On a PIP with a disability in the US: ask what it measures

Does having a disability change what a PIP means?

Not the plan itself. What changes is which of two kinds of standard your goal is, and they are treated differently.

A production standard is how much, how fast, how well. An employer may hold you to the same one as anyone else in the job, and lowering it is not something the law makes them do. What you can ask for is help meeting it: the guidance says an adjustment may be required to assist an employee in meeting a specific production standard. The number stays; the route to it can change.

A qualification standard is a requirement of the job itself, and the EEOC's own list of them includes attributes such as the ability to work with other people or to work under pressure. If you cannot meet one of those because of a condition, the employer has to be able to show it is job-related and consistent with business necessity.

That is the distinction the rest of this page runs on. Thirty tickets a month is the first kind, and arguing the number is not the move. Better presence in meetings is the second, and there the question is what it is a requirement for.

The goal written as a trait, and the question that moves it

People describe the same collision over and over. The plan asks for better attitude, more presence, a change in how you come across in a room — and for some readers those are traits their condition is part of. Saying so in the meeting often gets no answer, because there is no obvious one to give.

The useful move is not to argue about the trait. It is to ask, in writing:

• Which duty of this job does this goal measure?
• How is it measured, and what does meeting it look like?

The reason this works is not rhetorical. A goal written that way is a qualification standard, and the law's question about a qualification standard is exactly the one you are asking. Nobody has to answer you in the meeting, and an employer may well not. Ask in writing anyway.

Keep what comes back, including nothing. It is useful whichever way the plan goes: if you are working the plan, a goal restated as a duty is a goal you can actually meet, and if it ends badly, the question and its answer are both part of the record.

Asking for an adjustment is a switch, and it does not need the word

There is no form. There is no phrase you have to say. You do not have to mention the law, or use the words reasonable accommodation, or put it in writing at all.

What makes it a request is linking the two halves: a change you need at work, and a medical reason for it. Saying a chair is uncomfortable is not a request. Saying you need a different chair because of a back condition is.

Put it in writing anyway, and date it. Not because the law asks for writing but because the date is the thing everything below turns on. An employer may ask you to fill in their own form afterwards, but it cannot treat the request you already made as though it never happened.

None of which means you have to. Nothing obliges you to tell an employer anything about your health, and in the EEOC's own worked example the employee who said nothing had a reason: it had gone badly at a previous job. That is a real cost and this page is not going to pretend otherwise. What asking buys is the next section, and what it costs is the section after that. Both are worth reading before you decide, and the decision is yours.

There is no deadline to ask, and asking late costs what is already written down

The law sets no time by which you must ask. You can ask before any problem, in the middle of one, or after.

But an adjustment does not rewind. An employer is never required to excuse performance that is already on the record, to withhold discipline that was warranted, or to raise a rating to something the work did not earn. So the price of a late request is not the adjustment. It is everything already written down before you asked.

The EEOC's own worked examples put the line in a place worth knowing:

• Asked for the first time in the termination meeting, the request does not undo the termination.
• Asked when the plan lands, it is in time for the plan.

So if you do decide to say something, when you say it matters more than how well you say it. That is the shape of the timing question — not whether you will be believed, but which side of the writing you are on.

The plan does not have to be cancelled, and the pause is an ask

Asking for an adjustment does not stop a plan. The EEOC says plainly that accommodation never requires an employer to excuse poor performance or its consequences.

What one of its examples shows is better than cancellation anyway. A supervisor puts someone on a 60-day plan, the employee asks for an adjustment, and the supervisor postpones the start, works out the adjustment, and then starts the 60 days. The stated reason is that this gives the employee an equal opportunity to improve.

That is an example rather than a rule. The same guidance offers employers other ways to handle the gap, including limiting your duties while they decide, or leave. So ask for the pause and give that reason. If the answer is no, that by itself is not a breach of anything, and you have not lost ground by asking.

The reason to ask is what a yes is worth: a plan that measures you with the change in place rather than without it. A no leaves you where you were, with the ask on the record.

What they can ask you for once you have asked

There are two rules here and which applies depends on whether you have asked for something. This is the part worth reading before you ask rather than after.

Until you ask, the limit is tight. An employer may not require a medical examination or ask whether you have a condition, or how severe it is, unless the question is job-related and consistent with business necessity. It may always ask whether you can do the job's actual functions, which is narrower than it sounds.

Asking opens a door. Where the condition or the need for the change is not obvious, the employer may ask for documentation: what the impairment is, its nature, severity and duration, what it limits and by how much. If you refuse to provide it, the entitlement goes with it. That is the trade, stated plainly, and it is why the decision in the last section is a real one.

The door is not open all the way. Reasonable documentation means only what establishes that there is a condition the law covers and that it needs the change. On the guidance's own account an employer cannot generally ask for your complete medical records, and where there is more than one condition it may ask only about the one the change is for. It may require the documentation come from an appropriate professional, and may ask you to sign a release limited to specific questions.

What arrives is kept apart, with three exceptions the statute names. Medical information has to be held on separate forms, in separate files, as a confidential record rather than filed with your plan. But supervisors and managers may be told about necessary restrictions on your work and the accommodations you are getting; first-aid and safety staff may be told where a condition might need emergency treatment; and investigators enforcing the Act get what they ask for. So your manager learns what you cannot do and what you are being given. They are not entitled to the diagnosis.

The definition is wider than most people assume

A lot of people decide they are not covered and stop there. Three rules in the statute say otherwise, and all three postdate the guidance most of the internet is quoting.

• Breadth is the instruction. The definition is to be construed in favour of broad coverage, to the maximum extent the law permits.
• Episodic counts. A condition that comes and goes, or is in remission, is judged by what it does when it is active.
• Coping does not subtract. The condition is judged without the things that make it easier to live with. § 12102(4)(E)(i) names medication, assistive technology, the workarounds you have taught yourself, and — the one that matters most here — an accommodation you already have. A change your employer made two years ago does not shrink the condition it was made for. The single exception runs the other way: ordinary glasses and contact lenses are taken into account.

The activities the law names include concentrating, thinking, communicating, learning, reading, sleeping and working. Those are the ones a plan tends to be about.

One kind of limitation has a second statute behind it, and reaching for only this one can cost you the better route. Where the limitation is related to pregnancy, childbirth or recovery, a separate Act applies as well. It covers such a limitation whether or not it is also a disability, so the two are not alternatives.

What it adds is a route that stays open in one case this page's statute closes: where the inability to perform an essential function is temporary, the function could be performed in the near future, and it can be reasonably accommodated, all three together. Which statute answers you, and what leave does to a plan is that page.

What to do this week, and when it stops being a reading question

None of the following needs anybody's permission, and all of it is worth doing whichever way you expect the plan to go.

• Write down the goals as they are worded, before anybody revises them.
• Sort them into the two kinds. Which are amounts, and which are requirements of the job.
• Send the question about the second kind. Which duty does this goal measure, how is it measured.
• If you decide to ask for a change at work, ask plainly and date it.
• Keep what arrives, including the answer that does not come.

Three things are not readable off a page, and one of them has a clock. Whether a particular qualification standard really is job-related and consistent with business necessity is contested. Whether a condition meets the definition turns on facts a website cannot see.

And if you think a decision was taken because of your condition, talk to an employment lawyer now rather than later. The deadline to complain is short and it runs from the decision, not from the day you work out what happened — so the cost of waiting is the claim itself. That is a different thing from everything above, which you can do without anybody. When a PIP needs a lawyer is what to bring.

This is the federal floor, not your state's answer

Fairhanded is not a law firm and this is not legal advice. Everything above is the federal rule, which is the floor rather than the whole building: state law is frequently broader, and this page has not read it for any state. So nothing here is the whole answer for a named state, and the gap is real rather than a formality.

The federal rule also has an edge. It reaches an employer with 15 or more employees for each working day in 20 or more weeks of this year or last — a test about the year rather than about today's headcount. An employer below it is outside the Act entirely, and what applies instead is state law this page has not read.