We are all familiar with the accommodation requirements of the ADA. But here is a specific example that may cause some confusion with your HR department. Assume hypothetically that one of your employees confesses she is very stressed lately at work, almost the point of having a nervous breakdowns. The noise, confusion and constant interruptions are causing her distress. She requests to have a special section that is as quiet and calm as possible. What kind of accommodation should you give?
The ADA requires, after an interactive process, a reasonable accommodation. However, not if the accommodation creates an undue hardship on the employer. So in this case, giving her a quiet section in the office, having noise reduction headphones, and similar devices, would be appropriate. However, you do not have to reconstruct your whole office or environment just for her.
Here is an example of how you would respond to the request:
Your request for noise canceling headphones is granted. As you know, in most work environments, there is background noise and non-work related discussions amongst employees. This will filter out that noise. On the other hand, you will be expected to interact (in other words talk and discuss) with your manager and employees on all work-related issues.
You also have a request for non-essential meetings with upper management. This is hard to define. By definition, if upper management requests a meeting, it should be considered essential. That is why they are calling a meeting in the first place. And we trust the discretion of those upper managers. Unfortunately, we cannot give you the discretion of which meetings to attend and not attend when they are called by such managers. For this reason, at this time, we must deny that request. However, we will keep this issue open and if you come to us with clear indications that meetings were not business oriented, we would like to know.
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