Dementia in the Workplace: Advice for Employers
We are living longer, and as a result, working longer. Along with this comes the greater likelihood that cognitive decline will show up in the workplace. Despite this, many employers are not ready to address cognitive impairment and dementia.
America’s Aging Workforce
America’s workforce is aging; greater numbers of employees are working longer and delaying retirement. While older workers bring valuable knowledge and experience, they are also at higher risk for experiencing cognitive decline, including dementia. Many employers are not equipped to recognize when an employee is experiencing cognitive decline, how to address related performance concerns, or what to do with an employee’s dementia diagnosis.
Issues Arising from Dementia at Work
Employees who develop dementia while they are still actively working raise a number of concerns for employers: lapses in memory may lead to a decrease in the quality of work; behavioral changes could impact coworker or client relationships; and, at the most extreme, the employee’s cognitive decline could lead to disclosures of confidential information.
The workplace may also be a likely environment for an individual’s early dementia symptoms to be spotted. The employee may begin to have cognitive issues that are not noticed at home, but which may be evident in missed tasks or deadlines, difficulty multitasking, problems following instructions, or making decisions.
Addressing Performance Concerns
There is a clear need to address cognitive decline as it presents. Additionally, if an employee has been diagnosed with dementia, you may have to provide ADA accommodations to allow the employee to continue to work.
If you notice signs of cognitive impairment that are impacting work performance, you should address the impact on work performance itself, without speculating about the employee’s cognitive abilities. The signs of cognitive impairment should be treated as any other personnel issue would be – through a direct conversation with the employee, focusing on concrete examples of the observed performance issues. Avoid age- or disability-related questions.
After Diagnosis: Accommodations for Dementia
An employee may proactively, or even in the context of a performance-related conversation, disclose that he or she has been diagnosed with dementia. At this point, you may be obligated to provide accommodations for the employee, as long as the accommodations are reasonable and not cost-prohibitive.
In its guide on Employees with Alzheimer’s, the Job Accommodation Network (JAN) provides a list of accommodations that could be utilized to enable an employee to continue to work. Examples of these include: use color-coding to indicate important information, provide checklists, incorporate simpler tasks from other employees’ job descriptions, and reassign the employee to a different position that better matches his or her skills and capabilities. You will need to continue to monitor the success of the accommodations and whether the employee is able to continue to perform essential job functions.
Of course, health and safety risks may make any accommodations unreasonable, and depending on the nature of the employee’s position, reassignment, if available, may be the only option.
Creating “Dementia-friendly” Workplaces
In a recent report addressing cognitive impairment in the workplace, The Alzheimer’s Association highlighted the need for employers to increase awareness of dementia at work. Often, employees who are experiencing cognitive issues will hide the fact from supervisors, and coworkers may cover for them, further masking the problem. You should strive to create a workplace where coworkers are supportive of fellow employees who have dementia, where the policies and benefits support those with dementia, and where individuals who have dementia feel safe disclosing their difficulties and have access to the accommodations available to them.
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, the steps to create a dementia-friendly workplace are:
- Simplify the physical work setting.
- Allow working from home.
- Simplify routines.
- Provide reminders of activities, events, and appointments.
- Create a peer support system.
- Offer additional IT support.
- Adjust roles and responsibilities based on changing skills and abilities.
- Provide more supervision.
- Allow for flexible or modified hours and scheduling.
Of course, depending on your workplace, not all of these are feasible. A starting place is to review the work environment and policies with the goal of assessing how an individual with dementia might be impacted.
Bottom Line
Employers must address the issues that come along with an aging workforce. The costs to reputation, work product, internal work climate, and employees’ well-being are too high to ignore.
This article, slightly modified to note recent updates, was featured online in the Wisconsin Employment Law Letter and published by BLR®—Business & Legal Resources. Reproduced here with the permission of BLR®—Business & Legal Resources.