Last updated on : October 7th, 2026 by R Yadav
Someone goes off long-term. Things go silent. The work gets reassigned, then reassigned permanently. IT deactivates the login during a routine cleanup. Nobody's made a decision, exactly, but everyone's started behaving as though the person has left.
They haven't. The employment relationship outlasts the absence no matter how long it stretches, and nothing about being off work amounts to resignation or abandonment. Every obligation you had on day one is still live on day five hundred. So when clearance to return finally arrives and there's no role, no plan and nothing on file showing anyone thought about it, that's no longer a staffing headache. It's a legal exposure with your name on it.
Most employers miss this on one side or the other.
Too much contact reads as pressure. Weekly check-ins about return dates, work questions forwarded "just in case," a manager mentioning how buried the team is — compiled into a bundle, those messages look nothing like they did on the Friday someone typed them out. I've read the bundles. They don't flatter anybody.
Silence is the underrated failure. Twelve months of nothing leaves you with no information, no relationship and nothing to plan around, and from the other side it feels exactly like being written off. That resentment resurfaces later, usually in writing.
Scheduled, occasional, documented and actually warm is what works. A call every couple of months, no nudging, purpose stated plainly — support and planning — then a short follow-up note so there's a record of what was said.
Employers ask the wrong question constantly and create a privacy problem on top of the one they already have.
You don't get the diagnosis. Not the condition, not the medication, not the clinical notes. Asking invites a complaint.
What you're entitled to is functional detail. What can this person do? For how long? Lifting, sitting, concentration, hours, whether the restrictions look permanent or likely to shift. That's the raw material for an accommodation plan, and it's what a treating physician can reasonably provide.
If the note says "unable to work" and stops there, it's insufficient — but the reply is a specific written request for functional information, not a demand for records. Most long term disability lawyer Ottawa practitioners will tell you this single distinction prevents a large share of what lands on their desks.
The duty runs to undue hardship, and it's a process obligation as much as an outcome.
Employers lose cases where accommodation truly wasn't possible, because nothing on file shows it was seriously explored. Adjudicators want evidence of effort. Modified duties considered? Graduated hours? A lateral role? Equipment, schedule, remote arrangements? Did anyone ask the employee what would help, and write the answer down? "We looked and there was nothing" has never won anything. Four options weighed, three ruled out with reasons, one attempted — that's a different hearing entirely.
The failures I've seen weren't medical. They were scheduling.
Someone comes back at full hours into a full workload because the department is drowning. A month later they're off again, often worse, and this time the employer's fingerprints are on it. Build the ramp with the employee and their physician, start low, and agree in advance what happens if it isn't working so adjusting isn't read as failure. Brief the direct manager properly — that relationship shapes the result more than the plan on paper ever will.
Employers hear the term and grab for it.
It needs evidence of no reasonable prospect of return in the foreseeable future, grounded in real medical information, not in how many months have passed. No number triggers it automatically; two years doesn't do it by itself.
And terminating on that basis still carries statutory entitlements in most provinces, which catches people out. Speak to a long term disability lawyer before anyone makes the call — they'll want the medical picture, the accommodation record and the contact history, and if one of those three looks thin, that's the actual problem.
