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Rules Orientation Is Your Best Bet for Cultural Fit
"It’s better to be a pirate than join the Navy.”
That’s a loaded quote from a favorite cultural maven, Steve Jobs. Keep it in mind for the next few minutes, because I’m going to tell you the best thing you can do when hiring for cultural fit is figuring out who is a pirate — and who is a great fit for the navy.
Let me guess: You think your culture is unique.
Your employment brand is strong, with Glassdoor singing your praises and local newspapers dropping by to click photos of your workspace and write glossy profiles about how much passion your employees have.
I’m not hating on that. There’s one little problem, through. You’re allowing your managers to decide who fits your culture, right?
Your hiring managers aren’t great at interviewing for knowledge, skills and abilities. They’re even worse when it comes to deciding who fits your culture.
Rules orientation works like this: People who are 'high rules' actively look for the operations manual on the shelf when they’re dealing with issues. 'Low-rules' people, on the other hand, cringe at the thought of having to comply with an operations manual.
How do you get a better handle on helping your managers evaluate cultural fit? First, you need to define your culture, but, more importantly, you need to identify the type of person across all job titles who is successful in your culture.
It’s impossible to write an article that meets everyone’s needs from a cultural-fit perspective. But let’s assume this: Most people who promote their workplace culture as a competitive advantage tout some similar items as key to what makes them different.
Your best chance at successfully hiring for cultural fit is to figure out what type of DNA becomes a star in your company and then find a behavioral assessment tool that can help you measure it.
The problem is there are only a few behavioral characteristics that can provide a true link to the type of company you have. If I were going to choose a single behavioral characteristic to tie cultural fit to — regardless of company — it would be what I call “rules orientation.”
Rules orientation works like this: People who are “high rules” actively look for the operations manual on the shelf when they’re dealing with issues. Doesn’t matter what their annual salary is, high-rules people want to be told what to do.
That doesn’t mean they won’t do the job in question at a high level, but as you might expect, you really can’t expect a high-rules person to have a jones for innovation. They value structure and order.
Translation: They are great fits to join your “navy.”
Low-rules people, on the other hand, cringe at the thought of having to comply with an operations manual. Low-rules people love organizational chaos, and they want to figure out what to do given a specific set of circumstances.
Low-rules people will help you build the operations manual, but you better have another challenge/job for them once it’s built because they’ll refuse to have their daily activities managed to that degree.
These types of people are organizational pirates. Combine this trait with strong cognitive skills and high assertiveness, and the only thing missing is an eye-patch that matches the person’s version of business casual.
Why is rules orientation your best bet?
First, if your business revolves in any way around innovation, you’ll need a higher percentage of low-rules people than most companies. Innovation means you’re creating something out of nothing.
Asking a high-rules person to innovate on a daily basis is problematic. Remember that an individual being high rules isn’t good or bad; it’s just who they are. It’s up to you to make the right match for your company.
But wait! Before you accuse me of writing only for the software industry, let’s ponder an alternative. Many of you are HR/talent professionals in very conservative companies where risk management is a primary concern.
Even so, rules orientation is still important. From time to time, you might think you need someone with the ability to innovate or be a change agent. If that’s your goal, rules orientation is the best directional tool available.
The problem is that your company most likely can’t provide an environment where the low-rules individual can be successful. You can want it and your hiring manager can want it, but you’ll likely still fail when hiring a low-rules person.
A low-rules person joining a high red tape company would probably lead to frustrations from the level of approval that would be necessary to get things done. It will be tough for them to be successful (often in their own eyes) because of the time it takes to push a great idea through the approval change.
Does the candidate in front of you want to be a pirate or join the navy? The answer is your best chance to add a little science to how you view cultural fit when hiring today.
Break Through the Noise
If you’ve ever heard your employees say they “weren’t aware” of a benefit or “didn’t hear” about a meeting, maybe what you have is a “failure to communicate.” It’s time to try something different. Download our ebook of tips and best practices and get practical advice about communicating more effectively with your workforce.
The ‘Lego-ization’ of Learning
Analytics, machine learning, big data and the consumerization of content have transformed the way learning is delivered — and there is no going back.
While the information might be the same, the format it comes in is radically different, said Jennifer Stempel, a director at Deloitte Consulting. Think snackable chunks of learning that can be digested in three to five minutes, and massive content libraries that employees can access at will. “What people need to know hasn’t changed, but how they learn it has,” she said. “It’s about offering new platforms that enable employees to be in control of how they access learning.”
The increased focus on the need for training — it’s a top three priority for executives today according to Deloitte — coupled with the flurry of innovative new technologies and platforms to support learning have drawn a lot of attention and investment into the space. The global e-learning market was expected to reach $107 billion by 2015, up from about $32 billion in 2010; and the global market for learning management systems, or LMS, is expected to grow to more than $11 billion by 2020 from just over $4 billion in 2015.
Keep Your Workers Yearning to Continue Learning
By Richard Y. HuAccording to Bersin by Deloitte, U.S. corporations increased their spending on employee training by an average of 10 percent in 2014 (the fifth consecutive year of growth) as businesses responded to a growing skills gap in engineering, scientific and technical fields during the economic recovery. The largest portion of that money was spent on leadership development. But are companies doing it right by increasing their learning and development budgets? Here are some issues that human resources professionals should consider.The understated importance of improving competitiveness: According to a 2010 study by the former Bersin & Associates titled “High-Impact Learning Culture: The Best 40 Practices for Creating an Empowered Enterprise,” companies that are better at skills and talent development have a competitive edge: They are 32 percent more likely to be first in a market, have 37 percent greater employee productivity, 34 percent greater response to customer needs, 26 percent greater ability to develop quality products, 58 percent more likely to have the skills necessary to meet future demands, and are 17 percent more likely to be a market share leader.The (mis)perceived importance for retention and attraction of talent: On the other hand, learning and development opportunities can affect a company’s ability to attract and retain talent, though possibly not as much as HR professionals would believe. According to a 2012 survey conducted by Allied Van Lines, on average 23 percent of new employees will leave a company within a year. That survey also found that on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being “very likely,” HR professionals believe that 58 percent of employees leave because of a lack of development opportunities.Aligning the program’s goals with the company: Learning and development programs can service an unlimited array of skills and knowledge. As an HR professional, the first thing you should consider is how a training program would be aligned with your company’s overall business strategy and needs. For example, if your company is expanding internationally, how can your learning and development program allow your current workforce to succeed in new business environments abroad? On the other hand, if the company intends to hire new employees in other countries, how will you implement a learning and development program overseas that can help educate them in the culture of the company?Setting metrics for the program: Other considerations include cost and being able to effectively evaluate the company’s return on investment. According to a 2010 McKinsey & Co. quarterly survey, only 8 percent of companies indicated they tracked the program’s returns on investments. However, no single set of metrics apply to every program so it must be tailored.Choosing the right balance of programming: Finally, you should consider the appropriate balance of the types of activities in the program, which may use social and collaborative learning; widespread, but not overly reliant on electronic learning; and action learning); and limited trainer-led instruction.Richard Y. Hu is an associate attorney at Taft, Stettinus & Hollister in Chicago. To comment, email editors@workforce.com.
“It’s an exciting market right now, and there is a lot of disruption going on,” said Bill Pelster, a principal at Deloitte Consulting. The big vendors are rolling out a variety of new tools to make training easier to access and consume, and the market is crowded with new startups offering a host of innovative content forms, curation tools and platforms to support knowledge-sharing. “It will be an interesting year for M&A, and new products in this space.”
The Micro-learning Trend
While learning leaders haven’t given up on the classroom, more learning is done on the fly via computers, tablets and mobile apps. The way employees select and consume content has also changed. Even if the training they need is in a lengthy e-learning course, employees no longer feel obligated to follow it from start to finish, said Sue Rodeman, vice president of product marketing at Skillsoft. “There may be multiple five-minute videos in that 60-minute course, but they will only view the ones that are relevant right now,” she said.
That means learning leaders — and the vendors who support them — are rethinking how to package learning content, how to make it more easily accessible and how to track its use. For years, one of the key performance measures for the training department has been the number of courses taken, but if employees don’t feel the need to complete courses, that metric doesn’t work. “With micro-learning, the completion concept is less important,” Rodeman said. “It’s more about measuring the impact to the business.”
The transition from full courses to tiny, training chunks has resulted in a number of new tools and content options from vendors, including short-form video options, access to massive open online courses, or MOOCs, gamification tools to drive engagement, cloud-based content storage to ease access, and social media platforms to foster knowledge-sharing and discussion across the organization. “Vendors are reinventing the platforms their customer use to deliver training,” Stempel said.
They are also offering new tools to develop their own content pieces, and access to external content. Many of the bigger LMS companies and content providers are building out libraries of video-based material; the focus is on short stand-alone modules that can be repurposed in multiple courses. Jeff Carpenter, CEO of consultancy Caveo Learning likens these content chunks to Legos, which training departments can reconfigure to build a variety of courses. He notes that larger companies, like his client Dell Inc., have millions of pieces of content, so they have to start thinking about how to “design for reuse” if they want to stay nimble. “Otherwise, managing that volume of content will get unruly fast.”
Analytics Made Easy
Along with repurposing content, customers are also looking to vendors to help them streamline access to these bits and pieces of learning through better content curation tools.
“There is so much content out there,” Rodeman said. And it’s not just the material in the training library. Employees are accessing external content, social media content, content produced by individual business units and informal bits of information shared between employees. “Companies need tools to better curate all of this information so the right content can get to the right people at the right time,” she said.
“In today’s world, integration and aggregation of content is paramount,” said Nag Chandrashekar, vice president of learning and mobile product strategy at Saba Software Inc. “And it all has to interact seamlessly.”
There are a few small tech companies offering content curation tools, and vendors such as Skillsoft are building out their own offerings to make finding and accessing the right bit of content or knowledge easier. At the heart of this trend is analytics tools that enable companies to automate the content selection process for individual users, Rodeman said. Skillsoft is partnering with IBM to develop algorithms to assess learning needs and gaps and to make content recommendations. “We want to automate the process of figuring out what content is right for the learner,” Rodeman said.
Vendors are also employing analytics to help customers predict future learning needs. Predictive analytics for learning has been a goal for training vendors and companies for the past several years, and it appears that these efforts are finally coming to fruition. In the past year, vendors have rolled out new dashboards, analytics tools and machine learning algorithms to predict needs.
Saba for example, now offers TIM the Intelligent Mentor, a set of machine learning algorithms that respond to learner behavior and make recommendations on what content would be useful and help learning leaders track training usage. TIM “helps us see what people are using, and what actions to take,” said Saba customer Chris Salles, who is director of learning for Sally Beauty Holdings Inc. That has been especially valuable, as most of the company’s employees work in retail environments and might not have access to human resources managers to tell them what courses to take and when.
Saba is now taking the analytics technology beyond the individual learner or organization, and incorporating benchmark data to give customers a broader perspective on how their learning efforts and results compare with their peers. For example, the data might show a company that it offers more instructor-led training than average, or its number of hours of training is higher or lower compared with industry standards, said Charles DeNault, senior director of product marketing at Saba. “Benchmarking will allow training managers to step outside their organizations, and help them see whether they are the exception or the rule. The benchmarking technology is still in the development phase, but Saba expects to have a few case studies out early this year.
Training When You Need It
With all of these technological advances, companies still need vendors to make these tools easy-to-use and accessible. Jesse Hartigan, national training manager for Dyson, the global vacuum cleaner company, said he initially chose Mindflash Technologies Inc. for his company’s LMS because “they had a free demo, and I was signed up and using it in 20 minutes.” He stayed with the provider because it continued to improve its offering adding tools that Dyson needed. The most important: a mobile app to support training in the field, which is vital for Dyson’s widely dispersed sales team. “Mobile is really important to us because one-third of our team is on the road all of the time.” He especially liked that employees could access things like PDFs and learning summaries on their mobile devices, which they can access right before a presentation or sales meeting. “It helps us reinforce consistency in our messaging,” he said.
Dyson isn’t alone. Mobile learning has been a popular trend in training for several years, and vendors have been steadily rolling out apps that enable trainees to access content anywhere and at anytime. LMS vendors, including Mindflash, Saba and Skillsoft all offer mobile for learning and learning management, and their customers are eager to adopt these features. Recent data from nonprofit benchmarking organization APQC show that half of all organizations expect to offer training via mobile devices by 2020.
As companies adopt these technologies, also expect vendors to prove the value of their content and platforms to maintain their business. For Dyson, that’s all about “stickiness.” “If we are paying for content, it needs to add value,” Hartigan said. His team measures stickiness based on sales performance and watching trainees on the job. “That’s how we vet our training partners,” he said.
How to Choose
With all of these new technologies, it can be difficult for companies to know where to invest their training dollars. Sally Beauty’s Salles encourages companies to look for vendors that make the effort to understand the organization’s learning needs before they give a sales pitch. “It’s a relationship-based business,” he said. “Vendors should focus on your problems and how the product can solve them.”
Companies should also consider testing new technology with a few small pilot projects to see if it’s worth a broader investment, Deloitte’s Stempel added. “It’s a great way to test new technology, and to sell the concept internally to stakeholders if it works.”
And finally, don’t get so enamored with the technology and lose sight of what content the learner needs, said Elissa Tucker, research program manager at APQC. She notes that soft skills training and leadership development are the key challenges companies will face in the next five years, so they need to think about how the best training paradigms to help them close these gaps. “If you foster an environment of continuous learning where employees have tools to guide their own learning and development, you can begin to close these gaps.”
Tenaris: Optimas Gold Winner for Training
Tenaris, which is a global supplier of tubes and services for the energy industry, sought to position itself as a leader in corporate education using an innovative new technology.
The initiative, MOOCs and SPOCs: Pioneering Innovation in Corporate Education, took advantage of the recent, cost-effective and global phenomenon in education, massive open online courses. The mass classes that can be accessed from around the world were especially useful to Tenaris, which has highly specialized employees across the globe. It also took advantage of small private online courses, which offer more specialized classes to Tenaris employees.
The New York Times labeled 2012 as the “Year of the MOOC,” and by 2013 the Buenos Aires, Argentina-based company had launched the MOOCs and SPOCs project at TenarisUniversity, which was created to reduce the cost of corporate education while improving quality. Creating an online university also appealed to Tenaris’ digitally fluent employees.
The 2014-15 MOOCs, which reached an audience outside of Tenaris employees, included introduction to steel and introduction to numerical control courses. The SPOCs, geared toward specialized employees, included relationship marketing, thermo-mechanical processing of metals and other specialty courses. Tenaris University plans to develop more MOOCs and SPOCs for the 2015-16 calendar year.
The formation of Tenaris University has helped the company teach on a global scale, and attract a new generation of digitally inclined employees to the oil and gas industry.
The initiative was cost-effective and provided solid results in strategic positioning. Tenaris said by using MOOCs and SPOCs it was able to spend 20 percent of the amount it would have cost using traditional methods to the tune of $800,000 in savings.
For its use of emerging MOOC and SPOC technology to improve its corporate education and reduce costs, Tenaris is the gold 2015 Optimas Award winner for Training.
Andie Burjek is a Workforce editorial intern. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.
Editor's note: This article was updated Nov. 23, 2015, to clarify that the MOOCs and SPOCs project began in 2013. TenarisUniversity was created in 2005.
Robert De Niro: Your Internship Is Waiting, Your Mentorship Is Needed
Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway star in "The Intern." All photos courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
I’m gonna make Robert De Niro an offer he can and will undoubtedly refuse.
We have an editorial internship available, so if he wants some extra intern experience, I’d be happy to pull some strings.
De Niro’s latest movie, “The Intern,” opens this week (Sept. 25), so perhaps the famed method actor is looking to do a biopic on say H.L. Mencken and needs to work on his journalistic chops. The man did learn to speak Sicilian for his role in “The Godfather Part II,” to play saxophone for his part in “New York, New York” and, most famously, to box like a champ for his Academy Award-winning role as Jake LaMotta in “Raging Bull.” From what I've read, he's also a thorough interviewer of sources to learn about the intricacies of the characters he intends to play.
Yes, I know that opening is a play on Marlon Brando’s line in “The Godfather,” but De Niro did play Vito Corleone in “The Godfather Part II,” so it’s not completely off-base. I planned to use that line as an ice-breaker if I landed an interview with De Niro about “The Intern,” but alas it was not meant to be. I was, however, able to get a sneak peak at the Nancy Meyers written and directed comedy, which co-stars De Niro as 70-year-old intern Ben Whittaker and Anne Hathaway as Jules Ostin, the CEO of a successful e-commerce women’s clothing startup called About the Fit, and here are my thoughts.
(Note: Some spoilers below.)
Speaking of Brando, De Niro is at his best when he looks in the mirror in his movies. You really see the “soul” of his characters that way. Remember the power of LaMotta (De Niro) reciting Brando’s “On the Waterfront” lines in “Raging Bull” or Travis Bickle (De Niro) acting “threatened” as he prepares himself for mayhem in “Taxi Driver”? In “The Intern,” one of the funniest scenes is a short one where De Niro looks in the mirror practicing the best way to keep his eyes blinking naturally for when he’s talking to Jules.
We learn just before Ben’s first meeting with Jules that one of her eccentricities is she doesn’t like — or trust — people who don’t blink enough while talking to her, which is, I’m guessing, intentionally ironic as Jules seldom blinks when she’s having a conversation. Her eyes are wide open if you will. The beauty of De Niro’s role as the “observant” Ben is, in most scenes, he subtly blinks more than normal in Jules' presence. Watch for it in the movie; it’s a thing of beauty.
But there isn’t much time for blinking in the film. Meyers does a masterful job of establishing a quick pace to the movie that keeps it interesting. There’s a fantastic rhythm that’s anchored by the film’s nondiegetic score.
While Ben is the intern, he is also a mentor to Jules and some of the other younger workers on staff, which, I’m guessing, must be what it’s like to work with De Niro in real life.
He is a master at not only acting but also “becoming” the person he portrays, and he seldom fails. In this case, we find out that Ben, a former phonebook executive, lacks purpose in his life after his wife died and he retired. Of course, About the Fit — I’m not sure why a company name was picked with the initials ATF; it makes me think of the government agency and connotes a volatile environment — is a hip 2-year-old growing company, which asks intern candidates to create a Web video about themselves instead of a cover letter.
Acting the part of an older job candidate without much current tech savvy, Ben admits in his video that he had to ask his grandchild for tech support to figure out what a USB connector is. Later, once hired, Ben can’t figure out how to start his computer. It’s a bit cliché, but still funny.
Meyers has said Ben is the best male character she’s ever written, and it’s easy to imagine how she went to great lengths to tie the character to De Niro the real person by adding subtleties bordering on autobiographical portraits. The film is set in New York, De Niro’s stomping grounds, and there’s even a Tribeca reference, the place in New York where De Niro set up his entertainment business and, of course, his famous film festival. In one scene Ben offers to get sushi for Jules, who forgot to eat. It's one of De Niro’s favorite foods. In another scene, Ben, Jules and three other male employees drink shots of tequila until Jules has had too much. Patron is reportedly one of De Niro’s favorites.
It’s fun getting to know the work environment at About the Fit and the quirky characters who make up its staff (including Adam Devine and Christina Scherer [pictured with De Niro and Hathaway above] who play Jason and Becky in the film). Someone in the company rings a bell to recognize when something good happens to the company (such as getting a record 2,500 likes —hearts? — on an Instagram picture) or to recognize workers’ achievements, no matter how small. Ben gets recognized for cleaning a perpetually messy communal desk, and it’s great watching him sheepishly accept the praise. Getting the bell rung for him earns Ben a visit from the office masseuse (Rene Russo), and the two form an instant connection.
To show how busy Jules is, and perhaps her lack of leadership experience, she tries to do everything. She rides a bike around the office so she can get to her next destination faster, plans meetings in five-minute intervals, and even answers and handles customer service complaints when bridesmaid dresses show up in the wrong color. She promises to inspect the replacement shipment of dresses herself, gives the client her personal cell number if there are problems and even refunds the person’s money.
Hathaway for her part does an excellent job portraying the workaholic Ostin, and there is excellent chemistry between her and De Niro that jumps off the screen. You can feel the pressure mounting in Jules’ head as she tries to balance running a company that has quickly grown to 220 people with her family life, which we find out is difficult for her. Her husband (Anders Holm) agreed to take on stay-at-home Dad duties so Jules could focus on her career, but the decision obviously has worn on both of them. And some of the other moms are critical of the decision, which leads Jules at one point to exasperatedly say, “Are we really still critical of working moms?” Indeed.
I don’t want to spoil the film, but one of the only things that bothered me about it is how easily Jules forgives someone who hurts her badly. Earlier in the film, when she’s feeling the pressure of having to find a CEO to essentially be her boss, she says incredulously, “Get me some CEO lessons.” Truth is, she doesn’t need them; she just needs a mentor to point her in the right direction. She is a natural leader. In the aforementioned forgiveness scene, it feels odd to see this strong female leader seem weak in her acceptance of a personal betrayal even if it makes for a nice Hollywood moment.
“The Intern” is an excellent portrait of startup office life in 2015, and I highly recommend it. What sets it apart is the mentor-intern aspect of the movie, although at times it seems Hathaway’s character is the one going through an internship rather than De Niro's. After all, while millennials get most of the workplace attention these days, there is obviously a lot of older workers with a lot of knowledge to share and vice versa for that matter. That’s what internships are all about.
Right, Mr. De Niro?
Time Off for Religious Holidays
Today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which means that many Jewish employees are taking the day off. Is an employer obligated, however, to grant a request for time off when requested for a religious observance?
Title VII requires an employer to reasonably accommodate an employee whose sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance conflicts with a work requirement, unless doing so would pose an undue hardship. An accommodation would pose an undue hardship if it would cause more than de minimis cost on the operation of the employer’s business. Factors relevant to undue hardship may include the type of workplace, the nature of the employee’s duties, the identifiable cost of the accommodation in relation to the size and operating costs of the employer, and the number of employees who will in fact need a particular accommodation.
Scheduling changes, voluntary substitutions, and shift swaps are all common accommodations for employees who need time off from work for a religious practice. It is typically considered an undue hardship to impose these changes on employees involuntarily. However, the reasonable accommodation requirement can often be satisfied without undue hardship where a volunteer with substantially similar qualifications is available to cover, either for a single absence or for an extended period of time.
In other words, permitting Jewish employees a day off for Rosh Hashanah, and next week for Yom Kippur, may impose an undue hardship, depending on the nature of the work performed, the employee’s duties, and how many employees will need the time off. Employees can agree to move shifts around to cover for those who need the days off, but employers cannot force such scheduling changes.
In plain English, there might be ways around granting a day or two off for a Jewish employee to observe the holidays, but do you want to risk the inevitable lawsuit? For example, it will be difficult to assert that a day off creates an undue hardship if you have a history of permitting days off for medical or other reasons.
Legalities aside, however, this issue asks a larger question: What kind of employer do you want to be? Do you want to be a company that promotes tolerance or fosters exclusion? The former will help create the type of environment that not only mitigates against religious discrimination, but spills over into the type of behavior that helps prevent unlawful harassment and other liability issues.
Phobias Can Be Frightening for HR
Employees with phobias can sometimes find protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act. This is perhaps even more likely since 2008, when the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act made the definition of “disability” more inclusive.
Nevertheless, whether the ADA’s protections apply and whether employers must provide particular reasonable accommodations under the law depends largely on the specifics of each situation.
For instance, it may seem logical that someone with acrophobia (a fear of heights) would struggle in a job that requires regular maintenance work on bridges. One might assume that such an employee wouldn’t be a qualified individual under the ADA, and therefore wouldn’t be entitled to a reasonable accommodation under the law. However, a 2011 case before the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals (Miller v. Illinois Department of Transportation) indicated that the answer wasn’t that simple.
The court indicated in this case that working at extreme heights might not have been an essential job function; it was involved in only about 3 percent of the employee’s duties. What’s more, the employee’s fear had been accommodated for several years, as he had not been required to do the tasks that included such work. Ultimately, the appeals court ruled that the employee may have needed to be accommodated after all, and that there was enough left in question with this case for a jury to decide.
A Teacher’s Biggest Fear
More recently, a case (Waltherr-Willard v. Mariemont City Schools) surfaced before the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals involving a teacher with pedophobia: the fear of children. Like the bridge worker, this teacher asked for an accommodation for a phobia that seemed particularly in conflict with the core responsibilities of her job.
This employee taught several high school French courses and one Spanish class, but when she was asked to move to teach elementary school, she revealed to the school that her phobia prevented her from teaching children under 12. As a result, the school allowed the teacher to continue at the high school level. Years later, however, when the school moved its French courses online, the employee was again offered a transfer, but this time to teach middle school.
According to the lawsuit, the teacher did not protest this particular transfer, though she did eventually claim that the reassignment triggered her phobia and requested to be transferred back to high school. After being told no positions were available, the employee retired and later sued under the ADA, claiming that the school district failed to accommodate her under the ADA.
The ADA requires that employers provide reasonable accommodations for employees who — with or without a reasonable accommodation — can perform the essential functions of their jobs.
However, under the ADA, employers are not required to create new positions, or displace other employees as reasonable accommodations.
The court ruled in favor of the employer, indicating that, since there were no other jobs available, the teacher’s request to transfer would have qualified as an undue hardship for the employer. As such, the employer was not required to honor the request. In this case, the court did not speak to whether, as a teacher with a phobia of children, the employee was able to perform the essential functions of her job.
In both cases, the specifics turned out to be very important, but that’s the point. Situations involving the ADA are often much more nuanced and detailed than they originally appear. It’s the job of human resources professionals to take the time to dig into a situation like one of these to make sure that an uninformed snap judgment doesn’t result in a drawn-out court battle.
The next time you catch yourself mentally labeling an accommodation request as ridiculous, take a minute to challenge your assumptions. Revisit the situation to make sure you really have all the information, and separate what you know from what you think you know. Remember that whether a particular accommodation will be needed under the ADA will depend largely on the specifics of the individual employee, his or her functional limitations, the specifics of his or her job, and the resources and circumstances of your organization.
Further, keep in mind that whether a particular accommodation is reasonable will depend on whether granting the accommodation would impose undue hardship on the employer. Undue hardship is imposed if an accommodation comes with “significant difficulty or expense,” but this determination requires an assessment of the resources and circumstances of the employer in relationship to the cost or difficulty of providing the accommodation. Larger employers will generally be expected to make accommodations requiring greater effort or expense than would be required of a smaller employer.
Once you’ve rejected mere assumptions and thought through the particulars of the ADA, fill in the details of each individual employee situation with research (which may include information from the employee and medical professionals, if necessary). When you really take the time to dig into a situation, you might just be surprised, for example, to find out that a bridge worker with acrophobia isn’t ridiculous at all.
Katie Loehrke is an editor with J.J. Keller & Associates, a compliance resource firm, and the editor of J.J. Keller’s Employment Law Today newsletter. To comment, email editors@workforce.com.