Your company's first time will come. Will your process be ready?

Everything either attracts or detracts. Nothing is neutral.

My work is helping founders and CEOs build strong, high-performing companies that last. The kind people want to join, stay in, and trust when things get hard.

And things always get hard in the moments nobody planned for.

So this week, we're going to learn from one together.

Full transparency: I'm a SHRM partner. I write a column for them, serve as a Dean for HR-X LIVE!, and co-host Culture Creators with them. SHRM has asked me to share the facts of this case, and I've agreed. I'll separate facts from positions every time, and I'll give you both sides. You can judge them for yourself.

This week, a federal jury in Virginia hears Torres v. SHRM.

In 2024, Fiona Torres applied for a senior specialist role in SHRM's product management department. Her CV disclosed that she has lived with Type 1 diabetes for about 30 years. SHRM extended her an offer.

After the offer, she asked to bring her diabetes alert dog to SHRM's Alexandria office.

It says this was the first time it had been asked to consider a diabetes alert dog. It requested updated medical documentation and brought in legal counsel. It offered alternatives: accommodations for her continuous glucose monitor and insulin pump, extra breaks to check her blood sugar, food and drink at her workstation, and flexible leave. It also invited her and her physician to propose other options. It says Ms. Torres would not consider any accommodation but her dog and stopped participating in the interactive process, at which point SHRM withdrew its offer. SHRM says it met every obligation and will defend that in court.

She says the dog detects changes in her blood sugar earlier and more reliably than other systems, and that she'd used it at previous employers without issue. She says that after she explained why the dog was the accommodation she needed, SHRM ended the conversation and withdrew the offer. She sued under the ADA and the Virginia Human Rights Act.

A jury will decide who's right. That's their job.

Our job is to learn.

You may think this is an HR problem. It isn't.

It's a systems problem, and systems are a leadership problem.

At the center of this case is one principle. The ADA requires an accommodation that is reasonable and effective. The employee's preference gets primary consideration, but when more than one option would actually work, the employer has the final say on which one. That's why, in cases like this, the question that matters most often isn't "what did they ask for?" It's "would the alternatives have actually worked?"

The law expects you to get to that answer through a conversation, called the interactive process, not a menu where one side orders.

Whether that conversation holds up under pressure depends on what you built before anyone asked.

Five things to check before a request like this lands on your desk:

Companies built to last don't avoid hard asks. They get ready for them.

At the end of each day of the trial, I'll post a summary of the facts on LinkedIn. Follow along there, and I'll pull the leadership lessons together here when it wraps.

You are not the source of the energy. You are the conduit. How your company handles its hardest conversations is the culture, whether you designed it or not.

If this request landed on your desk tomorrow, would your company be ready? Reply and tell me. I read every one.

Talk soon,
Anita

This is Issue 12 of Live Wire, a weekly jolt of candid thinking for CEOs, founders, and people leaders who know culture isn't a side project, it's how a business performs. I'm building this alongside my upcoming book: Everyone Sells.