Rick Bell – Page 30

October 4, 2019June 29, 2023

The Past and Present of Mental Health Treatment

My most recent Workforce print feature story is about mental health parity, and that’s one of the topics I love writing about as a benefits reporter: the need for quality, accessible, affordable mental health coverage.

My preliminary research steered me to a new book, “Mind Fixers: Psychiatry’s Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness.” It explores scientists’ ultimately unsuccessful attempts to figure out the cause of mental illness.

The argument is that even though ideas or theories in psychiatry have prevailed in certain moments of history, all of them have been proven inadequate or outright wrong. And we’re still uncertain about both the cause of mental illness and why treatments work on some people but not others.

This sounds cynical, but I love a book that rationally explores the highs and lows of a scientific goal (in this case, to pin down the cause of mental illness). This isn’t discouraging as much as it is proof that people will constantly try to progress their understanding of the world in order to help people with a disorder. It’s more promising to me to see people admit their miscalculations and be determined to move forward than to see people stubbornly hold on to ideas from the past.

There are a few reasons I want to write about this book. The history of mental health treatment and theory is simultaneously fascinating, inspiring and upsetting. Especially in this context, history gives us many examples of how some of the mental health trends we’re now seeing in the workplace may not be exactly new.

I’ve gotten press releases about how people are more depressed or anxious now than ever before — especially millennials (or whatever young generation is being picked apart at the moment). I’ve spoken to people about how prevalent mental illness is and how that has changed over time. I’ve always been skeptical about the idea that it’s more common than in the past. My theory is that it’s more talked about now, more diagnosed now and less stigmatized now, and so the numbers just seem higher. (Feel free to argue against me on this, of course!)

What interested me about “Mind Fixers” was the section about the Cold War Era and how it was seen as the “Age of Anxiety” at the time. Many people relied on the “minor tranquilizer” Miltown, a predecessor of Valium, to deal with that anxiety. Meanwhile, in the 1980s depression became “the common cold of psychiatry.”

Comments like this make me wonder how current trends compared to other periods of history. This isn’t to minimize the impact that mental illness has on people and communities in the present. I bring this up so that we don’t talk about the history of mental health in a way that romanticizes the past. People in the 1950s, the 1800s, and before that had mental disorders, too. The treatments just weren’t as advanced.

According to the National Institute of Health and the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, 41.2 percent of adults with a mental illness have received mental health services. And, more importantly, this statistic is very gendered if you dissect the data further. While 47.6 percent of women have received this type of health care, only 34.8 percent of men have.

That’s a big gap. Why don’t men get mental health care as much?

There’s a lot written about this already (see the National Alliance on Mental Illness, National Institute of Mental Health and Psychology Today, for example), but here’s a historical angle that shows how deep this goes. “Mind Fixers” briefly explored a 20th century mental disorder known as hysteria.

It was “associated with women and weakness” and men did not receive this label. Fast forward to the 1970s, when people were talking about a new trendy topic called “stress.” It was thought that women were twice as likely to experience stress and depression than men.

This is just a snapshot. Still, it shows how deep these roots are that may tell men that they’re weak if they admit certain things.

Finally, “Mind Fixers” mentioned the unwillingness of insurance companies to cover psychiatric services in 1970s. Lack of benefits coverage of behavioral health is something that even today — after the passage of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act in 2008 — is still sometimes an issue.

Also read: Mental Health Parity Law Successes and Challenges

According to “Workforce Attitudes Toward Behavioral Health,” a February 2019 survey from behavioral health company Ginger, 35 percent of the 1,214 U.S. employees surveyed reported that they had to pay directly for behavioral health services their benefits didn’t cover. Further, 85 percent of people said that behavioral health benefits are important when evaluating a job, and 81 percent of people said they face barriers in accessing behavioral health care. The most common barrier (28 percent) was that providers aren’t available in their benefits plan.

I’d strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in the science behind mental health. It brings up a lot of interesting talking points like, How much has stigma improved in the past 200 years, and where is there still room for improvement? Which issues still exist that caused people problems all those years ago as well?

While this isn’t a book about the workplace, you’ll read about certain historical trends and movements that sound a lot like some of the “innovative” solutions you’re hearing about now. Maybe you’ll learn a couple lessons from history.

September 30, 2019June 29, 2023

Are Hangovers the Next Frontier of Your FMLA Headaches?

A German court recently ruled that a hangover qualifies as an “illness.”

Which got me thinking … are hangovers the next frontier of your FMLA headaches?

Thankfully, the answer to this question is almost certainly “no.”

But it’s worth reviewing the FMLA’s definition of “serious health condition” to see how I reach that conclusion.

The FMLA defines a “serious health condition entitling an employee to FMLA leave” as “an illness, injury, impairment or physical or mental condition that involves inpatient care …or continuing treatment by a health care provider.”

“Inpatient care” means “an overnight stay in a hospital, hospice, or residential medical care facility, including any period of incapacity … or any subsequent treatment in connection with such inpatient care.”

“Incapacity” means an “inability to work, attend school or perform other regular daily activities due to the serious health condition, treatment therefore, or recovery therefrom”

“Continuing treatment by a health care provider” means “a period of incapacity of more than three consecutive, full calendar days, and any subsequent treatment or period of incapacity relating to the same condition, that also involves” either “treatment two or more times, within 30 days of the first day of incapacity by a health care provider,” or “treatment by a health care provider on at least one occasion, which results in a regimen of continuing treatment under the supervision of the health care provider.”

It’s difficult to imagine a hangover meeting any of these criteria. No hangover should ever require an overnight stay, continuing treatment of three or more days, or a regimen of supervised continuing treatment, even if an employee feels so ill that he or she cannot work or perform other regular daily activities as a result.

HR folks and leave administrators, rest easy knowing that you will not have to grant FMLA to your hungover employees.

September 27, 2019September 9, 2019

Jimmy John’s No-Poach Policy Leaves Bad Taste

employment law, labor law, overtime records

Sylas Butler was an employee for a Jimmy John’s sandwiches franchise in Illinois.

After Butler’s hours were reduced, he attempted to transfer to another Jimmy John’s franchise. He discovered he could not transfer because the franchises have contracts with Jimmy John’s corporate that contain “no poach agreements,” — agreements that prohibit franchisees from hiring each other’s employees.

Butler brought a class-action lawsuit on behalf of current and former Jimmy John’s employees, alleging the sandwich company violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, and committed unfair and deceptive business practices under state law. The United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois held that Butler stated a valid claim under the Sherman Act and state law.

The court rejected Jimmy John’s argument that the no-poach agreements were merely “vertical” restraints on trade between Jimmy John’s corporate and franchisees, and not “horizontal” restraints upon trade between competitors, which are typically illegal.

The effect of the no-poach agreements was horizontal, as under the contract, the franchisees had the ability to enforce the no-poach agreements against each other as third-party beneficiaries. Butler v. Jimmy John’s Franchise, LLC, 331 F. Supp. 3d 786 (S.D. Ill. 2018).

IMPACT: Courts are increasingly skeptical of no-poach agreements that restrict the ability of employees to seek gainful employment.

September 24, 2019June 29, 2023

Girl Scouts Good, Union Organizers Bad

What rights do you have to ban union organizers from your property?

A lot. Your property is your property.

What if, however, you allow your employee’s daughter’s Girl Scout troop to set up a table outside and sell cookies? Have you just opened yourself to an argument that allowing cookie sales unlawfully discriminates against the banned union organizers?

Historically, yes, but currently, no. Or at least not under the NLRB’s most recent pronouncement on the issue of employer property rights, in Kroger Mid-Atlantic.

To establish that a denial of access to nonemployee union agents violated the Act …, the General Counsel must prove that an employer denied access to nonemployee union agents while allowing access to other nonemployees for activities similar in nature to those in which the union agents sought to engage. Consistent with this standard, an employer may deny access to nonemployees seeking to engage in protest activities on its property while allowing nonemployee access for a wide range of charitable, civic, and commercial activities that are not similar in nature to protest activities. Additionally, an employer may ban nonemployee access for union organizational activities if it also bans comparable organizational activities by groups other than unions.

Since the Girl Scouts (or the Salvation Army, or the American Cancer Society, or any other charitable, civic, or commercial activity) is nowhere near “similar in nature” to union organizing activities, an employer should be safe permitting the former while banning the latter.

September 24, 2019June 29, 2023

Beware the ‘Religious Exemption’ Plan

Warning: This month’s column is not for everyone. If, however, you are offended by what I am about to say, then this is specifically for you.

In August, the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, the federal agency that regulates and governs federal contractors and subcontractors, proposed regulations to clarify the scope and application of the religious exemption contained in section 204(c) of Executive Order 11246.

By way of background, Executive Order 11246, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in September 1965, “prohibits federal contractors and federally assisted construction contractors and subcontractors, who do over $10,000 in Government business in one year from discriminating in employment decisions on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” It’s been amended over the years, including its 2014 addition of LGBTQ protections to the list of prohibited discrimination.

Section 204(c) specifically exempts from coverage any “government contractor or subcontractor that is a religious corporation, association, educational institution, or society.”

The Trump administration seeks to expand section 204(c) to permit religious organizations with federal contracts to “make employment decisions consistent with their sincerely held religious tenets and beliefs without fear of sanction by the federal government.”

It makes clear that religious organizations can discriminate because of religion, and that religious organizations can require employees’ behavior to meet the organization’s religious rules.

What has people, including me, up in arms about this rule is its proposed change to what qualifies as a “religious organization.” The EEOC has long taken the position that for-profit companies cannot qualify as “religious organizations.” This proposal deviates from that long-standing rule for purposes of the OFCCP. Indeed, according to two senior Labor Department officials, the exemption would apply to “closely held companies acting in accordance with an owner’s religious beliefs.”

In other words, if someone organizes a closely held business for a religious “purpose” and holds itself out to the public as such, it would be exempt from the OFCCP’s anti-discrimination provisions if it operates its business consistent with its religious purpose.

What would this change mean practically? As the American Civil Liberties Union tweeted, “The Department of Labor just proposed a rule that aims to let government contractors fire workers who are LGBTQ, or who are pregnant and unmarried, based on the employers’ religious views.”

This is not “religious freedom.” It’s government-sanctioned discrimination. And it’s just plain wrong.

Private businesses can’t hold religious beliefs. Extending to them these protections based on their owners’ religious beliefs is dangerous. And scary. And abhorrent. We should all be troubled by a rule that permits an employer to opt out of an employment law because of a religious belief.

Religious freedom as an opt-out from the law is a dangerous construct. Our Constitution guarantees freedom of religion. We irreparably damage this important principle when we permit a private business, under the guise of religious freedom, to opt-out, without penalty, from an employment law with which it disagrees or finds offensive.

If you stand with me, and against government-sanctioned discrimination of any kind and in any form, write or call your senator and congressperson and tell them that this proposed rule cannot stand. That as a nation we are better than this. That all private businesses should be held to the same non-discriminatory obligations, regardless of the religious beliefs of their owners.

And, don’t forget about the comment period required by the rule-making process for any proposed regulations. The public gets to chime in, and everyone who opposes this rule should do so.

To conclude, I’ll make this as clear as possible.

Racism is wrong.

Sexism is wrong.

Homophobia is wrong.

If you disagree, you’re a bigot, period.

And, if you hide behind your religion to protect your views, then you’re a hypocritical bigot. There is nothing religious about bigotry, no matter what some might want you to believe.

September 24, 2019June 29, 2023

Google Hire Is Fired

Applicant tracking systems providers breathed a small sigh of relief in September when Google announced it was officially shutting down Google Hire, the cloud-based applicant tracking system that the search-engine giant launched barely two years ago.

It’s a fitting end to a product that was never a good fit for Google’s portfolio of solutions, said Othamar Gama Filho, CEO of recruitment marketing automation platform Talentify. “I was more surprised when they launched it than when they ended it.”

Google Hire promised to simplify the hiring process for recruiters. By utilizing Google’s powerful search capabilities, open API environment and G Suite tools, including Gmail and Google Calendar, recruiters would be able to more easily find and communicate with candidates, and schedule interviews. At least that was the pitch.

But in reality it didn’t offer a lot to make it stand out in an already crowded market. “The global ATS market is small compared to what Google is used to,” Gama Filho said. It’s projected to be a $2.34 billion by 2026, which may be exciting for a burgeoning tech startup, but is hardly worth the attention of a company that generates billions of dollars in revenues every year.

Google also never explained how the global platform would accommodate the unique data privacy regulations in every country where it was offered. Gama Filho noted that Google is already facing antitrust investigations in the European Commission for its Google for Jobs app, which could have chilled its interest in the recruiting space all together.

The real truth is Google Hire never found it customer base. “A lot of ATS platforms integrate with G-Suite, so there was not a lot to differentiate the offering,” he said.

It also wasn’t a good fit for Google’s business model, said Holger Mueller, vice president and principal analyst for Constellation Research. “Google never does anything in business apps. They can make a lot more money attracting the HCM SaaS vendors to their platform than competing with them.”

Mueller also points to Google Hire’s origin story as a potential harbinger of its early demise.

Google Hire was originally developed at Bebop, a startup tech firm led by Diane Greene, which Google acquired for $380 million in 2015. As part of that acquisition, Greene was brought in to head up Google’s cloud business.

Greene was lauded as a veteran of the enterprise software marketplace, and Google leaders believed she could help them compete with the likes of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

They were right. During her four-year tenure (she left earlier this year), Google Cloud increased its revenues to $1 billion per quarter. While it is still third in the public cloud marketplace, it’s closing fast on Amazon and Microsoft.

What does that have to do with Google Hire? Many believe buying Bebop was just Google’s way to get Greene onboard. “But they still had to show stakeholders that they didn’t waste the acquisition,” Mueller said. So they kept it on the books for a few years, used it to showcase how their technology could help recruiters. “But never really did anything with it.”

For customers of Google Hire, the good news is that it won’t be officially shut down until September 2020, giving them almost a full year to find a replacement. Google has also generously agreed to keep it running for no additional fees.

The lesson to be learned from the rapid rise and fall of Google Hire is that nothing lasts forever, Mueller said. “Especially when comes in the cloud.”

September 23, 2019June 29, 2023

No-fault Attendance Policies Offer No Cover When the ADA or FMLA Are Involved

An employee suffering from epilepsy, migraines and heart condition asks (with a medical note) for two unpaid days off from work to treat symptoms related to her disabilities.

Instead of granting the leave, the employer assigns the employee points under its no-fault attendance policy and fires her for exceeding the allowable number of attendance points. The EEOC has sued the employer, alleging disability discrimination.

A no-fault attendance policy assigns points each time an employee is absent, with corresponding levels of progressive discipline automatically imposed at certain point levels. Employers like these policies because they simplify attendance issues.

These policies, however, carry, a certain degree of risk — namely in the handling of absences protected by the FMLA or ADA. If the FMLA or ADA protects an employee’s absence from work, an employer would violate the statute by counting the absence as part of a no-fault attendance policy. And, in this case (assuming the medical note is legit), and for this reason, it appears this employer has a big problem with the EEOC.

On a more basic level, where’s the humanity in denying two days off for an employee to deal with medical symptoms, especially when the request is accompanied by a doctor’s note?

The ADA requires reasonable accommodations. Unless the employee is a serial abuser of unpaid days off, it’s hard to imagine a situation in which two days is not a reasonable request.

September 23, 2019June 29, 2023

Maybe You’re Aware … Self-Awareness Is in Short Supply at Work

Research indicates that more self-aware individuals understand others better, enabling them to lead more effectively.

The research on self-awareness by my organization, the Myers-Briggs Co., shows that most people believe they are self-aware. In fact, 82 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I have a great deal of self-awareness.”

Despite these high levels of self-reported self-awareness, a study by The Eurich Group shows that the quality of self-awareness is actually in short supply. This wasn’t a surprise. In our research, most participants thought that they were more self-aware than most people they knew (which is, of course, impossible; everyone can’t be more self-aware than everyone else).

There are a number of reasons to believe that greater general levels of self-awareness among individuals within organizations lead to positive business outcomes. Studies such as those by Bass and Yammarino, Atwater and Yamamarino, and Church showed that people with more accurate self-conception tended to perform better.

The relationship between self-awareness and flexibility is demonstrated by a study of the Royal Navy, which found that more self-aware leaders were better able to tailor their leadership style to the needs of a given situation. Better employee performance plus more agile leadership typically leads to a better bottom line.

There’s also reason to believe that self-awareness might influence retention. My team at Myers-Briggs recently researched workplace well-being with over 10,000 global respondents and found that individuals with a higher level of well-being — which can stem from self-awareness — had significantly higher levels of job satisfaction, felt much more emotionally attached to their organization, and were significantly less likely to look for a new job. They were also much more likely to be good organizational citizens being helpful to their co-workers, conscientious and more willing to go the extra mile.

What Is Self-Awareness and How Does It Help?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary self-awareness is, “Conscious knowledge of one’s own character and feelings.”

Researcher Anna Sutton further elaborates on this to describe it as, “The extent to which people are consciously aware of their interactions or relationships with others and of their internal states.”

Think about a time you took your car in for a tune-up. Nothing major was fixed, but afterward it drove like a dream. Similarly, increasing your self-awareness can help you perform better — by discovering how you operate you begin to understand how to adjust your behaviors for better results.

By increasing self-awareness, you also begin to better understand other people’s approaches. In our own recent research on self-awareness, survey respondents reported that increased self-awareness led to improvements in confidence, decision-making, people-management and stress management.

When we asked people about the advantages of being self-aware, the top five responses were:

Understanding of reactions and motivation.
Management of self and others.
Ability to adapt behavior.
Relationship improvement.
Personal growth.
We also asked people about any disadvantages to being self-aware — but many, many more people mentioned advantages. Additionally, people said that self-awareness was particularly helpful when:

Working with others in a team (mentioned by 58 percent of survey respondents).

Coping with stress (mentioned by 54 percent of survey respondents).
Acting as a coach (mentioned by 53 percent of survey respondents).
Dealing with change (mentioned by 50 percent of survey respondents).
Managing and leading others (mentioned by 45 percent of survey respondents).
Dealing with clients (mentioned by 33 percent of survey respondents).
Receiving coaching or feedback (mentioned by 28 percent of survey respondents).
How Is Self-Awareness Measured?

As we’ve mentioned, just asking people “are you self-aware” or even “are you more or less self-aware than other people” doesn’t work too well. It’s a bit like asking people, “Are you an above average driver?” Around 90 percent of Americans say “yes” to this even though this can only be true for 50 percent of individuals. There needs to be a more structured way to assess self-awareness.

A number of models and assessments can be employed to measure self-awareness in individuals. A particularly useful one comes from a 2015 study by Sutton, Williams and Allinson that identified four facets of self-awareness: Reflection, Insight, Rumination and Mindfulness. In conducting our own research, we used questions, including the sample below, designed to measure these four facets.

Agreeing with these questions suggests that you may be more self-aware, except for those marked with a “*”; more self-aware people will tend to disagree with these. How would you score? How about others in your organization?

Reflection

I often reflect on my thoughts.
I do not often think about the way I am feeling.*
I enjoy exploring my “inner self.”
I often reflect on my feelings.
Others would benefit from reflecting more on their thoughts.

Insight

I am interested in analyzing the behavior of others.
I value opportunities to evaluate my behavior.
It is important to understand why people behave in the way they do.
When I’m feeling uncomfortable, I can easily name these feelings.
I usually know why I am feeling the way I do.

Mindfulness

I am often on auto-pilot and do not pay much attention to what I am doing.*
Sometimes I am careless because I am preoccupied, with many things on my mind.*
I often dwell on the past or the future, rather than the present.*
My mind often wanders when I am trying to concentrate.*

Rumination

I often find myself thinking about past negative events.
When things go wrong, I often ruminate on them for long periods of time.
I tend not to look back and think about how I could have done things differently.*

How Can a Workplace Professional Promote Self-Awareness?

There are many ways to develop self-awareness, but a mix of methods will probably work best. Here are some of the most popular, based on responses to our survey.

Feedback from a range of different people, including:

Peers.
Managers.
Subordinates.
Clients.
Family.

An individual’s wider network.

Completing personality questionnaires.

Training to become a coach.

Coaching and other professional help.

360-degree feedback tools.

Journaling: keeping a diary or journal that explores thoughts and feelings surrounding the events of one’s life.

However, the most popular methods aren’t necessarily the best. We looked at a number of these commonly used approaches and found that the best methods, in order of effectiveness, were:

Training to be a coach.
Being coached.
Completing personality assessments.
Having structured feedback from your peers.
Journaling.

It wasn’t too surprising that “training to be a coach” topped the list, as this involves many hours of learning to understand oneself before being allowed to coach others. Of course, such training is also time consuming and expensive and not a realistic route for most employees.

On the other hand, “receiving personal coaching” as a way to help senior managers is something that many organizations may invest in. It does, however, come with a significant cost and time commitment, so for many individuals this may not be a realistic option. Instead, companies might want to look into using personality assessments and facilitating ways in which employees can have structured feedback from their peers. These may often be the most cost-effective approaches in terms of providing the biggest payoff for a relatively low monetary investment.

Similarly, “journaling,” the practice of keeping a diary or journal that explores thoughts and feelings surrounding the events of your life, offers a low-cost way to effectively promote self-awareness. However, journaling may not work for everyone.

Companies should note that one of the interesting findings of our research was that “feedback from your manager” was seen, on average, to be one of the least effective methods. This is an important point because, as noted earlier, this kind of feedback was also listed as one of the most common methods of promoting self-awareness that organizations leverage.

Though we cannot say definitively why manager feedback was not seen as especially effective, there are a number of possible reasons. Some managers may be less close to the work of their subordinates work than their peers; indeed in some large international organizations they may be based on a different country and rarely be in contact. Others may be viewed as having a particular agenda, or as being too busy with other aspects of their job. Whatever the reason, this is a troubling finding for managers.

You’re Self-Aware, Now What?

Building your own self-awareness is really just the first step. Once individuals become more aware of their own personality preferences and have a structure to understand and describe themselves, they can start to recognize how their co-workers are similar to or different from them. They can use this knowledge to begin to devise strategies to work with their co-workers more effectively, using their differences in a constructive, rather than destructive, way.

Research shows that more diverse teams can perform better than more homogeneous teams; team members can bring different perspectives to bear on the issues they have to deal with. Diverse teams can however suffer from more conflict, often because individuals simply do not understand other team members. Building self-awareness is a key way of solving this issue.

Linked to this greater understanding, managers and workplace professionals can put in place systems to help people work together more effectively. This could include approaches such as:

Establishing a modus operandi for working together that takes account of the rights and the responsibilities of different personality types.
Ensuring that important information is communicated in a range of different ways (rather than only in a style that suits the personality of the sender).
Taking into account both the logical answer and the solution that makes sense for people and the organization’s values when making decisions.
Identifying how the different approaches of team members can complement each other.
Allowing time for reflection during or after meetings.
Considering personality preferences when reorganizing office layouts.

For managers and leaders, the story does not stop there. Using personality assessments gives you a structure to understand yourself better. This in turn gives you a structure to understand those you manage; what motivates them, and how you can best communicate with them.

Understanding how your team works leads to an understanding of other teams and ultimately of the dynamics of your entire organization. For those at the top level, it can help in aligning the whole company to the strategy that is needed for organizational success.

Regardless of whether some or all of the approaches are taken, the key to successfully implementing any of these includes both the realization that we are different from others in ways that can be identified and described, and the harnessing of this diversity of personality in a positive way. And of course, this is a lesson that can be learned by individuals at any level in the organization.

September 19, 2019September 9, 2019

Arbitration Clauses Can Cause a Rift

In Latif v. Morgan Stanley & Co., plaintiff Mahmoud Latif complained to defendant Morgan Stanley’s HR department about his co-workers’ inappropriate comments regarding his sexual orientation and religion, inappropriate touching and sexual advances.

Latif also complained of a female supervisor sexually assaulting him. Morgan Stanley terminated him one year after he first complained. Latif brought suit in federal court alleging discrimination, hostile work environment and retaliation in violation of Title VII.

Morgan Stanley moved to compel arbitration under Latif’s employment agreement. In response, Latif argued the agreement was not enforceable as to his sexual harassment claims in light of a recently adopted New York law.

The New York law, N.Y. C.P.L.R. § 7515, prohibits employers from requiring employees to arbitrate claims of sexual harassment, except where inconsistent with federal law. The court found the New York law was inconsistent with federal law — specifically, the Federal Arbitration Act (the FAA), which states that arbitration clauses shall be valid, irrevocable, and enforceable, unless grounds exist for the revocation of any contract.

Similar to AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, where the Supreme Court held the FAA preempts state laws prohibiting waivers of class-wide arbitration, this court found that the FAA preempted the New York law because it attempted to prohibit arbitration of a particular type of claim. Latif v. Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 107020.

IMPACT: Employers should carefully craft arbitration clauses to comply with state law unless and until a court determines that the law is preempted by the FAA.

September 16, 2019June 29, 2023

Love, Life and Career — Chasing the Trifecta

Stefanie Coleman

As I think about the workplace issues faced by my clients, I can’t help but reflect on my personal life and how there might be some parallels. Supervising a toddler’s play date through the corner of an eye, holding my newborn in one arm while typing this opinion piece with the other and a light bulb switched on for me. To authentically reflect this chapter of my life and the workforce issues that matter most to me right now, I have to blog about flexibility. For me, there is nothing else so top of mind.

Since 2007, I’ve advised firms around the world on all kinds of workforce issues including flexibility. Over the course of my travels, I’ve had world-class mentors, both men and women alike.

Within this group, there is a set of common traits that I strive to emulate. They successfully balance the three important attributes of the trifecta: love, life and career.

If you are career-oriented, balancing the three components of the trifecta is an important condition for living a happy and fulfilled life. And, when done properly, it improves your chances of success in the workplace.

In the United States alone, despite relatively low levels of violent crime and unemployment, coupled with steadily rising income per capita over the last few decades, general happiness within the population is declining. The 2019 World Happiness Report describes this relationship as the Easterlin Paradox, where despite rising standards of living, happiness levels trend inverse. This is attributed to a variety of factors, one of which includes digital advancement — ironically, an urgent business opportunity for most executives.

Another reason for the Easterlin Paradox could be the growing workload faced by many employees in today’s workforce. In fact, HR leaders (particularly in North America) consider unmanageable workloads a key risk to their people experience. In response, several firms have prioritized wellness strategies as a means to remediate. To do so, establishing the link to flexibility is key. Wellness and flexibility cannot be decoupled. They go hand-in-hand.

Good flexibility programs help employees balance the trifecta.

Empower employees to spend meaningful and undistracted time with their loved ones and to invest in starting and/or growing loving relationships.
Give employees adequate opportunities to enjoy their lives by engaging in leisure activities, pursuing personal passions and participating in social and/or community networks.
Create a professional environment where love and life are celebrated and where making investments of time in these two components of the trifecta will enhance an employee’s career, as opposed to harming it.

The equation is pretty simple: Organizations that offer flexibility are more likely to have engaged workers. Engaged workers are more likely to be productive. Productivity leads to heightened levels of business performance. Performance strengthens the employer brand. Top talent likes top brands.

In a job seeker’s market where, at least in the United States, there are more open positions than available talent, firms cannot afford to be inflexible if they want to gain the competitive advantage in a growing war for talent.

But where to start? Consider these five tips for paving the way to a flexible future:

Establish flexible HR policies. Consider a work from home or casual dress policy. Think about an unlimited or mandated vacation policy and how this might impact well-being. Offer flex-time so employees can adapt their work hours to complement their lifestyle (to honor family, health and spiritual commitments).
Lead by example. Flexible HR policies are meaningless when not adopted. Sometimes, workers do not take advantage of these policies in fear of retribution if leaders do not walk the talk. It’s important that leaders give employees permission to partake by taking advantage of these policies themselves.
Consider diversity. Flexibility means different things to different people. For example, what might flexibility mean to a parent? How about someone transitioning to retirement? A caregiver? Someone with standing religious commitments? A single person?

With more diversity in the workplace than ever before, it’s important to take into account diverse needs when designing flexibility programs. A one-size approach to flexibility could offer an inflexible result.

Invest in technology. If the goal is to free up more time for employees for their personal use, offer state of the art technology that enables efficient work from home and mitigates unnecessary travel to the workplace or to meetings (particularly, where distance/air travel is required).
Monitor well-being and flexibility. To understand the return on investment in flexibility, establish a correlation to well-being metrics and other business outcomes and monitor this over time. Also, review the unintended consequences of “unsupervised” flexibility and put the necessary controls in place. For example, monitor patterns in remote working periodically to make sure people are still coming on-site to work and collaborate when necessary, while taking advantage of the policy when it’s not.

There are many ways to bring more flexibility to the workforce. However, as is sometimes the case with people programs, efforts to enhance flexibility will be futile when leadership support is not in place. While these are best enabled by HR, visible C-suite sponsorship is critical. Remember this before getting into tactics, as getting the leadership team on board first will be a worthy and very important next step.