February 03, 2021 Feature

Implementing Workplace Accommodations During COVID-19: What Employers Do and Don’t Have to Do

By Janelle Edwards-Stewart

Kelvin Murray/Stone via Getty Images

Employers are encouraged to be creative and to offer accommodation and flexibilities to non-disabled persons who the CDC has determined to be at increased risk of severe illness if they contract COVID-19.

Employers have known for some time the necessity of providing reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities. For most employers, since the establishment of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, providing these accommodations has become routine, if not simple. As a result, “accommodations” and “individuals with disabilities” have come to fit together like the proverbial “lock” and “key.”