Author: Andie Burjek

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What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate

employee communications

An employee suffers an injury that prevents her from operating a motor vehicle. With no means of transportation to travel to and from her workplace, the employee calls off work, believing that her absences were excused. They weren’t, and the employer fires her for excessive absences.

She sues, claiming disability discrimination, in part because of the company’s failure to accommodate her inability to drive.

n Hazelett v. Wal-Mart Stores, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the employee’s ADA claim should have survived summary judgment.

[I]t appears that Wal-Mart failed to participate in the interactive process required under the ADA.… Wal-Mart failed to provide Hazelett two requested accommodations: that she be given leave until July 17, 2015, in her FMLA Medical Certification when she would be released to drive, and two, an assignment to an alternative job to which she could commute.

What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate. Once an employer becomes aware of the need for a reasonable accommodation, the ADA obligates it to engage in an interactive process with the employee to identify and implement appropriate reasonable accommodations. That process requires communication and good-faith exploration of possible accommodations. An employer cannot dismiss, without discussion, accommodations. An employer cannot even rely on state workers’ comp laws or standards. The interactive process is mandatory, period.

Communication between an employer and a disabled employee is the key to avoiding problems under the ADA. Do not commit the cardinal ADA sin of failing to communicate. Talk with your employees. You’d be surprised how many problems you can head off with a simple conversation.

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How to put together effective workforce management reports

compliance; workforce management software

A lot of organizations are putting a good deal of money into HR technology systems, said Matt Stevenson, partner and leader of Mercer’s Workforce Strategy and Analytics practice. The first wave replicated paper-based systems and transformed them for online use, he said. The latest iteration of workforce management systems allows organizations almost an infinite amount of reporting.

”We have a lot of people asking us, ‘There’s too much here for us to really figure out. Can you tell us what we should and shouldn’t be reporting?’ ” Stevenson said.

Also read: Labor analytics add power to workforce management tools

He added that people in various departments look for different information in their workforce management reports. Operations professionals may focus on questions like, “How can this process be more efficient?” while those in the finance department may ask, “What’s the cheapest way to do this task?” And workforce management professionals focus on a different set of questions.

Stevenson had other thoughts about what workforce management professionals should be focusing on with reporting. 

What’s your problem? 

“Our finding is that it’s harder to come up with the questions than it is to draw answers from the system,” Stevenson said. “What’s also problematic is if you interrogate the data enough, it will eventually tell you what you want to hear. Which means if you [dig deeply enough] into a data set, you can find a data point that will confirm your hypothesis, even if it’s just not right. So that makes it a little bit hazardous.” 

For those approaching these expansive workforce management reporting systems, what’s important to remember is to know exactly what question they’re trying to answer or what problem they’re trying to solve, he added. Don’t approach this with intellectual queries that have no clear connection to solving a specific problem. 

Also read: A technology integration is an intervention to dissolve common payroll errors

He gave an example of a client with so much data, their mantra became that they would not gather any more data until they knew exactly what decision it would inform. “Data for the sake of data just makes it too hard,” he said. 

Follow the trends

While these HR systems and tools are good for reporting, another important use for them is a trends analysis of what has changed over the years, Stevenson said. From there, users can go about exploring what caused the trends or changes. 

For example, organizations could create workforce management reports to assess what mix of employees in each store gets the most profits. One way to do this would be to look at the most profitable store and copy their mix, but that would ultimately miss the point. 

A deeper trends analysis could help them explore questions like, “When this store/location added another employee, did it lead to more sales over time?” Looking across different store locations over a period of time this way, the person doing this analysis may realize that the staff mix or adding more staff might not be a significant factor for profitability at all. 

It could be something more straightforward, like the highest-performing store does the best because of its location, Stevenson said. “A jewelry store and rich neighborhood will sell more than the jewelry store in the middle of a field.” 

Also read: Cloud workforce management saves on costs, resources and time

He said the tougher question is, does it matter on how many people you have? Or is it something else? The answer depends on factors like the store’s business model and what it sells. Flexible HR systems allow users to answer these more complicated questions, and a skilled user can create their own reporting process in the tool to answer their own unique questions. 

A good, flexible reporting system will allow users to discover the right question for their own unique needs, Stevenson said. 

Finding the right questions 

To find the right questions, users can hire experts or talk to stakeholders of the organization, Stevenson said. But that on it’s own may not be the most efficient strategy.

“To be honest, most [users] just find themselves reacting to the data,” he said. They find themselves in a reactive cycle rather than a proactive cycle, and it’s hard to get out of that.

That’s the complicated part of these HR systems, Stevenson said. Users have all this extra data and the system can help with administrative tasks, but there’s so much data that reporting can become complicated. “There’s too much to report, and you have to put it in that extra effort to figure out what the right things are to report. And that’s not always straightforward.” he added.

The right sections to feature on your workforce management reports 

The categories to feature on an organization’s report depends on their industry, Stevenson said. For manufacturing, it may be all about having the right number of people to operate the machines. In hospitality, what’s more important is having employees with specific skills to perform certain tasks. 

Also read: How to avoid overstaffing through wage tracker software

For most industries the “workforce planning” and “compensation” categories are important, he added.  Organizations also are wanting to report on its diversity, equity and inclusion numbers. 

Ideally, there’d also be some data regarding productivity, even though that may be tough unless a company has a measurement to rely on that signifies productivity, he said. 

Reporting in the health care industry 

Health care can benefit  from these HR systems and reporting the most, Stevenson said. Lives are at stake, so if there’s a possibility that changing an HR model can save someone’s life, that’s a huge opportunity. 

Also read: Mental health provider persists through pandemic to continue patient counseling

For example, he said that Mercer recently found that when they joined operations data with HR data, they can predict 85 percent of the variance of things like the likelihood of picking up infections in a hospital. These are predictions and not explanations for what is happening, but they’re still helpful. 

“When we work with our hospital clients, we can tell them, ‘Here are the things we can predict based on the types of shifts, the characteristics of the staff, the number of hours people work, where they work [and] the flows of people coming in and out.’ Then we bring them operational data like, ‘[What] kind of patients do you have at any given time? What’s the case mix?’ ” he said. 

“What we’re trying to do now is convince clients to program this into their HR systems,” he added. This may allow them to narrow possible causes for why an event (like infection spreading through a hospital) is happening on the premises. 

How these HR solutions are maturing 

“It is my personal opinion that these systems will reach their full maturity when they’re more integrated with the other parts of the business, like financial systems and operational systems,” Stevenson said. “Because then you can compare the people with the financials and compare the people data with the operational data.”

Stevenson said that it wasn’t that long ago that these HR tasks were done on paper, and now we’re at the point where some people are complaining about the fact that their electronic records don’t match up to those in another HR system. 

He believes that at this future level of maturity, HR systems will be able to help answer people’s questions about what the right questions are and what’s the right data to collect. 

“I think we’re pretty far away [from maturity]. but just because you’re far away doesn’t mean you won’t get there fast,” Stevenson said. 

 

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Coronavirus Update: Reporting an employee who tests positive

COVID-19, workforce management WFM 2.0, ethics

When an employee tests positive, an employer has certain reporting obligations. These obligations fall into two categories—reporting to OSHA and reporting to your state or local health agency under state law.

OSHA

While OSHA has remained largely silent on mandates for businesses related to COVID-19, it has published specific guidance on when an employer must record and report COVID cases at work.

Under OSHA’s recordkeeping requirements, COVID-19 is a recordable illness, and employers must record cases of COVID-19 in their OSHA logs, if:

  1. The case is a confirmed case of COVID-19;
  2. The case is work-related; and
  3. The case involves death, days away from work, restricted work or transfer to another job, medical treatment beyond first aid, loss of consciousness, or a significant injury or illness diagnosed by a physician or other licensed health-care professional.
You should assume numbers 1 and 3 are met when an employee reports a positive test. Criteria number 2—work-relatedness—will almost always be the tripping point for recording vs. non-recording.
According to OSHA, an employer must make a “reasonable determination” of work-relatedness in determining whether to record an employee’s positive test. In making this determination, OSHA relies on three factors:
  • The reasonableness of the employer’s investigation. OSHA does not expect employers to undertake extensive medical inquiries. Instead, OSHA usually considers it sufficient for an employer (1) to ask the employee how s/he believes s/he contracted the COVID-19 illness; (2) while respecting employee privacy, discuss with the employee work and out-of-work activities that may have led to the COVID-19 illness; and (3) review the employee’s work environment for potential COVID-19 exposure.
  • The evidence available to the employer at the time it made its work-relatedness determination.
  • The evidence that a COVID-19 illness was contracted at work. OSHA states that the following information is relevant to this determination—
    • COVID-19 illnesses are likely work-related when several cases develop among workers who work closely together and there is no alternative explanation.
    • An employee’s COVID-19 illness is likely work-related if it is contracted shortly after lengthy, close exposure to a particular customer or coworker who has a confirmed case of COVID-19 and there is no alternative explanation.
    • An employee’s COVID-19 illness is likely work-related if his job duties include having frequent, close exposure to the general public in a locality with ongoing community transmission and there is no alternative explanation.
    • An employee’s COVID-19 illness is likely not work-related if she is the only worker to contract COVID-19 in her vicinity and her job duties do not include having frequent contact with the general public, regardless of the rate of community spread.
    • An employee’s COVID-19 illness is likely not work-related if he, outside the workplace, closely and frequently associates with someone (e.g., a family member, significant other, or close friend) who (1) has COVID-19; (2) is not a coworker, and (3) exposes the employee during the period in which the individual is likely infectious.
    • CSHOs should give due weight to any evidence of causation, pertaining to the employee illness, at issue provided by medical providers, public health authorities, or the employee herself.

Per OSHA, “If, after the reasonable and good faith inquiry described above, the employer cannot determine whether it is more likely than not that exposure in the workplace played a causal role with respect to a particular case of COVID-19, the employer does not need to record that COVID-19 illness.”

OSHA’s reporting rules also apply to confirmed workplace cases of COVID-19. That is, for confirmed work-related cases of COVID-19—
  • an employer must report to OSHA in-patient hospitalizations within 24 hours of knowing both that an employee has been in-patient hospitalized and that the reason for the hospitalization was a work-related case of COVID-19; and
  • an employer must report employee fatalities the occur within 30 days of the workplace incident (in this case, the exposure to COVID-19) and within 8 hours of the actual fatality.
Violations of these recording or reporting requirements are subject to OSHA’s traditional enforcement and penalties.
State Law
 
States have their own COVID-19 reporting requirements. For example, Ohio mandates that businesses “contact their local health district about suspected cases or exposures” of COVID-19. This reporting is critical so that the local health department can undertake the contact tracing necessary to identify close contacts and limit pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic spread.
Employers should check with their legal counsel on their state-specific reporting requirements.
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Crying ‘discrimination’ because you refuse to wear a mask isn’t just silly, it’s offensive

COVID-19, coronavirus, public health crisis

Please watch this short video and then let’s talk.

This woman claims discrimination because she refuses to wear a mask in public.

“Stand back,” and “You don’t care about other people,” are just a couple of the attacks this woman has received because she refuses to cover her mouth and nose.

Technically, this is discrimination in that she is being treated differently than mask-compliant folks. But this isn’t Discrimination.

The type of discrimination we worry about is the invidious discrimination individual suffer because of some innate trait over which they have no control and/or a fundamental individual liberty—race, sex/gender, LGBTQ status, religion, national origin, disability, age, etc.

The type of this discrimination about which this woman is complaining is discrimination of her own choice—her selfish choice to purposely avoid and ignore the most basic of safety and health measures everyone (or at least everyone with common sense and a rational belief in science) agrees is necessary to protect us during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Discrimination against marginalized groups is a major problem in our country. Let’s not trivialize it by elevating these complaints to its level.

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Cloud workforce management systems continue their rise

cloud based hr systems

Cloud workforce management solutions have consistently become the norm in recent years, but some organizations continue to stick with their same old on-premise HCM systems.

As organizations look to the future of their organization and how technology will manage HR tasks, consider these differences between cloud-based and on-premise solutions. 

Also read: How technology can help your employee engagement strategy

Pricing for cloud workforce management solutions versus on-premise solutions

While on-premise solutions remain in use, eventually all solutions will be cloud-based, priced per employee per month, said Karen Piercy, a partner at Mercer’s Philadelphia office. Still, many organizations are still using the same on-premise solution they’ve had for years. 

If a large organization has bought many different technology solutions and constantly moves to the latest upgrade every few years, the costs come through in the large upfront sum to purchase the original technology and smaller annual maintenance costs, Piercy said. Additionally, companies generally choose to upgrade every few years and pay the cost for those upgrades.

Compare that to a cloud-based solution, which updates automatically and relies on totally different pricing models. 

“For some organizations, if you bought [an on-premise solution] 15 years ago and haven’t done much upgrading, your costs for that technology is not that significant. Now in the new model, the pricing will be different,” Piercy said. “But I do think there are [cloud] solutions for different sized organizations, and there are different pricing models for different types of employees. Some software vendors cost a lot less if they’re contingent employees or if they don’t have full access to the system or they’re part-time.” 

Regarding cloud workforce management solutions, Piercy believes organizations can find a pricing model that fits their needs regardless of the technology budget they’re working with. Plus, it’s a change they’ll have to make eventually. “I do think eventually everything will be priced this way and all vendors will move to that kind of model,” she said. 

On-premise decline

While 70 percent of organizations have deployed at least one cloud-based HR application, 40 percent still use at least one on-premise solution, according to the Sierra-Cedar “2019-2020 HR Systems Survey.”

However, now many software vendors are no longer selling on-premise solutions, Piercy said. 

“Now if you want [something] new, you can’t really get on-premise. That 40 percent will continue to drop as organizations continue to replace their solutions,” she said. 

The future of cloud solutions 

Piercy expects that growth will continue in many different HR areas in this marketplace. For example, she believes that we will see more features like artificial intelligence and chatbots as part of the core product. 

Of course, she added, organizations will need the right data in their systems to use some of these features correctly. 

“You need to have skills linked to employees to be able to do analyses and recommendations around that. But I think as it’s baked into the core solutions, companies are going to use it more and more, and it will get more refined. That’s one area where I think we’ll see a lot of growth,” she said.

Meanwhile, there are new entrants to the cloud marketplace, like the Microsoft and Google, Piercy said. They’re companies to watch as they could choose to do things very differently than the norm.   

There’s also been a boom in the products and services involved in every aspect of talent acquisition, especially now since processes like onboarding are not being done in person, Piercy said. Onboarding is an example of something that can be difficult for HR to do, and therefore different cloud vendors are seeking to address this gap, coming at it from different directions. 

Analytics are easier with the cloud

Analytics are a heavy area of growth in HR software solutions. Organizations have often struggled with on-premise solutions in terms of getting data in a way where the numbers are actionable and make sense, Piercy said. 

Also read: Labor analytics add power to workforce management tools

In the past when the leadership team would be making a decision on something, it was often the case where HR would bring in one set of numbers and finance would bring in a different set, she said. If people couldn’t come to a consensus, generally employers would end up siding with finance’s numbers, not HR’s. The cloud, however, allows teams to more easily access the same data.

Additionally, the new technology that’s being baked into HCM systems is allowing for much better basic reporting and much more detailed analytics around that, Piercy said. 

One of the key results of the new technology is that organizations are going to be able to leverage the data. 

“[People will] finally be able to leverage their data much better and do the deeper analytics that HR has been wanting to do — being able to prove business cases and value of HR programs, and understanding their workforce in more detail,” Piercy said. “We’ll see more and more of this promise coming through with technology.” 

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Comorbidities, COVID-19, and your employees

health care, employee health

Let’s talk about comorbidities. A comorbidity is the simultaneous presence of two chronic diseases or conditions in a patient. In the case of COVID-19, certain comorbidities are known to increase one’s risk for a more severe illness.

According to the CDC, people with any of the following underlying medical conditions are at increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19:

  • Cancer
  • Chronic kidney disease
  • COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)
  • Immunocompromised state (weakened immune system) from solid organ transplant
  • Obesity (body mass index [BMI] of 30 or higher)
  • Serious heart conditions, such as heart failure, coronary artery disease, or cardiomyopathies
  • Sickle cell disease
  • Type 2 diabetes mellitus

Additionally, people with any the following might be at an increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19:

  • Asthma (moderate-to-severe)
  • Cerebrovascular disease (affects blood vessels and blood supply to the brain)
  • Cystic fibrosis
  • Hypertension or high blood pressure
  • Immunocompromised state (weakened immune system) from blood or bone marrow transplant, immune deficiencies, HIV, use of corticosteroids, or use of other immune weakening medicines
  • Neurologic conditions, such as dementia
  • Liver disease
  • Pregnancy
  • Pulmonary fibrosis (having damaged or scarred lung tissues)
  • Thalassemia (a type of blood disorder)
  • Type 1 diabetes mellitus
What does this mean for you and your employees? It means that for the duration of this pandemic, you likely need to maintain two sets of work rules—one for employees with comorbidities and one for those without. Employees with one of the listed underlying disabilities (or pregnant employees) might need an exception in an in-person work requirement or attendance policy, a separate work area, or more frequent breaks to remove a mask.
It does not, mean, however, that you can force or mandate a separate set of rules on disabled or pregnant employees who do not request them. The law does not allow employers to impose paternalist policies on these employees. In fact, the workplace discrimination hate paternalism. Good intentions do not excuse discrimination. An employer acting from a place of good intentions to protect disabled or pregnant workers from a potentially deadly exposure of COVID-19 is still discriminating if that’s not the employee’s choice. Only the employee can make that choice.
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Inside the DOL’s changes to the final rule interpreting the FFCRA

COVID-19, coronavirus, public health crisis

The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a decision in August holding that several provisions of the Department of Labor’s final rule interpreting the Families First Coronavirus Response Act are invalid. 

As explained previously, the FFCRA provides eligible workers of covered employers with Emergency Paid Sick Leave and Emergency Family and Medical Leave for various reasons related to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Calling into question the DOL’s interpretation of these laws, the court found that the final rule’s (1) “Work Availability” requirement, (2) definition of “Health Care Provider” for purposes of determining who may be excluded from eligibility, (3) employer consent for intermittent leave requirement, and (4) documentation requirements — to the extent that they were a precondition to leave entitlement — were invalid. 

Also read: Leave management should be as simple as submit, approve and hit the beach

On Sept. 11, the DOL announced changes to its final rule in light of the decision, effective Sept. 16. The following is an overview of the changes to the Final Rule.

The “Work Availability” Requirement 

Under both the EPSL and EFML provisions of the FFCRA, eligible employees of covered employers are entitled to paid leave if they are “unable to work (or telework) due to a need for leave” for various COVID-19 related reasons. In implementing these provisions, however, the DOL has generally excluded from eligibility those employees whose employers do not have work for them.  

While the court determined that the language of the FFCRA itself did not allow this, the DOL disagreed, and expanded and clarified its position in the revised Final Rule. Among its reasons for maintaining its position, the DOL explained that removing the work-availability requirement would not serve the FFCRA’s purpose of discouraging employees who may be infected with COVID-19 from going to work (if there is no work to go to, an infected employee would not need leave). It could also lead to perverse results in that furloughed employees with a qualifying reason (who were not working) could be paid FFCRA benefits while their colleagues without a qualifying reason (who also were not working) would not. 

The DOL noted that EPSL and EFML are forms of “leave” and that employees who had no work to perform — i.e., were on furlough — do not require “leave,” as that word is commonly understood. 

Noting the FFCRA’s anti-retaliation provisions, the DOL emphasized that employers may not make work unavailable in an effort to deny leave. The DOL also pointed out that other COVID-19 relief measures — including the Paycheck Protection Program and expanded unemployment provisions of the Coronavirus Relief, Aid, and Economic Security Act — more appropriately address the needs of employees for whom no work is available. To address specific failings noted by the court, the DOL clarified that “work availability” is a requirement for all forms of leave under the FFCRA.

Also read: Time off policies promote convenience while enhancing engagement

The Definition of ‘Health Care Provider’

Under the FFCRA, employers may exclude from EPSL and EFML eligibility “health care providers” and/or “emergency responders,” the DOL definitions of which were expansive. While the definition of “emergency responders” was not addressed in its decision, the court held that the FFCRA’s unambiguous terms did not allow for the broad definition of “health care provider.” 

In light of the decision, the DOL has revised the definition of “health care provider” to match the definition in the FMLA, and include other employees who provide diagnostic services, treatment services, or other services that are integrated with and necessary to the provision of patient care. The DOL has updated its answer to Q&A #56, clarifying that “health care providers” who may be excluded by their employer from FFCRA eligibility include: 

  1. “Anyone who is a licensed doctor of medicine, nurse practitioner, or other health care provider permitted to issue a certification for purposes of the FMLA.” 
  2. “Any other person who is employed to provide diagnostic services, preventive services, treatment services, or other services that are integrated with and necessary to the provision of patient care and, if not provided, would adversely impact patient care.” 
  3. Employees who do not provide direct heath care services to a patient but “are otherwise integrated into and necessary to the provision those services — for example, a laboratory technician who processes medical test results to aid in the diagnosis and treatment of a health condition — are health care providers.”

This second group includes nurses, nurse assistants, and medical technicians.” It also includes “employees who directly assist or are supervised by a direct provider of diagnostic, preventive, treatment, or other patient care services.” 

The Q&A further clarifies that a person is not a health care provider merely because their employer provides health care services — i.e., IT professionals, building maintenance staff, cooks, or food service workers. 

Notably, the revised “health care provider” definition no longer permits the highest official of a state (i.e., the governor) to expand the definition to include any individual they determine is a health care provider necessary for that state. 

The definition of “emergency responders” — including the highest official’s ability to expand it — has not changed.  

Provisions Relating to Intermittent Leave

The DOL’s final rule allows employees to take EPSL and EFML intermittently “only if the Employer and Employee agree,” and even then, only under certain circumstances — i.e., when the employee’s use of intermittent leave will not risk the employee transmitting the virus to others. While the court recognized that the final rule’s restrictions on when an employee may use leave intermittently are consistent with Congress’s public health objectives, it rejected the blanket requirement of employer consent. The DOL disagreed, however, and reaffirmed its position that employer approval is needed to take intermittent FFCRA leave. 

While the FFCRA did not expressly permit or prohibit intermittent leave (in contrast to the FMLA, which expressly authorizes employees to take leave intermittently, but only under certain circumstances), the DOL reasoned that the employer-approval condition is consistent with the longstanding FMLA principle that intermittent leave, where foreseeable, should avoid “unduly disrupting the employer’s operations,” particularly when it is not medically necessary (e.g., bonding leave). 

Notably, the DOL clarified that the employer-approval condition would not apply to employees who take FFCRA leave in full-day increments to care for their children whose schools are operating on an alternate day (or other hybrid-attendance) basis, because such leave would not be intermittent. In an alternate day or hybrid-attendance schedule, the school is physically closed with respect to certain students on particular days as determined by the school, not the employee. For the purposes of FFCRA, each day of school closure constitutes a separate reason for FFCRA leave that ends when the school opens the next day, and thus intermittent leave is not needed because the school literally closes and opens repeatedly. 

This is distinguished from a scenario where the school is closed for some period, and the employee wishes to take leave only for certain portions of that period for reasons other than the school’s in-person instruction schedule (in which case the use of leave would be intermittent and would require employer approval).

The Documentation Requirements 

The DOL’s final rule required that employees submit documentation to their employer prior to taking leave. The text of the FFCRA, however, requires only that employees give notice “as is practicable” for foreseeable EFML, and that they follow reasonable notice procedures for EPSL after the first workday or portion thereof that they receive paid sick leave.  

Recognizing these inconsistencies, the court held that the documentation requirements, to the extent they are a precondition to leave, are invalid. The DOL agreed with the court, and has thus revised the final rule to clarify that the documentation need not be given “prior to” taking EPSL or EFML. Thus, employers may require an employee to furnish as soon as practicable the required information and/or documentation discussed here.

In light of the foregoing, employers of health care providers in particular should familiarize themselves with the revised definition in order to ensure accuracy in determining which of its employees may be excluded from eligibility for EPSL and EFML. Employers who have relied on the previous “health care provider” definition to exclude employees from eligibility may wish to contact their attorney with questions about the revised definition and/or its impact on excluding such employees from FFCRA entitlements going forward. 

Additionally, to the extent employers were requiring documentation to support a request for EPSL and EFML prior to the leave, such processes must be revised to allow employees to provide such documentation “as soon as practicable.” 

Employers may continue to deny EPSL and EFML if there is no work available for the employee, and may continue requiring approval for use of EPSL and EFML on an intermittent basis, pursuant to the requirements of the revised final rule (and only if such intermittent use is for a permissible qualifying reason).

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Time and attendance management implementation is about more than just punching a clock

scheduling; time and attendance; forecasting

Your time and attendance system does a vital job for the organization, keeping track of hours and saving managers time to do work that can’t be automated. But with so many software options to choose from, picking the right time and attendance management system for your organization can be complicated. 

An HR technology expert spoke about what organizations should consider as they shop for a new time and attendance system. 

Set guiding principles around time and attendance 

Organizations must decide on these guiding principles before they seek out potential time and attendance management solutions, said Will Manuel, partner in Mercer’s Digital Practice. Questions to consider include:

  • Do we want to use one system for everything?
  • Do we want to use a system that can integrate with other HR or payroll software?
  • Do we want to allow mobile or something that can only be accessed onsite?

Further, an organization must understand what makes it unique, Manuel said. Its geography, industry, employee composition and unique business needs will determine what kind of time and attendance system and features will be the best fit. Time and attendance is a functional area of workforce management that varies much more depending on these factors than other areas of human capital management like performance management, he added.

The employee composition aspect is important because full-time salaried employees generally have different leave and vacation policies than hourly employees, he added. A time and attendance system must be able to account for the types of employees an organization has and the types of leave they have access to. 

Also read: Leave management should be as simple as submit, approve and hit the beach

Manuel also suggested that organizations should decide where the time will be calculated. Will it be in the time and attendance system or will it be simply recorded in that system and then calculated through the integrated payroll software? 

“For the hourly population, it becomes a lot more complicated, because you’re calculating it by hourly rates, which may factor things like overtime. The complexity of the calculator sometimes goes beyond the basic time and attendance system,” he said.

Integrate when possible

Organizations generally want to adopt a time and attendance management system that can integrate with payroll systems, Manuel said. This allows the company to access much more robust data and analytics. Also, “you can make much more informed decisions around productivity measures and cost of labor when they are integrated into more of a single system,” he said.

Also read: A technology integration is an intervention to dissolve common payroll errors

“That doesn’t doesn’t mean data cannot be fed from a standalone time and attendance system into an HCM system, which would be able to provide that more robust set of data, analytics and reporting. It just should not be assumed that can happen,” he added. “You have to understand what is the time system and its capabilities, and what is the HR or payroll system and its capabilities.”

As a guiding principle, one system that meets an organization’s requirements is better than using two systems, he said. But what it ultimately comes down to is the company’s unique use cases and if a single system can handle everything that is needed to support the business. Sometimes, multiple standalone systems will fit these needs better.  

Growing trends in time and attendance 

Labor forecasting is the major trend to keep an eye on in time and attendance management, Manual said. It helps guide managers by providing actionable insights on how to improve their scheduling. 

There are also solutions that have come out to minimize flukes like payroll leakage and buddy punching, he added. “But it’s really the reporting and analytics that is what’s helping to differentiate the best in breed,” he said. 

Look to your future needs, not just your present ones

One mistake organizations make when picking out a new software system is only considering their present needs, Manuel said. “They also need to look at where they think their workforce composition is going to be and what they may need three or five years down the road from now.” 

The norm for time and attendance systems may change in the next few years, he added. Looking forward allows organizations to “see the picture  beyond time and attendance and more the employee experience and what the [system] needs to support the business.”

time and attendance; scheduling; software

The simple question to ask is, “Will my workforce composition be the same as today in three to five years?” If the answer is that it will look different, organizations should consider the ramifications of choosing the time and attendance system they chose. 

The risks of picking a system that can’t adapt to your unique needs

Again, organizations should understand what makes them unique, and the right time and attendance system will be able to address these needs. It helps ensure there are no surprises, Manuel said. 

“I’ve unfortunately seen it too often where something is selected, but it can’t configure to the handful of complex rules. And therefore [the organization] has to change the business to fit the time system as opposed to the time system supporting the business,” he added.

He gave the example of XYZ unions, for which there are a number of complex calculations based on factors like how long an employee has worked, what union they belong to  and what their hourly rate is. Also, they may be working different shifts and have varying rates. 

“Calculations can be pretty complex for certain groups, and you need to make sure that if you’ve got complex calculations, the system can handle it,” he said. “Don’t  just assume that the system can handle it because somebody said it could. Assume that the system can handle it because somebody showed you it could handle it. Rely on ‘show me,’ not ‘tell me.’ ”

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Workforce management tools to help address modern workplace challenges

HR tech; hr manager; workforce management software

As the world throws curveballs at businesses, new workforce management tools are created as old ones may become irrelevant or even more daunting to use. 

Luckily, new technologies are constantly being created to address these challenges. 

Geofencing 

With more employees clocking in on their phones, it could be possible for them to clock in anywhere. Geofencing — a capability in which time and attendance tools can put a fence around a location that that workers cannot clock in unless they are on premise — is one solution that’s gaining momentum. 

Karen Piercy, a partner in Mercer’s Philadelphia office, said that she’s recently seen more clients ask about geofencing when looking for vendors. While it used to be something that clients were not directly seeking when looking for a vendor, now it’s something on many wish lists. 

Also read: Companies may pay the price for poorly managed payroll practices

Fighting burnout and fatigue 

One of the biggest challenges of recent years is the quick pace of transformation and innovation, said Jan Bruce, CEO and co-founder of meQuilibrium. These changes can impact the way that employees work on a day-to-day basis. Even before COVID-19 hit the U.S. in early 2020, companies and employees were struggling with how to deal with change effectively.

She gave the example of distribution workers, who years ago may have gone about their day with a clipboard and a manifest and did their daily deliveries based on that paper document . Now it’s more likely they used an iPad, where tasks can be updated whenever it is convenient. In the future, it’s possible that self-driving cars are instructed where to go, and the employee is essentially only used to offload products. 

People don’t change as quickly as technology does, which can lead to change fatigue and burnout, Bruce said. Change fatigue refers to people feeling tired out by constant change, and burnout refers to people feeling overwhelmed by not having enough resources to deal with these changes appropriately.  

Bruce suggested that resilience training software can help employees deal with change better. Resilience refers to not necessarily working harder but adopting the skills to solve problems or address a situation as efficiently as possible with the resources available. 

Additionally, managers have a role, as well. It’s not all on the employees. Managers should understand how employees as a group are feeling and learn the overall climate of the workforce, Bruce said. If workers are stressed, managers can explore the question of what is causing burnout and hindering their productivity. 

Also read: How technology can help your employee engagement strategy

For this, Bruce recommended using a HR tool or software that provides managers data-driven insights, rather than something that simply shares tips and guidance. Good workforce management tools here will deliver actionable insights to managers. 

Adopt workforce management tools with personalization 

In the context of burnout, personalized tools can help in many ways. Bruce said the right tools could help people track their stress levels and get instant feedback from a chatbot if someone is seeing a pattern of feeling more stressed than usual. 

Users could get insights like that they’re always a little more stressed on a certain day of the week or after a specific type of meeting or event. From there, they can identify a specific stress point and go on from there trying to deal with it better, Bruce said. 

Personalization is also something that applies to the broader spectrum of workforce management tools and technology. 

HR tech; hr manager; workforce management software

Machine learning is gaining traction

The Gartner report “Six Emerging Human Capital Management Technology Trends” explored different tools and technologies likely to become commonplace in the near future. One of these tools is machine learning in HCM, likely to see mainstream adoption in the next five to 10 years, according to the report. 

Machine learning is broadly applicable to most, if not all, HCM processes, the report stated, and in order to be successful, organizations must have access to rich data sources, including historical data. By adopting this tool, organizations may be able to take advantage of the many benefits from helping people and processes evolve to guiding talent planning and investment decisions. 

The report also included some warnings regarding the impact of machine learning. “Beware of the limitations of machine learning in HCM. A decision based on bad data or a bad analysis will usually result in an unexpected/poor outcome,” it stated. 

Additionally, deploying machine learning as a one-off initiative is not the most effective use of the tool, the report said. It’s better used consistently for continuous improvement over time. 

Voice of the employee technologies

The Gartner report also highlighted “voice of the employee,” or VoE, technologies, which are able to collect and analyze the opinions, perceptions and feelings of employees through means such as surveys or feedback tools. It is estimated that these tools will see mainstream adoption in five to 10 years, according to the report.

These solutions offer a way for managers to measure and improve employee engagement and retention, and they better allow managers to identify any commonplace issues among staff.

One important recommendation Gartner has for organizations interested in this technology is to build a VoE strategy with data privacy and security requirements in mind.

Also read: Shift feedback software is an immediate conversation starter

Chatbots for bots

Organizations have been incorporating AI-enabled chatbots in their HR systems for years, but that becomes difficult to manage when there’s a different bot for each HR function, said Will Manuel, partner at Mercer.

One of the newer innovations is bots for bots, he added. Socrates.AI is one of these software technology companies that helps manage the bots an organization uses so that the way questions are being answered is consistent across bots. 

“Otherwise, even though you’re leveraging new technology, you’re still creating silos. And integration is better,” Manuel said. 

 

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Coronavirus Update: The pandemic plight of working moms

pregnancy discrimination

There is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has been tough on employees. A recent report published by Policy Matters Ohio illustrates just how tough it’s really been.

  • Ohio had fewer jobs in April 2020 (4,704,000) than at any time in the past 30 years.
  • At the height of COVID-related unemployment, 31.7% of Ohio workers were out of work because of employer layoffs, furloughs, and closures.
  • Unemployment peaked at 17.3%
  • While unemployment and jobless numbers are starting to rebound, there are still nearly 600,000 fewer jobs in Ohio now than at the start of millennium.
As bleak as these overall statistics are, I want to focus on another aspect of the report—the plight of working mothers.

According to the report, working moms have taken the brunt of the wave of employees working from home.

  • Working moms with young children reduced their work hours four to five times as much as fathers did nationally, widening the work hours gap between men and women by 20-50%.
  • The current recession has increased the gender pay gap by five percent, seven points higher than what we typically experience in other recessions (in which the gender pay gap is normally reduced by two percent).

What does this mean?

Men and women are about equally likely to be able to work from home, but the burden of new unpaid care work falls especially heavily on women.… Added child-caregiving responsibilities are competing with women’s paid work and in some cases forcing women out of the labor force altogether, with consequences for their careers that could be permanent. Women may never recover the career losses they face to support their families’ child care needs through the crisis. The pay gap with men, which has been narrowing over recent decades, could be wrenched open once more for years to come.

What is an employer to do?

  1. Remind supervisors and managers that family responsibility discrimination is illegal. While Title VII does not expressly include “family responsibility” as a protected class, the EEOC has long held that Title VII’s prohibits discrimination against parents as parents if you are treating some more favorably than others (e.g., dads better than moms, or men better than moms). There are also, a few states that expressly prohibit parental discrimination. If, for example, you have to make decisions about layoffs, you should be considering whether working parents are disproportionately included.
  2. Consider accommodations to aid working parents. Work from home is already an accommodation, but there are others that could help here. Modified work schedules (which the Department of Labor favors in its FFCRA guidance), designated breaks, and the provision of additional work supplies such as laptops and printers could all ease the burden on parents working from home. Our goal here should be helping employees figure out solutions to get their job done, not harming employees (and the business) by erecting barriers that prevent it.