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I was recently talking to my good friend Steve, a business owner, who shared a story about one of his former employees. I’m not going to lie, at the beginning of the story I was laughing hysterically at the visuals that were forming in my head.  But as he shared more details, the story became troubling.  Then I put myself in his shoes and realized that a happy ending for everyone would be a real challenge.

Steve has been in a family business for over 20 years.  A few things that make him successful is his sharp intellect of his industry coupled with a deliberate focus on his priorities and goals.  Equally important is that his loyalty and commitment to both his clients and employees is unwavering.

On to the story…

One of Steve’s employees named Denise was working at the organization for 10 years and Steve “inherited” her when he joined the company.  Shortly afterwards, Denise developed narcolepsy and everything changed.

“Narcolepsy is a chronic sleep disorder that causes a person to fall asleep at inappropriate times, like work, school, driving, etc.”

You get the idea.  Scary stuff for both the employee and the employer.  Steve’s department was on the third floor but he set up a cot in the conference room on the first floor so Denise could sleep at lunch time or any time she needed rest.  Steve would wake her every day and walk up to her desk after lunch.  Throughout each day, Denise would randomly fall asleep — while at her desk, on the phone, in a meeting, riding in the car, walking or eating.  She would be escorted by someone when she left her desk due to the danger of falling down the stairs or simply falling.  She was fortunate enough to have a co-worker live near her and offered to drive her to and from work each day.  This continued for two and a half years.

As a human being, you want to do all that you can to support someone who wants to work.  As a business owner, you have to consider the cost of a full-time employee, the expected productivity and the actual productivity.  Obviously, you also need to be compliant with the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act).  Steve went above and beyond the requirements for reasonable accommodation as required by the ADA and may even have been able to claim an undue hardship since many of the accommodations were disruptive to other employees’ ability to perform their jobs.  In this case, the productivity was not there for this small business yet Steve persevered and worked with Denise until she was ready to stop working.

This story intrigued me because of the conflict between what’s right for the business and what’s right for the human.  We can all quickly answer that you do what’s right for the business, but then maybe you’ve never worked in a small company before.  Think about being a business owner in this situation.  What would you have done differently?  How would you have handled this employee?  Being a small company, it isn’t possible to get creative with job sharing and flexible work schedules.

I am very interested in hearing your thoughts and opinions.

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BIOGRAPHY

Kimberly Roden is an HR professional with 23 years of experience.  Her passions lie in helping others become better leaders — to foster employee engagement as well as employee development.  Kimberly’s greatest accomplishment (and challenge!) in life has been being a single mother to twins who are now in college.  Besides finding Kimberly on her blog http://karoden.wordpress.com/ She  is also a contributing writer to www.womenofhr.com site

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