Human Resource Blog

Excessive Bathroom Breaks

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We have an employee who takes excessive bathroom breaks and it is now having an affect on her team (always complaining) and production.

Is there anything we can do to address this without putting the Company at risk?

You are right to be concerned. OSHA standards require that employers provide rest rooms, and that employees be permitted to use them. So any restriction on bath room breaks is likely to become an issue for OSHA.

The best way to handle this problem is to address the real issue — this employees productivity. The problem is not that she is in the bathroom too often, its that she is not getting enough work done. That is a legitimate concern for any employer. Ideally, you should have already established minimum standards for productivity and those standards should be objective. In a factory, for example, the employee would be responsible for producing 47 widgets per hour. If you do not already have objective performance standards, its time to establish some.

Employees can legitimately be disciplined and even terminated for not meeting productivity standards.

If employees are not aware of the productivity standards, inform everyone in writing now. Then start disciplining anyone who does not meet them. To be fair, its probably better to review productivity on a weekly, rather than a daily, basis. If the problem employee wants to keep her job, she will very quickly figure out what she needs to do to increase productivity. And employee morale should increase immediately, becasue the other employees will see that you are addressing this problem.

Just one note: If by any chance the problem employee approaches you and explains that she is pregnant or has another physical condition that causes her to use the rest room frequently, you will want to proceed with caution. In some cases, allowing frequent bathroom breaks would be considered a reasonable accommodation under ADA (as long as she was meeting productivity standards.) And the employee does not have to use the words reasonable accommodation in making the request.