Reference no: EM132257596
Julia, a salesperson took five months of leave as a reasonable accommodation. The company compares the sales records of all salespeople over a one-year period, and any employee whose sales fall more than 25% below the median sales performance of all employees is automatically terminated. The employer terminates Julia because she had fallen below the required performance standard. The company did not consider that the reason for her lower sales performance was her five-month leave of absence; nor did it assess her productivity during the period she did work (i.e., prorate her productivity).
What employment discrimination claims, if any does Eliza have?
What are the potential basis and issue types?
How should the company have handled the situation? Explain how they could extend the reasonable accommodation for Julia into the calculation of their performance standards.
Answer:
1. Performance Evaluation Discrimination law comes under VII of the Civil Right Act of 1964, Julia has this law on her side as the company has evaluated sales performance over a year for each and every employee and during that year Julia was on leave for 5 months. Due to this Julia performance should only be accounted for the 7 months she worked.
2. In this case there is a issue of discrimination at the time of performance evaluation, this same issue can also come while evaluating performance for promotions. In the case Julia took a leave of 5 months as a reasonable accommodation to which she is entitled legally. On this basis Julia's performance should be evaluated for the 7-month period only.
3. Company should have evaluated Julia's performance on the fair ground either by evaluating performance for 7 moths or considering her performance for those 5 months from the previous years. That would be the right way to evaluate the performance of sales person.