CASE 1 Mary Corey

Section 1

The decision by an employer to terminate the employment of an individual comes with a possible risk of legal challenge. This is true for the involuntary termination which normally results from the dissatisfaction of the employer with the performance of an employee especially where the productivity of the employee fails to deliver the list expected results due to mental disability. The Americans with disabilities act prohibits from discrimination against an employee who is qualified but with disability in regard to hiring and discharging them of the employment. The termination of Mary’s employment contract could make the organization that Helen works on its behalf to run into legal issues regarding the discrimination of an employee on the basis of their disability. The ADA act defines mental impairment as a disability that leads to a substantial limitation on an individual’s main life activities including any psychological or mental disorder like mental or emotional illness (California Department of Fair Employment & Housing, n.d). The Act provides that an organisation should provide reasonable accommodation to someone who is qualified but gas mental disability, where they ask a time off because they are stressed or depressed. The employee need to, however, have communicated such a request for the time off for change at workplace for the same reason involving a medical condition.  Such a statement is enough to put any manager on notice that the concerned employee is giving a request for a reasonable accommodation. Where the need for the employee to be accommodated is not obvious, the manager can ask for sensible documentation shows the functional limitations or the disability of the employee. The reasonable accommodation should apply unless such an application will lead to undue hardship. This accommodation may involve work schedules modification or redesigning the job (Dessler, 2015).

The case of Mary represent a scenario where Helen as a her supervisor would run into legal issues regarding the termination of the contract given that it can be alleged in a court of law that the employee was experiencing mental incapacitation that led   to her being unable to perform in her work. Given that Mary had asked for various sick leaves and even notified Helen that she was undergoing mental hardship, this would be ground for legal tussle, since the assumption will be that the employee had adequately informed the employer of their medical condition. Furthermore, Mary had informed Helen that she would have preferred to be transferred to another department , a step that she saw as necessary for her to fell regain her individual work performance since in such a department the pressure will not be so great. However, Mary would have to have given the manager a request that is not vague, and the request to have been in written form , and which states clearly that she had a mental disability that prevent them from thinking or acting normally. If there was no proof of such a notification , Helen would have a very weak case to answer since the issue would be whether the organisation knew , and whether the information was enough to let the management know that they might be dealing with an ADA case. The Act further provides that in order to determine the right reasonable accommodation, the employer may be required to have a process that interactive but informal with the said employee who needs to be accommodated so as to identify the limitations for the individual  and the kind of the accommodation to deal with the limitations(Dessler, 2015). By doing this, Helen and her manager Betty would avoid any legal problems that would result from discharging Mary.

Section 2

In order to help in improving the performance of Mary, Helen should invoke the implementation of the Employee Assistance System. The system provides advisory and counselling services and the use of such a program as a popular system of addressing individual problems of an employees has become very popular, especially for looking into the counselling for mental health. In fact, the mental health of an individual is the most common issue that is addressed by such a program and family problems come in second. This is because issues related to family matters and conditions such as stress or depression are the main factors that account for the sick days that are normally taken by the employees (Dessler, 2015). Such a programme would go a long way in providing assistance to Mary so that to reduce significantly the number of sick leaves taken and to achieve an overall improvement in her work performance. Helen should also involve the use of the system to deal with any family issues or problems that are causing the change in organisational behaviour of Mary. In this manner, the organisational conflicts that arises out of the change in Mary’s behaviour will be eliminate and a good working relationship restored with fellow colleagues. To achieve this, Helen will have to communicate with the employee regarding the availability of the system and why it is important to be proactive in its use.

 For such a system to work , the employees in a firm should be encourage to have an attitude that anyone can be in need of the services provided by it at a point. From the perspective of an employer, implementation of the system sends out the message to the staff that their wellbeing is also very important. Through effective communication, the employees will note that the system will offers them self-help tools which they should use. However, the employers and managers should have several issues in mind concerning the implementation of the system. The most important of the issues is that all those involved in the program, whether the Employee Assistance System’s staff or the supervisors should have much respect for confidentiality. This involves keeping all the files locked, reducing the identifying information and limiting the access of the information of a person using the system. The legal issues involved in the utilization of the program should also be considered. The managers and supervisors should ensure that the purpose of the program is defined, eligibility of the employee outlined, responsibilities and roles of the system, employer personnel and provide the procedures that are used in this plan (Dessler, 2015). When all these have been fulfilled, employees like Mary will gain the confidence of trusting the system to resolve their pressing personal and family issues and where the issues cannot be managed by it, necessary referrals for further attention will be provided. Thus, Helen should communicate to Mary the need to use the system to address her issues so as to restore and improve her work performance, to strike work-life balance and to have good relation with her fellow colleagues and employer (Dessler, 2015).

Section 3

Helen should have noticed and addressed the issues immediately the consistent drop in Mary’s work performance and change in behaviour more so while relating with fellow colleagues started showing. This follows the principle that the human resource has a strategic role of striking the balance between the employee’s needs and the interests of the organisation. But Helen followed the assumption that the management should take a softer approach while dealing with the needs of the employees while allowing the interests of the organisation to prevail over those of the people within the organisation (Hammonds, 2005). Thus, she ought to have communicated with Mary to get to the root of the unusual behaviour and take keen interest in the dropping performance. Through this communication, the issues underlying would have been recognized so that they are arrested before the situation got out of control.

Job withdrawal was also evidenced in this poor performance and the deteriorating relationship between Mary and her colleagues. Job withdrawal refers to a situation where actions are taken whose intention is to place a psychological or physical divide between the employees and the work environment. The lateness and absence of Mary are actions or situations that represent job withdrawal. Withdrawal by an employee is a reflection of their decreasing engagement, so that they become less connected and committed to having their job completed. This aspect can clearly be noticed in performance appraisal which refers to the evaluation of an individual’s present and past performance and relating it to their performance standard. This appraisal allows both the subordinates and the manager to come up with a plan that is appropriate for improving on any deficiencies and reinforcing the strength of the subordinates (Dessler, 2015). Through evaluation of Mary’s past and present job performance over a given time, Helen should have noted the extent of her withdrawal and then take then interacted with her personally to understand the lying problem. Whether the issues were personal or family related, it was easier to handle them sooner than later. The overall results would be the balancing of the needs of the employee and that of the organisation. This through creation of the right environment that will allow the employee to share their problems with their managers or supervisors who will initiate a process of addressing issues. This would work well in a good performance management that makes sense out of the employee’s performance in regard to overall goals of the company (Dessler, 2015).

Section 4

Government Code sections 12940, 12945, 12945.2 relates to the above mentioned case. These sections relates to any discrimination of an employee due to their mental disability and also touches on reasonable accommodation. It refers to a qualified person with disability as one who can carry out the essential job functions whether with reasonable accommodation or not. It recognizes a person with mental impairment as one with such an impairment that lead to substantial limitation on their major activities of life. Working is also regarded as a main life activity and to be limited in it, one need only to limited in carrying out what is required of that particular job. The case of Mary can be regarded in terms of discrimination on the basis of limitation. It, however, provides that for one to be limited considerably in a main working activity, they must be restricted substantially in their capability to carry out a range or class of jobs in different classes in comparison with an average person possessing comparable abilities (California Department of Fair Employment & Housing, n.d).

 

 

References

 Dessler, G (2015). Human Resource Management: Pearson Education. 14th ed.26-416

Hammonds, K. (2005). Teaching Guide for “Why We Hate HR”. Fast Company.4-10

California Department of Fair Employment & Housing (n.d). Disability under the Fair

Employment & Housing Act. Retrieved from:

 http://www.dfeh.ca.gov/res/docs/publications/dfeh-208dh.pdf