When does capability kick in?
January 30, 2009
A friend of mine is in a tricky position at work, and when he was describing it to me the other day, it got me thinking as it’s quite an interesting situation from a HR point of view.
My friend is a project manager, and therefore oversees jobs, delegating work to people in his team and ensuring the different tasks are completed on time and in budget. The projects have very specified fees, and time spent on a project is costed to that project through a project management system that logs timesheets and project codes. Therefore work has to be efficiently completed to enable projects to be completed within the budgets allocated.
This is all really straightforward stuff, but what happens when you have a situation with an employee who is perhaps not able to complete works in the most efficient manner because of an illness or disability? In my friend’s case, one of the employees that had been allocated to his project suffered a stroke a few years ago, and as a result has not worked as fast as he was previously able to since then, and struggles to pick up new skills and knowledge. Therefore the tasks my friend allocates to this employee cannot be completed as quickly or effectively as was perhaps quoted, yet the employee’s time still needs to be allocated to the project so that the company can charge for him and pay his salary.
So my friend is in a quandary: on the one hand the company wants to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ so that the employee is able to continue to work, which in this case means giving him fewer tasks or more time to complete tasks, but on the other hand the project manager has to deliver the project on time and in budget, which will be seriously hindered by this employee’s capabilities. What is the answer?
I feel this case is lodged right in between the ‘reasonable adjustments’ element of disability/sickness legislation and the statutory capability procedures. Do the adjustments become ‘unreasonable’ when it involves not delivering projects within the fee and therefore losing money for the company? Should the employee be taken through capability procedures? I think it is a really interesting debate and I would be really happy to receive your feedback and ideas.
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