The Essential Guide to Family & Medical Leave

chapter 10 | reinstatement | 219
Fitness-for-Duty Certifications
If an employee takes leave for his or her own serious health condition, you
may require the employee to provide a fitness-for-duty certification: a signed
statement from a health care provider indicating that the employee is able to
return to work. However, you may require this certification only if you meet
the following requirements:
• Your company must have a consistently applied practice or policy
of requiring employees to provide a fitness-for-duty statement. The
company need not require every employee to provide a fitness-for-duty
certification, but it must require all similarly situated employees (that is,
employees in that position and/or with that serious health condition) to
provide one. (29 C.F.R. § 310.) For example, a company might require
all employees in positions that require manual labor to provide such a
certification following time off for an injury of any kind.
Policy alert
Include fitness-for-duty certification requirements in your written policies.
If your company has a uniform policy or practice of requiring certifications
from similarly situated employees, it must include this information
in its employee handbook or any other written material it provides to
employees about the FMLA. See Chapter 11 and Appendix B for more
information on company policies that affect your rights or obligations
under the FMLA.
• The certification must be job related and consistent with business necessity.
This language, taken from the ADA, simply means that the company
must have an important business reason for requiring the certification.
Example: Maurice works in a warehouse, lifting and loading heavy packages. After
taking FMLA leave to have surgery and recuperate from a broken ankle, Maurice is
ready to return to work. The company asks him to provide a fitness-for-duty certification,
in keeping with its policies. This would be job related and consistent with
business necessity, because the company could reasonably believe that Maurice’s
injury might affect his ability to do the job.