Rick Bell – Page 48

November 7, 2018June 29, 2023

Hyatt Taps Into Virtual Reality to Hire 10,000 Young Workers

The unemployment rate may be at a record low, but there are still vast pockets of workers in the United States struggling to find jobs.

Global hotel chain Hyatt Corp. is tapping into one of these talent pools with RiseHY, its new community-hiring program, which uses virtual reality and gaming to introduce young people looking for career opportunities to the hospitality industry.

As part of the initiative, Hyatt hotels around the world have committed to hiring 10,000 “opportunity youth” — people ages 18 to 24 who are neither in school nor working — by 2025. According to data from Brookings Institute, 4.7 million young people fall into this category.

“This program is a labor of love,” says Jessica Schultz, Hyatt’s senior manager of community engagement. Part philanthropy and part talent development, RiseHY was designed to support the community while helping Hyatt fill its talent pipeline. “This is a pool of untapped talent who have skills and ambition,” said Audrey Williams-Lee, vice president of corporate HR and philosophy. “They could be a great fit for our organization.”

Immersive Hotel Tours

However, RiseHY is more than just a targeted recruiting effort.

Opportunity youth often come from disadvantaged neighborhoods and have limited work experience and education. “Hospitality jobs aren’t even on their radar,” Schultz said. When Schultz and Williams-Lee began designing the project, they knew they would need to close that gap and find a way to help young people imagine building a career in hospitality.

To give them a sense of what life would be like working in a hotel, they worked with a vendor to build a virtual reality app, called YouVisit, where candidates can take a virtual guided tour of a hotel, see what workers do and learn what’s required of different roles including room attendants, hostesses, wait staff and concierge. “The virtual reality lets them see what their career path could be, and to think about whether this is a good fit for them,” Williams-Lee said.

Gaming the System

Priyanka Jain

Interested candidates are also invited to complete an online assessment, built by Pymetrics, that uses artificial intelligence to assess a candidate’s skills and attitudes through a series of games and reasoning exercises. The games use neuroscience and reviews of past assessments to measure things like how well candidates multi-task, whether they can filter distractions, and their willingness to take risks, explained Priyanka Jain, head of growth and lead product manager for Pymetrics.

The system then determines where a candidate would be a good fit. “There are no good or bad responses,” Jain said. Rather, it helps the candidates and Hyatt understand where candidates are likely to thrive in the absence of a resume or past job experience.

The virtual reality app and game-based assessments are meant to ease these young people through the early recruiting process, but it is also expected to help increase retention and job satisfaction by ensuring the right people are put into the right roles, said Schultz. “It will create a better flow for our talent funnel.”

Once candidates are selected, they are either hired directly and given a mentor to support them as they ease into the role, or they are placed in a three- to six-month training program developed in partnership with community groups to give them the skills they will need on the job.

Once the training is complete, they may be hired by Hyatt or referred to other hospitality employers. “We aren’t just doing this for Hyatt,” Schultz said. “It’s about helping these kids find careers in hospitality.”

Expanding the program ensures every interested youth has an opportunity to find a job and that Hyatt doesn’t have to slow the program down during low hiring seasons, she added. “We expect to hire at least 10,000 youth, but this program will impact so many more.”

November 6, 2018June 29, 2023

Sexual Harassment Prevention 101: No Strip Clubs

Last month, the EEOC held a public meeting on preventing workplace harassment.

Titled Revamping Workplace Culture to Prevent Harassment, it’s the agency’s second meeting since forming its Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace, and its first in the #MeToo era.

The EEOC discussed the need for employers to take a holistic approach to change workplace culture to prevent harassment.

Somehow, the EEOC missed “No strip clubs for employees” as one of its anti-sexual harassment talking points.

Under Armour did not get this #MeToo memo until very recently.

According to The Wall Street Journal, earlier this year Under Armour sent its employees an email advising that the company was ending its longstanding practice of employees charging visits to strip clubs on their corporate credit cards. It appears that over the years, executives and employees, including its CEO, took athletes or co-workers to strip clubs after some corporate and sporting events. Not surprisingly, according to the WSJ, “some top male executives violated company policy by behaving inappropriately with female subordinates,” and “women were invited to an annual company event based on their attractiveness to appeal to male guests.”

The Journal goes on to quote Under Armour Chairman and CEO Kevin Plank, “Our teammates deserve to work in a respectful and empowering environment.… We can and will do better.”

No kidding.

Bravo, Under Armour, for taking such a brave stance on your anti-sexual harassment, pro-female culture. Prohibiting employees from using expense accounts at strip clubs is not something about which a company should need reminding. It’s something it should have been doing all along.

Employers, you better “do better,” because we are all watching.

November 5, 2018June 29, 2023

How to Decide When to Make Political Statements in the Workplace

These days, particularly in the United States, it feels like the divided nature of our politics makes it almost impossible to keep from choosing sides.

Whether you’re a person, a business or a politician, you almost certainly know what you support and what you oppose. For organizations and their leaders, that means the more difficult issue often becomes whether to say anything publicly about what you support or oppose.

From a business perspective, the issue of whether to make political statements is critical — and it’s more complex and risky than ever. In the past, CEOs, boards or businesses that took some sort of activist stand used to be able to draw a fairly bright line between social activism and political activism.

Today those lines are far more blurred. Whether we’re talking about the #MeToo movement, education policy, health care, immigration or trade issues, these debates frequently fall into both the social and political spheres.

These are deep and roiling waters for business leaders who personally feel obligated to communicate which side they’re on regarding hot-button issues. Given that there are essentially no people in the middle, coming out on one side or the other comes with significant business risk.

If you’re a business leader who represents a brand and you’re considering taking a public stand on a social or political issue, you should first think very carefully about these three constituencies.

The first group you have to carefully consider when mulling a public political stand is your employees. And here’s the first big question to ask yourself: Is your stand consistent with your stated and lived corporate values, or do those values just represent those of the CEO or some portion of the C-suite? If your stand is consistent with your stated and lived corporate values, and they’re not just the personal musings of a company executive, then you’ve got a check in the go-forward box.

Next, ask yourself if your stand will alienate employees and exacerbate the line between people on both sides of the issue in a more public way than already exists. Think about whether some employees will leave, or if they’ll instead stay and be more committed. Or perhaps they’ll remain but as alienated employees with reduced engagement and performance across the board.

An organization’s public political or social stand can bring employees together or can tear them apart. It can also significantly affect your ability to attract talent, for better or worse, particularly when the economy is strong. You have to carefully measure these potential impacts before you step into the political arena.

Next, it’s absolutely vital to consider how your stand will affect your customer base. Start by considering whether your public position will be received negatively or positively by customers — and also whether it will make it harder or easier for loyal customers to do business with you. The reality is that your stand could grow or diminish your customer base, while also negatively or positively affecting your brand promise.

Remember that you’re representing a business. If you feel compelled to make a political stand, think through how it will affect your actual business, what will the stakeholders will think about that and how or whether they will support you in the long term.

Also read: How to Manage Emotions in a Post-Election Workplace

Finally, you have to weigh the impact of your action on your community. No organization exists in a vacuum, whether it’s a one-location business, has 20 locations around the country or is a global organization with hundreds of locations around the world. Consider how your stand will positively or negatively affect your standing in the communities in which you live and operate. Will the community be in agreement or will you alienate your community base?

Particularly if you’re a business with one or a handful of locations, you do business with other businesses in the community and you likely have relationships with policymakers. That means you have important relationships with the larger social environment in which you are living and working, and your business often relies on these connections in nontrivial ways. If your stand will make any of these harder, you need to think through truly what the ramifications are for that action.

When pondering a political stand, the bottom line is to remove the self from your decision and think only in terms of the business. If the stand you’re going to take will put your business at risk, put your employees’ jobs at risk or put your organization’s reputation at risk, then you need to think seriously about whether you’re willing to assume that risk.A

Also read: Talking Politics at Work Shouldn’t Be Taboo

That doesn’t mean you don’t ultimately take the stand. It just means you have to be knowledgeable about what the effects will be and have contingency plans in place. As business leaders, we have to think through the ramifications for our organizations and the people that make them — and not just for the CEO.

November 5, 2018June 29, 2023

Managing Election Day at Work

As tomorrow is Election Day, I thought I’d share a few tips for employers to keep in mind.

First: Please don’t tell your employees for whom to vote. It may or may not be illegal (depending on your state), but it is certainly a terrible HR practice.

Second: Ohio law requires that employers provide all employees a reasonable amount of time off to vote on Election Day. Deny employees that right, or punish them for exercising it, at your risk. Better yet, embrace the Time to Vote movement and implement policies (like paid time off) to encourage your employees to vote on Election Day.

Finally: After the election is over, think about how we heal at work. Some thoughts (care of The Wall Street Journal): providing meeting space for employees to talk after the election, offering supervisors and managers sample language for opening up a constructive dialogue with employees, and playing soothing music to distract employees from political headlines.

Watch the Video: Voting on the Clock Works as an Employee Engagement Tool

Bonus: While you’re voting on Election Day, don’t forget to cast your ballot for the Worst Employer of 2018.

End of public service announcement.

October 31, 2018June 29, 2023

When You Employ a Satanist

“Rosemary’s Baby,” the classic 1968 horror film, tells the story of a pregnant woman who (spoiler alert: correctly) assumes that a satanic cult wants her baby.

What does “Rosemary’s Baby” have to do with employment law?

In honor of Halloween, I bring you the story of Irving Cortez-Hernandez, a “Catholic-Satanist” who prayed to the Devil for his pregnant co-worker to miscarry, and as a result lost both his job and his religious discrimination lawsuit.

Cortez worked as an inside sales representative for Centennial Puerto Rico, selling wireless and broadband telecommunications services to customers in one of its mall stores.

During his employment, Cortez complained to HR that one of his co-workers, Lymarie Torres, had skimmed commissions from his sales. During HR’s investigation of the theft allegations, Torres unloaded about behavior by Cortez that one could only describe as downright frightening.

He would speak in a weird language and, when questioned, would explain that he was praying to Satan, or that the Devil had ordered him to speak in tongues.
He would threaten Torres with satanic rituals, including during her pregnancy to induce a miscarriage.
He told employees that Satan protected him, and that they should not mess with him.
He threatened Torres with comments such as, “Today I feel like killing you,” and others with, “Today I [feel like/would/will] kill someone.”
He would tell co-workers that “when the Devil is inside of him, there is no stopping him.”

Not surprisingly, Centennial fired him. Slightly less surprisingly, Cortez sued for religious discrimination.

In Cortez-Hernandez v. Centennial Puerto Rico (D.P.R. 11/18/2010), the district had little difficulty dismissing Cortez’s lawsuit. He claimed that Centennial terminated him because of his satanic religious beliefs. The court didn’t buy it, concluding that Centennial fired him because of his offensive and threatening comments and behavior, not his religion.

That said, there is no rule that Title VII only protects traditional religions. Indeed, quite the opposite is true. According to the EEOC:

The law protects not only people who belong to traditional, organized religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism, but also others who have sincerely held religious, ethical or moral beliefs.

Thus, if Satanism is a “sincerely held religious belief” (and, by all accounts, it appears to be), then Title VII protects from workplace discrimination those who practice it. What Title VII does not protect, however, is using your religion as a justification for harassing or threatening others. Hence, Cortez’s lost-cause lawsuit.

Happy Halloween, y’all.

October 30, 2018June 29, 2023

Abortion Discrimination = Pregnancy Discrimination

Is there a more controversial topic than abortion?

As controversial and divisive as it might be, the law is pretty clear that an employer cannot fire an employee for having one.

In the EEOC’s 2015 Enforcement Guidance on Pregnancy Discrimination and Related Issues, the agency made its position clear:

Title VII prohibits discrimination based on pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition. Thus, an employer may not discriminate against a woman with a medical condition relating to pregnancy or childbirth and must treat her the same as others who are similar in their ability or inability to work but are not affected by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.… Title VII protects women from being fired for having an abortion or contemplating having an abortion.

The courts universally support the EEOC’s position. It’s been the law of the 6th Circuit for nearly 20 years, and the 3rd Circuit for 10.

Yes, there are limited exceptions. The First Amendment, for example, might protect religious institutions that take adverse actions against an employee because of an abortion.

For the most part, you need understand that whether you agree with a woman’s right to have an abortion, abortion discrimination equals pregnancy discrimination, and firing an employee who has (or expresses an intent to have) an abortion is no different than firing that employee because of her pregnancy.

October 29, 2018June 29, 2023

Anti-Semitism at Work

The devastating events of this past weekend served as a sobering reminder that anti-Semitism not only still exists, but it’s thriving.

The reality is that anti-Semitism never went away. It has always been there, bubbling under the surface. The current climate in our country, however, has given it permission to boil over.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, anti-Semitic attacks have increased 60 percent since 2016. It’s the largest increase since the ADL starting tracking these statistics.

And, you can bet that if anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise in the country as a whole, they are also on the rise in your workplace.

Whether it’s debates among your employees about “the Jewish question” or George Soros, or more blatant attacks like images of swastikas or Adolph Hitler.

When I was in college I worked summers in a warehouse. There were only two Jews in the entire workplace — the company’s owner and me. One of my workers, upset that he had been denied a raise, hanged the owner in effigy on a giant swastika, with the message, “Cheap Jew.” My (not unfounded) fear is that these attacks will rise in frequency given the current state of our country.

What can you do?

Be aware.

Be open to complaints.

Be vigilant in treating any anti-Semitic message or attack the same as any other unlawful harassment in your workplace. Investigate, and take corrective action to ensure that it does not happen again.

October 26, 2018June 29, 2023

Voting on the Clock Works as Employee Engagement Tool

While voting is an important right for Americans, some employees don’t get the chance to cast a ballot because of strict workplace attendance policies.

As the 2018 midterm elections near, employee engagement and recognition company O.C. Tanner asked more than 1,000 workers around the country about their organization’s rules concerning voting during standard office hours.

In the October 2018 study, 62 percent of participants said their company allows them the flexibility to vote during the workday, and 34 percent of survey participants said their company offers its employees paid time off to vote.

O.C. Tanner Institute Vice President Gary Beckstrand said the data proves that companies aren’t tremendously supportive of their employees voting.

“Organizations could do a better job at allowing their employees time off to vote and express their support of the activity,” Beckstrand said.

A significant finding was how employees who were given flexibility to vote during the workday reacted. Beckstrand said employees who are given the flexibility to vote are more positively engaged.

“Employees who feel that their employers care about their overall report well-being report high feelings of well-being,” Beckstrand said. “Allowing employees time to vote is a simple way to acknowledge and support social and emotional wellness.”

According to the study, 65 percent of people say they would recommend their company to a friend as a good place to work, as opposed to the 47 percent of respondents who can’t vote during work. Also, 69 percent of participants said they want to work for their current employer a year from now, contrasting from 48 percent of respondents who can’t vote during office hours.

A 2018 Society for Human Resource Management differs from the O.C. Tanner report, citing that 44 percent of companies give paid time off to vote. While benefits can come from accommodating an employee’s civic duty, employers may be considering employee productivity issues when it comes to allowing time on the clock to go to the polls.

Dean Carter, vice president of human resources and shared services at clothing company Patagonia, said employers can use voter flexibility to their advantage, regardless of financial ramifications.

“If citizenship and democracy are part of your values, then there is no greater way to show it than to make sure your employees have time off to vote,” Carter said. “This is why we’re proud to be part of the Time to Vote [campaign], which has more than 300 companies leading a nonpartisan effort to engage in democracy and increase voter turnout.”

Workers should make sure they know their voting rights.

Employee voting rights and restrictions vary by state. In Illinois, for example, employees are allowed up to two hours’ leave if their company’s hours begin less than two hours after polls open and end less than two hours before polls close. In Michigan, it is a misdemeanor for an employer to discharge or threaten to discharge in an attempt to influence employee’s vote, according to employment law firm Constangy’s Employer’s Guide to Employee Voting Rights.

David Chasanov is a Workforce editorial associate. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

October 24, 2018June 29, 2023

How Many N-bombs Does It Take to Create a Hostile Work Environment?

Smelter v. Southern Home Care Services (11th Cir. 9/24/18) answers the question, “How many N-bombs does it take to create an unlawful hostile work environment?”

So as not to bury the lede, the answer is one.

Brenda Smelter was the only African American working in her office at Southern Home Care Services. During her two months of employment, she alleged that she endured racist statements on a daily basis by Connie Raleigh, the office manager, and Catherine Smallwood, a customer service supervisor.

Smallwood called black men “lazy” and “the scum of the earth.”
Smallwood said that “black women ha[d] babies on welfare.”
Smallwood said that President Obama’s “big ears” made him “look like a monkey.”
Smallwood told Smelter that her hair made her look like a “mixed monkey” from the movie Planet of the Apes.
Raleigh described black people exiting a bus at a Wal-Mart store as looking like they were “chained together.”
Raleigh said that she wished she could “send them all back … to Africa.”

On the day of Smelter’s termination, she and Smallwood engaged in a verbal altercation over a schedule change, which ended when Smallwood allegedly “jumped up … in a rage” and said “get out of my office … you dumb black nigger.”

The court of appeals reversed the district court’s dismissal of Smelter’s hostile work environment claim. It held that in the “two months during which Smelter had endured racist comments on a daily basis” was sufficient to create a jury issue over the existence of hostile work environment. “The … comments Smelter endured in the office involved obvious racial slurs conveying highly offensive derogatory stereotypes of black people.”

Yet Smallwood’s lone use of the N-word, directed at Smelter, in and of itself and without more, would have sufficed:

A reasonable jury could conclude that the harassment was severe. Most severe of all and addressed directly to Smelter herself was Smallwood’s calling her a “dumb black nigger.” Implicitly acknowledging the egregiousness of this epithet, Southern Home argues that Smallwood’s “one-time use” of it was insufficient to establish severity as a matter of law. We strongly disagree. This Court has observed that the use of this word is particularly egregious when directed toward a person in an offensive or humiliating manner. Here, Smallwood did not simply use the epithet in Smelter’s presence; instead, she directed it at Smelter as a means of insulting her in the midst of an argument.

Smelter demonstrates a hostile work environment that no employee should endure and no employer should tolerate, period.

Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

October 22, 2018June 29, 2023

What You Need to Know About Your Office Lottery Pool

Late Friday afternoon (when the Mega Millions was only a mere billion dollars), I received a phone call from Brian Duffy, a reporter from our local CBS affiliate.

“We are doing a story on office lottery pools. Are you the right person for me to interview about some of the legal risks?”

Two hours later, he was in my living room with a camera person interviewing me.

“Everyone is your friend until you’re looking at a billion dollars, and all of a sudden, that kind of stuff goes out the window because people get motivated by greed,” I told him.

You can watch the rest of my thoughts here.

As for office lottery pools, the legal risks (if you are lucky enough to win) fall into two major categories.

1. An employee claims the winning ticket for him or herself.

For example, in 2009, Americo Lopez quit his job after discovering that one of the office pool Mega Millions tickets he was holding won the $38.5 million jackpot. When his co-workers learned of his deception, they sued, and each collected their share of the jackpot.

2. An absent employee was not able to participate.

For example, in 2011, Edward Hairston sued his Youngstown cabinet-company coworkers, claiming they froze him out of their $99 million payout. His lawsuit claimed that he had participated in the office lottery pool for eight years, and his co-workers failed to cover his ante while he absent with a back injury. The parties reached a confidential settlement.

So, what can you do to mitigate these risks in your office pool?

The best, and safest course of action, is to draw up a written contract for each member of the office pool to sign. That said, as I pointed out during my interview, these are exceedingly rare.

Still, there are less formal measures you can take to limit risk:

Appoint one person to act as the point for collecting money, purchasing tickets and acting as custodian.
Collect all money up front before buying tickets, and only buy as many tickets as you have cash collected.
Keep a list of who has contributed to the pool, and if you want to be extra cautious, have each participant sign something evidencing their participation.
Distribute copies of the purchased tickets to all participants prior to the drawing, so that there is no dispute between a pool ticket and a personal ticket.

And, as for all of the talking heads who are suggesting that employers altogether avoid office lottery pools because of the legal risks, I say grow up and stop being such a killjoy. Lots of things have risk. I drive to work every day, even though my odds of dying in a car crash are 1 in 11,700. My odds of winning the Mega Millions are 1 in 302,575,350.

In other words, you are 26,000 times more likely to die on your way to work than win the lottery when you get there. So why not have a little fun, promote some office camaraderie, and spend a few dollars. And, in the extremely off chance that you actually win, the worst that will happen is that you might have a wait a bit for your pot o’ gold while some legal issues sort themselves out.

Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.