When a claimant is a “working supervisor,” such as a lead carpenter on a construction site, Social Security may have additional questions about that supervisory, managerial, clerical or administrative work:
- What was the nature and extent of claimant’s supervision?
- Did claimant actually do the work or just oversee?
- If did the work, what percentage of the time?
- Did claimant hire or fire employees?
- Did the claimant complete employee evaluations?
- Did claimant track employee work time or worked with payroll?
- Did the claimant prepare work schedules?
- What type of record keeping did the claimant do?
- What specific reports did you prepare?
- Did the claimant prepare and maintain files of reports?
- Did the claimant order merchandise, equipment and supplies?
I came across this list of questions (and my client’s answers to them) recently in a claim file at the Reconsideration level.
These questions explore whether the claimant has acquired job skills that would transfer to jobs that are less demanding physically. Be careful when you get into this area! If SSA determines that the claimant has transferable skills to a range of jobs within their RFC, the claim will be denied at step 5 of the sequential evaluation.