together
• How the ADA benefits everyone
• A step-by-step manager checklist you can use the next time an employee raises a health issue

Who Should Attend:-

• Frontline supervisors and team leads: You’re usually the first person an employee tells, and a casual comment can legally count as a request. What you say in that first conversation matters.
• Department managers: You approve schedules, enforce work rules, and make discipline decisions, and any of the three can turn into an ADA issue.
• New managers: Learn the rules before your first accommodation request, not halfway through it.
• Directors and senior leaders: Your managers follow your example. You need to know where the legal lines are so you can back them up and keep job descriptions defensible.
• Small business owners who manage employees directly: Find out whether the ADA, or your state’s version of it, applies to you, and what to do when it does.