WI SHRM State Conference

Generation Accommodation: ADA Compliance Strategies for Boomers, Xers and Millennials

With a changing and aging workforce, human resources professionals are called to manage a growing number of disabilities in the workplace. Each of the generations currently populating the workforce have unique types of medical conditions requiring accommodation.

Those different generations also approach those medical conditions differently both in the workplace and outside the workplace. Attendees in this seminar will learn some of the basic foundations of federal and state disability accommodation law that apply to all employees in the workplace, regardless of generation.

We will then focus on the growth of particular generational conditions, including mental health conditions, and revisit past practices to accommodate employees with mental health conditions, including episodic conditions. We will explore real-life examples of how employers handled or mishandled accommodations in the workplace. The key take-away from Tom & Scott’s presentation include:

• Understand current federal and state law related to accommodations in the workplace, including the differences in application of state versus federal law, with an emphasis on the practical effect of how appeals courts are interpreting the expansion of disability and accommodation requirements from the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act
• Identify unique aspects of addressing mental health conditions in the workplace, including how requests for an accommodation might be expressed, how employee misconduct related to mental health conditions should be handled, how episodic conditions might be accommodated and how the direct threat defense under federal law has been interpreted and might be applied
• Experience working through real-life examples of accommodation scenarios across each of the generational needs of the workforce, with interactive dialogue and peer sharing to enhance the learning experience. Discuss the future of accommodating medical conditions in the workplace, driven by employees from different generations, and how human resources professionals can prepare their managers to best address front-line accommodation needs