Fitness for Duty Testing - Ergonomic Validation for Legal Compliance
- Room: Champagne 4
- Session Number: IS6
Wednesday, November 03, 2021: 2:00 PM - 2:50 PM
Speaker(s)
Description
Hiring blindly and making poor return to work decisions have resulted in crippling costs to employers. Fitness for duty (FFD) tests, aka Physical Abilities Tests, have proven to be highly effective for reducing injuries on the job by ensuring new hires and return to work cases possess the physical abilities to safely perform the essential functions of a job. However, FFD tests that do not assess true essential job functions expose employers to discrimination claims. Ergonomics plays a key role in job modifications required to identify true essential job functions. This requirement is key to the proper design of FFD tests. Dr. Bunch, with over 30 years of experience in conducting FFD tests at a national level for hundreds of industries, will describe how employers should utilize ergonomics to correctly identify essential job functions required to create a legally defensible and highly effective FFD program as well as for determining proper job accommodations for ADA cases.
Track(s)
Learning Objectives
1. Translate the ADA definition of an essential job function to a physical demand validation of jobs.
2. Apply reasonable ergonomic interventions to correctly identify essential job functions.
3. Critically analyze a fitness for duty test to ensure it correctly assesses essential job functions.
4. Utilize FFD testing methodologies with confidence in their legal defensibility.