human resources Archives - Page 10 of 38

July 24, 2020May 1, 2023

COVID-19 and reassessing workforce management

COVID-19, workforce management WFM 2.0, ethics

Over the past several months workplaces across the globe were forced to embrace the future of work in ways they never considered. COVID-19 may fundamentally change the workplace and in this context, here are three key considerations as employers work through this recovery phase in reaction to the pandemic.

Rethinking workplaces: Ensuring the health and safety of workers will be crucial to reopening plants, offices and stores and determining new team models.
Rethinking workforces: An estimated 2.7 billion people, or more than four out of five global workers, have been affected by stay-at-home measures. In addition to looking at new ways to deploy existing workers across an organization, many organizations are looking to identify opportunities to connect furloughed workers to job openings in areas with growing recovery demands.
Rethinking work: As organizations look toward the realities of a post-pandemic world, it’s likely that new business priorities will need to redesign teams and workforce policies, addressing the benefits and risks of a dispersed workforce while building flexibility.

It has become even more critical to look at the COVID-19 pandemic and how it exposed two key problems in managing the workforce. When cost management is not designed into daily workforce management activities and decisions and when there is no dedicated business unit focused on owning timekeeping and scheduling outcomes, it can be difficult to manage your bottom line or your workforce effectively.

The pandemic created an extreme disruption for workforce management. Many employers are concerned about costs and how to reconstitute their workforce to be optimally productive under different conditions.

If they are operating today, things like store hours and cleaning have changed. If they are planning to reopen, the restart may change when and how much labor is needed and can be afforded. Labor cost and revenue models are under pressure to adapt to such changes.

Unfortunately, workforce management has been mainly focused on efficient, automated, transactional processes such as reporting time and automating staffing interactions such as requesting time off. These activities and decisions aren’t likely designed to act as levers to drive critical outcomes or adapt to disruption in the workplace.

Such processes typically work well for what these standards are designed to do, but not for what functions employers should be doing. Transactional, routine scheduling and timekeeping processes aren’t capable of solving for pandemic-level issues impacting the workforce.

The pandemic created an extreme scenario that laid this fact bare. Employers should be operating differently and doing more. It exposes two everyday problems that have long been overlooked.

Cost and productivity should be treated as dynamic outcomes that are actively influenced by the employer in real-time workforce management activities.
Cost or productivity should be managed and influenced well with a workforce center of excellence and people who specialize in workforce management.

Labor cost and productivity can determine if an organization is competitive, profitable and serving its customers well. However, in too many organizations, it almost feels like workforce management is on auto-pilot … until something goes wrong.

If the employer is already operating with workforce management 2.0 — which we will call WFM 2.0 for brevity’s sake — it likely has the following characteristics allowing them to (a) design and control their labor spending for different workplace conditions and (b) know how to assign the work to the modified workforce for the ideal productivity and outcomes.

Characteristics of WFM 2.0 — managing cost and productivity outcomes.

Ownership — A designated business unit known as the WFM Center of Excellence should be responsible for labor outcomes (cost, compliance, productivity, quality, scheduling experience, etc.) and the enabling tools required to manage (timekeeping, scheduling, absence management, mobile and web-enabled devices, dashboards, etc.). This team knows the current model and is able to design the future state and the strategy to get there.
Capability — Specialized workforce management professionals who plan, design and support the timekeeping, absence management and scheduling practices and platforms. Post-COVID-19 operations will rely on these experts to know what policies, system configuration and scheduling models need to change to optimize cost and utilization.
Access to leadership and support — the WFM Center of Excellence — the CoE — reports directly to executive-level stakeholders who sponsor the function, hold it accountable, prioritize its needs and fund its operations. Post-COVID-19 transformation will require support from finance, HR, IT and operations to execute on planning, retooling systems and testing and monitoring workforce performance.

Signs that WFM 2.0 is operating effectively.

The WFM CoE understands the workload and work priorities:

Secures accurate forecasts. This will be challenging and essential in the post-COVID-19 world to recast the labor supply-demand model.
Defines what good work and workforce look like at a detailed, task and practice level blending in the new protocols such as cleaning and distancing.
Creates solid data from time and schedule data to determine what labor should cost.
Decides what types of workers to engage or what work to automate for the lowest cost and optimal outcome. It may be time to pivot some work to machines, work from home or third parties.

The WFM CoE understands the optimal workforce:

What good work looks like — updating labor standards relative to COVID-19 protocols.
What workforce is available — WFM differs from workforce planning and headcount management. WFM is about knowing the workforce that is available “today, right now” from the active, skilled and healthy workforce.
Who are essential workers.
How much the workforce requires to earn (what compensation is necessary to make work attractive — in other words, hazard pay, shift premium for evening, overtime for excessive hours, on-call pay, paid sick time, etc.).
How to connect to the workforce using up to date, reliable contact mechanisms.

The WFM CoE understands how to put the proper combination of shifts, people and pay practices together to meet the business needs to drive cost and productivity:

Use the right mix of part-time, full-time, contingent or machine workers.
Design optimal shift patterns and rotations for new health protocols and regulations.
Deliver schedule equilibrium (predictable, stable and adequate schedules).
Score schedule quality.
Prevents payroll leakage (avoiding time inflation, overstaffing, gaming the system to inflate pay and benefits).
Turn on self-scheduling, shift swapping and other self-service scheduling processes as needed.
Use float and standby staffing appropriately.
Is up to date on scheduling laws such as the fair workweek, wage and hour rules, and collective bargaining requirements.

The WMO (workforce management office[DM1] ) or WFM CoE understands what tools the business needs and how to use them, such as:

Timekeeping systems and devices will drive cost and payroll.
WFM devices that improve safety so workers can return to work.
Scheduling systems and communication tools to engage with the workforce in real time as situations change.
Ideal absence management systems to easily facilitate planned and unplanned time off.
Dashboards to monitor cost and utilization, react in real time to problems happening on the front line to ensure consistency in how managers operate.
Data-supported insights to inform internal and external stakeholders to show how cost and productivity are being delivered to support and satisfy workers, managers, investors, regulators and the community.

WFM 2.0 was bound to happen. The pandemic is a catalyst for immediate business transformation.

Labor cost and productivity are critical to the financial and competitive viability of employers. Leaving things on auto-pilot isn’t a cure for COVID-19’s impact on any organization’s health.

Businesses that will recover and thrive can start by establishing a permanent workforce management center of excellence acting as the command center for managing labor cost and utilization.

Lisa Disselkamp is the managing director at Deloitte Consulting LLP.

July 24, 2020October 22, 2021

Ethics and the future of workforce management

As the future of work rapidly evolves and organizations integrate people, technology, alternative workforces and new ways of working, leaders are wrestling with an increasing range of ethical challenges.

These challenges are especially pronounced at the intersection between humans and technology, where new questions top the ethics agenda about the impact of emerging technologies on workers and society. How organizations combine people and machines, govern new human-machine work combinations and operationalize the working relationship between humans, teams and machines will be at the center of how ethical concerns can be managed for the broadest range of benefits. Organizations that tackle these issues head-on – changing their perspective to consider not only “could we” but also “how should we” – will be well positioned to make the bold choices that help to build trust among all stakeholders.

Ethical concerns are front and center for today’s organization as the nature of work, the workforce and the workplace rapidly evolve. In Deloitte’s 2020 Global Human Capital Trends report, 85 percent of survey respondents believe that the future of work raises ethical challenges but only 27 percent have clear policies and leaders in place to manage them.

And managing ethics related to the future of work is growing in importance: More than half of the respondents said that it was either the top, or one of the top issues facing organizations today, and 66 percent said it would be in three years.

According to our report, four factors rose to the top of the ethics concerns: legal and regulatory requirements, rapid adoption of AI in the workplace, changes in workforce composition and pressure from external stakeholders.

The leading driver that respondents identified was legal and regulatory requirements. Given that there is often a lag in laws and regulations relating to both technology and workforce issues, this perception is surprising. However, outside of a few moves including fair workweek rules for hourly workers, policy changes have been slow in coming.

The pressure on ethics created by the rapid adoption of AI in the workplace, however, is much more understandable. AI and other technologies make ethics in the future of work, specifically more relevant because the proliferation of technology is driving a redefinition of work. Perhaps the issue that has attracted the most attention is the question of how technology affects the role of humans in work.

While our survey found that only a small percentage of respondents are using robots and AI to replace workers, headlines of the forthcoming “robot apocalypse” continue to capture global attention and raise concern. Organizations that are implementing technologies that drive efficiencies can expect to make decisions whether and how to redeploy people to add strategic value elsewhere, and what, if they decide to eliminate jobs, they will do to support the workers thus displaced. AI will also be a part of scheduling work across a blended workforce of machine and human workers.

As technology becomes more embedded into work, its design and use needs to be assessed for fairness and equity. Organizations should consider questions such as whether their applications of technology decrease or increase discriminatory bias; what procedures they have to protect the privacy of worker data; whether technology-made decisions are transparent and explainable; and what policies they have in place to hold humans responsible for those decisions’ outputs.[1]

Our research found that the third driver of ethics’ importance in the future of work is changing workforce composition, which raises issues about the evolving social contract between the individual and the organization and the organizations and society — the growth of the alternative workforce is one major phenomenon contributing to these concerns.

The number of self-employed workers in the United States is projected to hit 42 million in 2020. “Invisible labor forces” are being exposed in the recent research by Mary Gray and Siddarth Suri’s “Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass,” which talks about the unsavory working conditions of many workers performing the high-tech piecework (labeling data, captioning images and flagging inappropriate content) that powers automation and AI.

The fast growth of this workforce segment is calling to attention related ethical concerns, including alternative workers’ access to fair pay, health care and other potential benefits.

July 21, 2020June 29, 2023

How to effectively use data analytics for workforce success

There’s a lot of emphasis put on data-driven decision making. But how do organizations start that process? Serena Huang, global head of people analytics at the Kraft Heinz Co., shared some helpful insights into how leaders can use data to better understand the workforce and improve overall management and performance.

Workforce recently caught up with her, and she shared her thoughts on how to use data analytics and gather information and employee feedback for better workforce management.

Workforce: What do leaders need to know about the relationship between strategic business planning and data analytics?

Serena Huang: I’d encourage leaders to think of data analytics as a new mindset and a new language rather than a new tool from IT. There are several areas where analytics can improve business planning, such as more accurate demand forecasting and a better understanding of consumer behaviors.

WF: What is the importance of using analytics in managing people? How did the COVID-19 pandemic highlight this?

Huang: It’s always been important to use analytics in managing people. Many companies would say that “people are their most important asset” and even the most technologically advanced companies cannot operate without people. Instead of relying on intuition, analytics can help organizations make more informed decisions faster and at scale.

Employees’ health, safety and engagement have never been more important. The pandemic has provided an opportunity for HR to become heroes by caring for employees and ensuring business continuity. At Kraft Heinz, this is critical because our employees are crucial to making food that everyone needs. We have a responsibility around the world to feed people, and our employees make it happen.

WF: What are the common misconceptions about people analytics and its role in workforce management?

Huang: One of the biggest misconceptions is that data must be perfect before you can do analytics. I always recommend starting with the business problem rather than the data. You’d be surprised how much usable data already exists. Another misconception is that you need data scientists or know how to code to start doing people analytics. It is much more important to focus on the right questions before hiring a data scientist or learning how to model.

Also read: Labor data analytics can inform better talent decisions

WF: How can organizations effectively use and make sense of the data they have?

Huang: Visualizations and dashboards are great ways to turn data into insights. To know where to start, it’s best to align with business leaders on solving problems.

For example, in workforce management, companies often have significant data on time and attendance, so a starting point can be using analytics to optimize labor costs. If there are different systems, it’s helpful to choose a country or location that needs the most help and start with a pilot.

To create the most value, it’s important to monitor data quality on an ongoing basis.

WF: How can organizations track the right type of data for their workforce? How can they identify metrics of success?

Huang: It’s crucial to stay closely connected with the leadership team on strategy and business problems. If you can figure out the top three to five pain points, you can then frame questions to answer and think about what data you’d need.

The metrics of success will vary from one problem to another. I’d recommend thinking in different time frames and ask yourself what success looks like in six months, 12 months, and two to three years.

WF: How can managers use data to improve productivity and boost employee engagement?

Huang: Managers can certainly leverage surveys if they have a large organization. Often organizations conduct engagement surveys on a regular basis, so start with existing surveys for potential areas of improvement.

For managers with smaller teams, it is most beneficial to conduct regular check-ins and one-on-ones. Managers must create an environment where there is psychological safety, so team members feel comfortable sharing concerns openly.

WF: What are different ways companies can collect feedback or listen to their employees, especially in the era of remote work?

Huang: There are several ways companies can listen to employees, including surveys, virtual focus groups, and Q&A during employee town halls. It’s helpful to monitor the participation rates as it could signal overload if participation decreases. It’s also important to encourage managers to connect with their team members directly on a regular basis in addition to this corporate-level feedback.

WF: What are the factors to consider when choosing the right tools, methods or technology to measure and improve employee engagement?

Huang: A good starting point will include an evaluation of how many employees, how many languages, local legal requirements, reporting/analytics for users, text analytics capabilities. In my article published on LinkedIn, I explain why there isn’t the “right” number of times to pulse employees, and it depends on how quickly the business leaders can act on feedback.

WF: What do you think the future of work will look like given current times?

Huang: It’s hard to predict what will be a temporary rather than permanent shift in the future of work, but I see more focus on flexibility, diversity and inclusion, well-being and skills development.

Data from COVID HR-Pulse show that fewer than 50 percent of companies had a remote work program before the pandemic, and now office employees have been working virtually for months. Employees will demand more flexibility, and organizations can use flexibility to attract new hires.

We have seen different businesses get creative during the pandemic. At Kraft Heinz, we’re focused on being agile at scale because we believe that agile and nimble organizations will outperform those that cannot pivot quickly when needed. To be truly agile in workforce planning, an organization should know the skill sets needed to deliver business results and the skills its workforce currently has.

Also read: A midterm outlook on the future of the workplace

The recent tragedies have brought diversity and inclusion front and center for many organizations. Companies that can create an inclusive environment where everyone belongs will continue to be able to attract and retain talent.

While mental health remains a difficult topic to discuss, especially in a corporate setting, the pandemic has made it more critical to talk about this topic. We will likely see a focus on employee well-being extend beyond the pandemic.

July 20, 2020June 29, 2023

Employee performance shines bright with valuable, continuous shift feedback

With the number of engaged employees consistently hovering at a disappointing 33 percent, it’s little wonder that retaining good workers is an elusive endeavor.

Disengaged employees can break down an organization. Minimal effort and a lack of productivity shouldn’t be the standard expectation, and building a quality workforce takes teamwork and constant inspection and fine-tuning of the processes. There are better ways than “hire and pray they work out” to develop, engage and evaluate a workforce.

Rate your employees’ performance

For managers there is no greater feeling of satisfaction than watching an employee grow into their role. Some employees thrive immediately, and others take time to bloom and flourish. Building a strong team takes a keen eye for talent, but assessing and developing effective talent also requires time and patience.

One solution is utilizing software that allows managers to evaluate employees through continuous, ongoing shift ratings and feedback. Much like tracking an actor from cameo appearance to leading role, the five-star rating system follows an employee’s pathway for success from an ordinary start to a meteoric rise in achievement.

‘A’ ratings — assessment and accountability

How do you hold your team accountable while also inspiring them to grow?

Managers can take the input and build skill profiles for their front-line employees with a shift rating and feedback solution. Qualitatively assessing an employee’s performance may at first seem arbitrary, but as the assessment continues over the course of that person’s tenure with the organization, the solution reveals ongoing performance over time.

Using a five-star rating system, managers can record employee performance immediately after their shift ends.

Assessments aid scheduling

Too often managers are forced to guess which employees mesh best. This should not turn into a game of Whack-a-Mole hoping to guess which person to pair with your cadre of five-star employees. There are likely a handful of two-star employees, while the bulk of the workforce ranks among three- and four-star staffers and it is imperative that managers consistently find the proper Triple-S balance: seniority, salary and skill.

A shift feedback and rating tool provides the perspective and guidance managers need to blend top talent with those who are competent in their work as well as those who require more training. While having a lineup of all five-star talent is a manager’s dream, conversely, scheduling an entire shift of two-star talent has the potential for disaster.

Incorporating a shift rating and feedback app into a manager’s arsenal provides that quick-glance guidepost to maximize the available talent at any given time.

Don’t hesitate — rate!

Like a forgotten item on a grocery list left on the counter, it’s easy to forget the nuances of an employee’s performance in the days following their shift. Implementing a shift rating app leaves nothing to memory.

Wait two weeks or even two days and recollection of that employee’s performance is as hazy as the IPA they were serving that day. Rate the employee’s performance from one to five stars immediately after the shift ends and there is no room for doubt.

Managers then gain the confidence that their assessment maintains pinpoint accuracy and removes the guesswork from scheduling future shifts. The ratings also can be averaged per team to determine where staff performs best.

You’ll be a star when scheduling your employees with the confidence you need through a continuous system of rating their performance based on one to five stars. Get the Workforce.com shift rating and feedback app and let your stars shine through.

July 13, 2020October 4, 2021

Human capital management: Enriching your human resources

Human resource management is an ever-evolving discipline in business management.

Dating back to the early 1900s, experts recognized that managing a workforce goes beyond carrying out transactional tasks and ensuring that there are hands on deck to get the job done. Gradually, more attention is given to understanding employee well-being and its importance in delivering quality work.

One expert who delved into the study of the workforce was James R. Angell, president of Yale University and the Carnegie Corp. He started a joint initiative between the Engineering Foundation and National Research Council to propel a research movement that looks into the science behind workforce management through unifying modern engineering, labor management, and educational bodies. It has given birth to Workforce.com today and for 98 years, this initiative has delved deep into the issues within the workforce and understand best practices in human resource management.

As market trends change and employee behavior and preferences shift, an organization’s human resources management practices should also pivot to meet these developments. Today, it is all about engaging the workforce to push the business forward and is a key component of business success.

Human Capital: Investing in your organization’s best asset

Human resource management, as its name suggests, is an area of business management that ensures a holistic experience for the organization’s most important resource — its people. It’s involved with the following:

Recruitment: Recruitment is the core foundation of building an organization’s human capital. It is involved in identifying the needs of the company and the particular roles that can fill those gaps. Attracting, screening, and onboarding candidates are all part of the recruitment process. The goal of the recruitment process is to successfully find candidates whose skills, values and motivations are aligned with the organization’s goals and culture.
Compensation and benefits: Compensation and benefits refer to what the company gives its employees in exchange for their work or service, and they include monetary and non-monetary components. A company’s compensation and benefits package includes an employee’s salary and government-mandated benefits. Other perks and incentives can be part of the deal such as insurance coverage, gym membership, housing allowance, company-sponsored trips and events.
Labor law compliance: Running an organization is governed by employment laws. Human resource management is involved in creating company policies that comply with labor regulations. Labor law regulations vary per region and they can change from time to time. That being said, a crucial part of human resource management is staying at pace with these changes and ensuring that company policies remain compliant.
Training and development: Training and development are focused on nurturing the potential of employees. Training refers to programs that are geared toward improving skills or learning new technical knowledge needed to perform tasks. Meanwhile, development is focused more on programs that enrich an employee’s overall growth concerning soft skills, leadership, communication, and adapting to certain situations.
Retention and engagement: Human resource management is also involved in creating strategies to keep employee turnover to a minimum. Retention and engagement programs are proactive steps to ensure that employees are motivated to perform their best not just for a paycheck but because they have a clear alignment of values with the organization. All of these parts should move cohesively to ensure the best experience possible for staff at every stage of the employee lifecycle.

Overcoming human resource management problems

Human resource management involves a lot of moving parts and these can come with their own sets of challenges. Here are common challenges in human resource management and ways to solve them.

Difficulty in attracting the right talent.

Delays in hiring can be costly, but an unfit hire can also be detrimental to an organization. So how do you know a candidate is fit for the role? While skills and experience are important in assessing whether an applicant is qualified or not, it’s also essential to look into whether they can fit into your company culture.

How to solve:

It’s all about clarity and a good candidate experience. Create your job ad in such a way that it highlights what you’re looking for and what’s in it for a qualified candidate when they get in. Provide information about the working style and culture that you have in your company. This will attract people who both have the required skills and similar values as you. At the same time, this can also filter out candidates who have a different working style and culture preference. Another common challenge is convincing candidates who are highly skilled and qualified yet passive. These candidates are most likely in touch with a lot of recruiters and are considering more than one job offer. How do you stand out? Look into what motivates this type of worker. Investigate what that person is looking for in an employer and see if that aligns with your goals, culture and compensation package. Customize your messaging accordingly.

Boosting your brand as an employer can also help increase your chances of attracting the right talent. According to research from Glassdoor, organizations that invest in employer branding are three times more likely to make a quality hire.

Poor candidate experience can also be the thing between you and a quality hire. Communication is at the core of solving this. Make sure that all details and instructions are clear at every stage of the process. Timely feedback and response are also crucial. Take a look at your current process and see how it’s affecting candidate experience and employer brand. Glassdoor found that organizations that create a strong experience for candidates improve their quality of hires by 70 percent.

Dealing with too much paperwork.

Human resource management deals with a lot of information — from employee details, company policies and other essential business documents. And too much paperwork can be a burden, especially when done manually. It can take time away from more valuable tasks like strategizing and optimizing programs and processes.

How to solve:

There are digital solutions that can remove the tedious task of processing paperwork. For instance, digital employee onboarding solutions help eliminate the long forms that new hires need to fill. They enable new staff to log in their information and upload important documents online. This ensures better accuracy of information, improves the employee onboarding experience, and allows for a better way for a new hire to spend his first day at work.

Understanding and applying labor laws.

Staying compliant with labor laws is a must. However, understanding regulations, applying them in policies, and staying at pace with labor law changes can be very challenging.

How to solve:

Implement a compliance strategy to avoid any potential financial and reputational repercussions of failing to comply. A compliance strategy is a set of programs and processes that’s geared towards ensuring regular updates and audits of policies and communicating any changes with staff promptly. Given the ever-evolving nature of regulations, it’s best to build a strategy and assign a working group to focus on compliance. Technology is also helpful in staying at pace with changes. For instance, some solutions automate labor law updates and ensure that these are reflected in the payroll computation.

Retaining employees.

Attracting the right talent is just half of the battle. The other half is retaining them and keeping them satisfied with their role, especially those that are performing above and beyond.

How to solve:

It’s all about consistent growth and learning. Employees are more likely to stay the course when they are given opportunities to grow and are recognized as a vital part of the organization’s success.

Training and development programs are essential to retaining employees. But creating these programs is not a one-time thing. That’s why it’s important to have regular alignments with your staff. Regular check-ins can help you get a pulse on their current sentiment about working in the organization, satisfaction with their roles, and the challenges or gaps they’re facing. From there, you can customize programs or identify next steps that can help them stay engaged.

It also pays to have a competitive compensation and benefits package. One of the things to keep employees happy and make them know that they are valued is by providing not just what they need to get their job done, but also offering other incentives that will motivate them to perform better and stay aligned with the values of the organization.

Engaging talent at every stage of the employee lifecycle.

Human resource management plays an important part in engaging employees, and it is a continuous process throughout every stage of the employee lifecycle, from onboarding up until the time an employee leaves an organization. All of these stages affect culture, staff morale, and the success of the company.

An organization is only as good as its employees. It’s imperative to nurture and cultivate staff no matter where they are in their tenure with the organization. Doing this takes time. That’s why it’s important for human resources to have the right technology in place so that they can reduce time on administrative tasks and focus more of their energy on engaging employees.

June 23, 2020June 29, 2023

Must you accommodate an employee with a high-risk family member?

One of the questions I have received most from clients during this pandemic comes in some variation of the following: “An employee [does not want to come into work/wants to work from home/wants a leave of absence] because s/he lives with someone who is at high risk for coronavirus complications. What do we do?”

In other words, must you accommodate an employee for the employee’s close family member’s disability?

According to the EEOC, the answer is, “No.”

Is an employee entitled to an accommodation under the ADA in order to avoid exposing a family member who is at higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19 due to an underlying medical condition?

No. Although the ADA prohibits discrimination based on association with an individual with a disability, that protection is limited to disparate treatment or harassment. The ADA does not require that an employer accommodate an employee without a disability based on the disability-related needs of a family member or other person with whom she is associated.

For example, an employee without a disability is not entitled under the ADA to telework as an accommodation in order to protect a family member with a disability from potential COVID-19 exposure.

According to me, however, the answer is, “It depends” (on how you’ve historically treated similar requests by similarly situated employees).

The ADA not only protects employees with disabilities, but it also protects employees associated with individuals with disabilities. There is, however, one critical difference between these two types of protections. The former imposes on employers an obligation to offer reasonable accommodations, while the latter does not. This difference, however, does not mean that employers in all cases can deny accommodations to employees associated with individuals with disabilities.

If an employer has a history of accommodating employees similarly situated to an employee requesting an accommodation for an employee associated with someone at risk for coronavirus complications, the employer would be open to claim of disparate treatment by denying the employee’s accommodation request. Thus, an employer must scrutinize its decision to deny an accommodation request for an employee’s family member against similar requests by other similarly situated employees to avoid a claim of disparate treatment.

Of course, the ADA is a floor and not a ceiling. An employer is always free to accommodate any employee’s request for any reason. As the EEOC points out, “[A]n employer is free to provide such flexibilities if it chooses to do so.” Further, during the pandemic, the DOL “encourages employers and employees to collaborate to achieve flexibility and meet mutual needs.”

Moreover, there are myriad business reasons why an employer might choose to grant an accommodation in this case.

It’s the ethically or morally correct thing to do.
It will help you to retain a quality employee.
Granting the accommodation will create goodwill, strengthening the employee’s loyalty to your company.
You will avoid the potential for bad press or negative social media if you deny the request, or worse, fire an employee seeking an accommodation under these circumstances.

For these reasons, I generally favor granting the accommodation. Unless there is a legitimate and overriding business reason to deny an accommodation request to an employee who, during the COVID-19 pandemic, seeks remote work or a leave of absence because he or she does not want to endanger a high-risk family member, grant the request. It’s the right thing to do, and, depending on the circumstances, it might also be the legal thing to do.

June 23, 2020August 3, 2023

Defining workforce management: Leading teams for success

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In 1922, James R. Angell, president of Yale University and the Carnegie Corp., led a joint initiative between the Engineering Foundation and the National Research Council. The goal was to take workforce science to new heights through unifying modern engineering, labor, management, and educational bodies. It has given birth to what we know today as Workforce.com and workforce management.

Since then, the team behind Workforce have delved deep into the science behind workforce management — from productivity, labor regulations, workforce challenges to the evolution of work. All of these insights have been put into practice with a full-featured workforce management platform that is being used by companies across the world.

The anatomy of effective workforce management

So what is workforce management? Based on almost a century’s worth of research and study, we identified three main components that are crucial at effectively leading teams. Each of them requires a unique approach, but as a whole these areas should function seamlessly. Let’s look at each of them.

Operations. When talking about workforce management, the first thing that comes to mind is operations management. It is all about making sure that quality output is created, within the given timeframe and resources in an organization. This involves planning and organizing. Some of the processes are creating employee schedules, timekeeping, output management and budget forecasting.

Labor compliance. Labor regulations govern workforces around the world. These laws are set to protect workers and regulate certain business practices concerning the welfare of employees such as wages, work conditions and employment relationships.

Labor regulations can differ by country or region, and these are taken into account in company employment rules and policies. While increasingly difficult to remain compliant, failure to do so can mean costly penalties that can greatly damage not just an organization’s bottom line but also its reputation.

Employee engagement. Employee engagement is an area of workforce management that focuses on enabling employees to perform their best in alignment with their individual purpose and the objectives of the organization as whole.

Employee engagement is typically correlated with happiness with work. But it’s important to note that they are not one in the same. Happiness at work is just one of the byproducts of good employee engagement. To achieve good employee engagement, there has to be a clear communication in the workforce — from onboarding to getting the job done.

Also read: How to make your onboarding process engaging and easy

Debunking common workforce management myths

Workforce management can spell success or failure for an organization. Let’s look at some of the common beliefs that can hinder success for an organization.

It’s just scheduling. While creating schedules is an important part of workforce management, it’s not just all there is. It has a lot of moving parts that are tightly integrated with each other. This includes timekeeping, budget forecasting and engaging employees.

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

It can be done manually or using spreadsheets. This can be done manually, but such an option can be prone to mistakes. One wrong value input can mess up the entire sheet and end up being counterproductive. It can result in wasted time to find the problem.

It is easier for smaller organizations. There are many factors at play in workforce management, and one of them is company size. But that doesn’t mean that a smaller organization has it easier than a big corporation. Each organization, regardless of size, has its own unique sets of goals, objectives and needs. And all of these come into play when managing the workforce. What makes it easier or harder is not just how many employees they have but also the alignment of roles, resources and objectives.

Upskilling or training can lead to more skills and less staff. Nurturing the potential of staff is vital in workforce management, but developing their skills and training them to gain new ones doesn’t necessarily mean a lesser need for staff.

There needs to be a balance in mentoring staff to be able to do more and making sure that they still have the space to master their newly acquired skills. Leaders need to be careful not to unnecessarily push staff from task to task or they can risk driving them to burnout.

Culture doesn’t have an impact on business performance or bottom line. Culture is one of the vital components that sets the tone for employee engagement. A company may have a strong set of policies but it will all be for nothing when the culture doesn’t sit well with the employees. It can lead to high turnover rates, lower productivity and overall low workforce morale, which can all impact the bottom line.

Also read: Give managers the time they need to sharpen up their all-around skills

It’s a one-time deal. Establishing processes for operations, labor compliance and employee engagement is a good start. But workforce management continuously evolves. There are always changes that will influence the needs of an organization and leaders need to be quick to adapt to those changes. Optimizing is constant in workforce management, and it’s something that leaders need to pay more attention to.

Setting up the workforce for success

Workforce management involves many processes that can be daunting and time-consuming for managers or team leaders. Here are some best practices that can make workforce management more efficient.

Use a workforce management platform. Leverage technology for the admin tasks involved in workforce management. Use a workforce management platform to accurately keep track of attendance, automate timesheet to payroll processing, scheduling, time-off management, and to make sure that labor laws are accounted for in computing for pay.

An effective workforce management platform goes beyond borders and allows for teams to work together no matter where they are. Go for a solution that can be accessible anytime, anywhere and on any device.

Before going for a workforce management solution, it’s imperative to look at your needs as an organization. According to the Workforce Management Trends for Hourly Workers, 46 percent of respondents say that poor integration with other systems is a shortcoming of their current workforce management platform. Avoid this type of challenge by understanding your requirements and considering ease of use for staff.

Monitor and optimize. Workforce management is all about maintaining efficiency and employee well-being. One advantage of automation is having data and analytics that can be a source of insights as to how you can optimize your operations and what areas you can improve on. Analyze your data and make informed decisions about how you can improve productivity and employee engagement in your organization.

Listen to your employees. Communication is key to a successful workforce. Always keep channels open to your employees. Since staff are always on the front lines, it pays to listen to them to gain better insight on customer service, identify operational gaps, and improve working conditions for staff.

Effective workforce management is all about employing smart solutions to spend less time on repetitive tasks and paperwork and more time on improving the business and empowering staff for success. It’s all about creating value for customers and employees alike.

June 22, 2020June 29, 2023

How to communicate when an employee tests positive for COVID-19

essential workers; workers' compensation, mask

Positive COVID-19 tests are sadly the reality of 2020 and likely at least part of 2021.

Nationally, 2.23 million of us have tested positive for coronavirus. If your employees have been fortunate enough so far to avoid the virus, the odds are good that before this pandemic is over one or more of your employees will test positive.

Before we discuss the right way to communicate a potential workplace exposure to your employees, let’s explore the wrong way, via one of my favorite punching bags, the WWE.

Via Deadspin:

As “Monday Night Raw” was wrapping up last night, reports started to leak out that a member of WWE’’s developmental program had tested positive for COVID-19.… It’s hard to pinpoint which is the more galling aspect: that the talent and crew of WWE found out about the positive test the same way the rest of us did, through social media and the internet last night, or that everyone showed up to work thinking they were safe, or however close to that word they felt by working for WWE, when in fact they weren’t.

If one of your employees tests positive for COVID-19, your other employees deserve to hear the news from you, not from a Facebook post, a tweet, a local news reporter or otherwise. You just have to make sure you are communicating the news legally.

The ADA’s confidentiality rules still apply to these communications, and an employee’s positive coronavirus test is still a confidential medical record. This means that you cannot divulge to anyone else the identity of the employee(s) who tested positive. It does not mean, however, that you can’t (and shouldn’t) communicate to employees that they might have been in contact with someone who has tested positive (or is displaying symptoms consistent with COVID-19) and that they should be diligent about monitoring their own health for potential symptoms.

Your only limit is disclosing the identity of the corona-positive employee. Otherwise, you are free to make any communication you want.

And you should. Your employees will resent you if they learn of the diagnosis of their potential exposure from anyone but you. Moreover, you can flip the story around into one focused on everything you are doing to protect the health and safety of your employees.

Dear Employees:

It saddens us to inform you that one of your co-workers has tested positive for COVID-19. The law prevents us from telling you the identity of that co-worker, but we want to assure you that we will continue to support this employee as your co-worker heals from this virus, and we will welcome them back to join you at work once it is safe to do so.

We are doing everything within our ability and resources to keep you as safe and healthy as possible at work. Still, with many cases of COVID-19 transmitted before anyone knows they have been exposed, and with you only being at work for a fraction of you day, we cannot 100 percent guarantee the virus won’t enter our workplace.

We continue to require that you self-assess daily for your own potential COVID-19 symptoms (fever or chills, cough, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, fatigue, muscle or body aches, headache, new loss of taste or smell, sore throat, congestion or runny nose, nausea or vomiting, or diarrhea). If you have any of these symptoms, please let us know, and do not return to work until you have received a negative COVID-19 test, or you are symptom-free for at least 72 hours and at least seven days have passed since your first symptoms.

We are also continuing to take the following steps to help ensure, as best as possible, your health and safety here at work:

Employees are required to wear masks or other facial coverings at all times while at work, unless you granted a specific exception (such as for safety, a medical reason, or because you are working alone in a closed office).

employees are required to maintain six feet of social distance from others at all times.

Employees must diligently wash their hands and otherwise use hand sanitizer (which we are providing in intervals around the workplace).

Employee must self-assess their own health before reporting to work, and no employee is permitted to come to work if they have any of the known symptoms of COVID-19.

Lunch room and other common areas are closed until further notice.

Each employee is responsible for cleaning their own work station at the end of each shift.

We are deep cleaning the entire workplace on a weekly basis.

Additionally, because of the unfortunate positive test, we had the facility deep cleaned and sanitized prior to anyone being allowed to reenter after we learned of the positive test.

Our commitment to your health and safety is our top priority. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact ______________. Our door is always open.

June 19, 2020October 7, 2021

A midterm outlook on the future of the workplace

The COVID-19 pandemic is the first of its kind for virtually everyone living on this planet. We’ve survived SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in 2003, MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) in 2012, Ebola around 2014, and even AIDS.

We’re still here, and yet this feels different. As of this writing, we still don’t know what we don’t know about this virus’s trajectory, its reinfection rate, or the longer-term ramifications to the health of those infected.

It’s difficult to speculate how and in what ways this health crisis will affect the workplace globally, but in the nearer term, it’s reasonable to predict certain outcomes with a fairly high degree of certainty. The phases of COVID-19 will likely follow a pattern of illness, mitigation, and control (where we are now), economic impact in terms of stock markets and unemployment, and anticipated litigation, especially in the areas of employment, wage and hour, and disability discrimination. Finally, a “new normal” of sorts will establish itself, but things many never be quite the same. We’ve lost a certain innocence about many of the things we take for granted.

For example, there will certainly be a gradual, staged reintegration of workers back into the workplace. Some nations, states and companies may lurch right back in, while others will be more cautious, prudent, and mindful about the upcoming reintegration. What’s for sure, though, is that we’ll gradually move back into a fully operational and integrated workplace.

Working remotely

Two changes, however, are likely: a smaller workforce at each company and a remote approach to working. To that latter point, Gen Z’s desire for more flexibility and greater work-life balance may dovetail nicely into this paradigm of remote telework. Technology creates new opportunities for face-to-face, real-time meetings, even if they aren’t in person. Likewise, a smaller, leaner workforce will likely be the new norm as organizations pare down corporate infrastructure and spans of control and retain only the strongest performers.

A practical impact of more remote work from smaller teams, however, may be the threat to managers’ exemption status. For example, in California, “concurrent duties” are permissible during emergencies. An exempt employee may perform both exempt and nonexempt duties, all the time qualifying as exempt.

However, outside of an emergency, exempt managers must spend 50 percent or more of their time engaging in “exempt” level duties, meaning responsibilities with a high degree of independent judgment, discretion, and decision-making. If remote managers in smaller organizations start doing more of the work their subordinates have typically done, their exemption status could be threatened. And if your managers’ exempt classification is in jeopardy, class action wage and hour lawsuits may result.

HR steps up

How can HR leaders step up? By predicting the natural reintegration curve that’s coming our way. Some workers may truly suffer from anxiety and depression as they return to work. Expect new medical diagnoses of “adjustment disorder with anxiety” and PTSD—pre-traumatic stress disorder—as workers experience a new paranoia about coming to work, their surroundings, and everything they touch and come into contact with.

Think about it: simply using public transportation to get to work may cause some to seek medical treatment for an invisible enemy that surrounds them. Employees may ask about “proximity alarms” and warning devises that trigger when coming within six feet of coworkers and customers. Partitions and barriers like the plexiglass windows seen at the grocery store may be at the top of certain employees’ wish lists, as may be requests for staggering arrival times to avoid overcrowding.

Likewise, as an employer, you may want to implement new rules on PPE (personal protective equipment), hand-washing and other sanitation standards. You may likewise look to introduce attestation language to your electronic timekeeping system when nonexempt workers clock out at the end of the day verifying that they have no COVID-19 symptoms.

Challenges ahead

Whatever this looks like in your particular organization, rest assured that change is coming in the form of predictable and unforeseeable challenges.

Be the wisdom. Lead and welcome the change. When in doubt, err on the side of compassion and leave judgment behind when supporting your workers through this.

There will likely be no greater opportunity for you to exercise selfless leadership than you’re getting right now at this very moment in your career. We’re at a point of pure creation, with few policies, precedents, or practices to fall back on or guide us. See this as an opportunity to excel, shine, and lead.

Teach what you choose to learn. Help your team members and employees know that you’re there for them and you’ve got their backs, no matter what challenges come your way next. This crisis is the making of inspirational leadership that will define you for the rest of your career.

Now, more than ever, you have an opportunity to demonstrate role model leadership and touch and inspire those around you. Never let a crisis go to waste.

June 17, 2020June 29, 2023

Does Title VII protect employees whose spouses are pregnant?

A male Disney employee has filed suit against his former employer, claiming that Disney unlawfully discriminated against him because of his wife’s pregnancy.

According to Steven Van Soeren’s complaint, Disney fired him after he took two weeks of paternity leave following the birth of his child, and after supervisors advised him during his wife’s pregnancy on the wisdom of having a child. (As an aside, Van Soeren claims that his supervisors learned of the pregnancy by hacking his computer.)

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act (enacted in 1978) amended Title VII’s definition of “sex” to make clear that it also includes “pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.” Disney is now arguing that Van Soeren’s lawsuit should be dismissed because Title VII doesn’t protect a male employee because of his wife’s pregnancy. Yet, the statute does not say “a woman’s pregnancy”; the definition is gender-neutral. Thus, Disney has an uphill battle to establish that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act doesn’t equally cover dads as moms.

Further, consider the following passage from Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County—

It doesn’t matter if other factors besides the plaintiff’s sex contributed to the decision. And it doesn’t matter if the employer treated women as a group the same when compared to men as a group. If the employer intentionally relies in part on an individual employee’s sex when deciding to discharge the employee — put differently, if changing the employee’s sex would have yielded a different choice by the employer — a statutory violation has occurred.

Bostock says very clearly that an employer discriminates on the basis of sex if “changing the employee’s sex would have yielded a different choice by the employer.” Would Disney have made the same decision relating to a woman’s choice to have a child, or did it rely on outdated and illegal stereotypes about a man’s role as a provider instead of a caregiver? It’s doubtful, based on the comments Van Soeren claims his supervisors made after they learned of his wife’s pregnancy.

Bostock leaves open a lot of questions: Can religious employers claim an exemption from Title VII’s prohibition against LGBTQ discrimination, and if so, how broadly?

Does Title VII’s prohibition against LGBTQ discrimination moot the Trump Administration’s plan to roll back protections for transgender people from discrimination in health care and insurance coverage? Add to this list the question of just how broadly Bostock’s causation standard will apply, and if it applies to other forms of sex discrimination such as pregnancy discrimination?

I believe it does, and I believe Disney will lose its effort to have Van Soeren’s lawsuit dismissed.