Job Restructuring Under the ADA

Job restructuring is expressly listed in the ADA as a form of reasonable accommodation. It means changing how, when, or in what order a job is performed, or reallocating parts of it — and its limits turn entirely on the distinction between essential and marginal functions.

Essential Versus Marginal Functions

An essential function is a fundamental duty of the position. A marginal function is peripheral — something the role includes but which is not fundamental to why the position exists.

Under the ADA, an employer generally must consider reallocating marginal functions, and generally need not remove essential ones. Everything in a restructuring analysis depends on which category a given duty falls into.

How Functions Are Assessed

The determination is fact-specific, and a job description is evidence rather than proof. Factors typically considered include:

• Whether the position exists to perform that function.
• How much time is actually spent on it.
• The consequences of not requiring the employee to perform it.
• The number of other employees available to perform it.
• The degree of specialization the function requires.
• The employer's judgment, and written job descriptions prepared before advertising or interviewing.
• The work experience of others who have held the position.

Employers whose job descriptions list every conceivable duty as essential weaken their own position, because the description is then obviously not a considered assessment.

What Restructuring Can Look Like

Reallocating marginal functions

A role that is 90 percent analysis and 10 percent occasional heavy lifting may be restructured by reassigning the lifting, where lifting is not why the position exists.

Changing when functions are performed

Moving a task to a different time of day can accommodate conditions with predictable variation, without changing what the job involves.

Changing how a function is performed

Different equipment, different method, different sequence — the function is still performed, by different means.

Modifying schedules

Adjusted hours, part-time work, or a modified break pattern.

What Employers Are Generally Not Required to Do

• Eliminate an essential function.
• Lower production or quality standards applied to everyone.
• Create a new position.
• Displace another employee, or convert a role into one the employer does not need.
• Promote the employee as an accommodation.

Note that the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act takes a different approach, contemplating temporary suspension of essential functions — so ADA reasoning should not be applied automatically to a PWFA situation.

Reassignment as the Fallback

Where restructuring cannot make the current role workable, reassignment to a vacant position for which the employee is qualified may be a reasonable accommodation. The position need not be a promotion, and the employer is generally not required to create one.

The Effect on Other Employees

Reallocating marginal functions inevitably gives them to someone else. That is permitted, and it is also a practical management issue. Two points help: keep the medical basis confidential, which is required in any case, and consider whether the reallocation is sustainable rather than simply loading it onto the nearest colleague.

An accommodation that creates a new problem tends not to survive.

Document the Analysis

Record which functions were identified as essential and on what basis, which were treated as marginal, what restructuring was considered, what was implemented or rejected and why. A restructuring decision without a recorded essential-function analysis is very difficult to defend.

See documenting the ADA accommodation request process for the wider file.

Reviewing Job Descriptions Before You Need Them

Job descriptions are evidence of what is essential, and their persuasive value depends on when they were written. A description prepared before a position was advertised carries weight; one revised after an accommodation request does not.

The practical implication is to review descriptions periodically as a matter of routine, ensuring they reflect what the role actually involves and distinguishing genuinely essential functions from those that are merely customary. Descriptions listing every conceivable duty as essential are weak evidence precisely because they are obviously not considered assessments.

Restructuring and Performance

Restructuring does not require lowering performance standards. An employer may hold an accommodated employee to the same quality and output expectations applied to everyone else in the role.

What it does require is that the standards themselves are genuine and uniformly applied. A standard invented or enforced only for the accommodated employee is not a performance standard; it is a disguised refusal.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can we refuse because other employees object?

Colleague dissatisfaction is not undue hardship on its own.

Must we restructure permanently?

Restructuring can be temporary or permanent depending on the limitation; review it as circumstances change.

What if the job description says a function is essential?

It is evidence, and it can be rebutted by how the job is actually performed.

Related Reading and Training

See examples of reasonable accommodations. For training covering the ADA alongside FMLA and workers' compensation, see the integrated certification program.