EEOC guidance says telework can be a disability accommodation

Why telework now sits in the accommodation conversation

For monday.com employees, the biggest takeaway is simple: remote work is not only a lifestyle preference. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, telework can be a reasonable accommodation when a disability makes successful on-site performance difficult and the job, or part of it, can be done from home without significant hardship.

That distinction matters inside a company like monday.com, where flexibility can be used as a recruiting pitch, a team norm, or a performance-management tool. Once telework becomes part of an accommodation request, it stops being a vague question about “remote culture” and becomes a case-by-case workplace rights issue with real consequences for managers, HR teams, and individual contributors.

What the EEOC guidance actually says

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s guidance on work at home and telework was published in 2003, but the core point has aged well: employers do not have to create a telework program, yet if they do offer one, they must give employees with disabilities an equal opportunity to participate.

The agency also says an employer may need to waive a standard telework eligibility rule if the accommodation is needed. One example the EEOC has given is a one-year waiting period for telework eligibility. If a new employee needs to work at home because of a disability and the job can be done at home, the employer may have to make an exception.

That is a practical reminder for monday.com hiring managers. A policy written for the average employee is not automatically enough when the issue is access, not convenience.

How the EEOC decides whether telework fits the job

The EEOC does not treat telework as a universal fix. It says feasibility depends on the job itself and the actual conditions of the role, including the need for face-to-face contact, access to resources at the worksite, equipment available at home, and how much supervision the work requires.

That framework is useful because it pushes conversations away from broad labels like “hybrid” or “fully remote” and toward essential functions. An engineer, product manager, or sales professional may be able to do a large share of the job from home, but not every task is equally portable. The question is whether a modified setup still lets the person do the job effectively without creating significant difficulty or expense.

For workers, that means the strongest accommodation request is not “I prefer remote.” It is “this arrangement lets me perform the essential parts of my job.” For managers, it means the answer should not turn on habit or culture alone.

The 2026 federal-sector update makes the issue more explicit

On February 11, 2026, the EEOC and the Office of Personnel Management issued new federal-sector FAQs on telework accommodations for disabilities. Those FAQs explicitly frame telework as a reasonable accommodation in the middle of ongoing return-to-office pressure, which is exactly why they are relevant beyond Washington.

The guidance breaks telework into three categories. Full-time telework means remote work. Recurring telework means a scheduled partial-week arrangement. Situational telework is temporary work from home for circumstances such as recovery from a medical procedure.

The FAQs also say agencies may find it helpful to reevaluate a major accommodation such as recurring or full-time telework once a year. That does not mean the accommodation expires automatically. It does mean employers should revisit whether the arrangement still fits the person’s role and needs, rather than locking into assumptions made months earlier.

Why this hits differently at monday.com

monday.com’s own careers pages show that the company still uses a mix of work arrangements, including hybrid roles in New York City, Denver, and Munich. At least one posting describes a global work environment with employees in New York, Tel Aviv, London, Sydney, São Paulo, Tokyo, and more.

That matters because monday.com is not a small, single-site company with one set of expectations. It is a distributed workplace serving over 250,000 customers worldwide, and its own operating model has to match that scale. When a company builds software for coordinating work across teams and time zones, its internal flexibility rules become part of its credibility.

The company’s first-quarter 2025 revenue of $282.3 million, up 30% year over year, shows the business is still growing fast. Growth, though, makes consistency more important, not less. The larger the organization gets, the easier it is for managers to improvise their own rules, and the more likely it becomes that flexibility turns uneven unless there is a clear accommodation process.

What monday.com managers should do differently

The most important shift is to stop treating flexibility as a casual benefit conversation once a disability is involved. A manager may be tempted to decide based on team culture, visible collaboration, or a personal sense of fairness. The EEOC guidance says the decision needs to turn on whether the essential work can be done from home, whether the employer can avoid undue hardship, and whether the employee with a disability is being treated on equal terms.

A practical approach inside a company like monday.com would look like this:

• Separate preference from accommodation. A worker asking for remote days to improve focus is making a different request from a worker needing telework because on-site work is not feasible.

• Look at the job, not the stereotype. Some tasks require more in-person contact, some require access to on-site systems, and some do not.

• Revisit eligibility rules. If there is a waiting period or a standard hybrid requirement, the rule may need to be waived for an accommodation.

• Review major accommodations periodically. Annual check-ins make sense for recurring or full-time telework, especially when the role or medical needs change.

• Document the reasoning. Consistency protects both the employee and the company, especially when multiple teams are handling similar requests differently.

That is not just a legal exercise. It is a management discipline. Teams that handle accommodation requests casually create resentment, confusion, and avoidable risk.

The bigger lesson for modern work

Remote work is often sold as a perk, a retention tool, or a symbol of modernity. The EEOC guidance pushes it into a more serious category. For some employees, telework is the difference between being able to work at all and being pushed out of the labor market.

For monday.com, that should sharpen the internal conversation about culture and performance. A strong workplace is not one that insists everyone work the same way. It is one that can tell the difference between a policy designed for convenience and a legal obligation designed for access. In the next phase of work, that difference will matter more, not less.