It’s clear that 2020 has certainly been a year like no other. People are sick and dying. Hospitals are filling up. Our essential workers are stressed and tired.
I’m tired, too. Part of what’s making me tired is continuing to hear people complain about “2020” when we have so much for which to be thankful.
Here’s my list of everything for which I have been and continue to be thankful during the pandemic.
That no one in my very immediate world has become severely ill with COVID-19, or worse has died from it. I pray every day that I can still say this six months from now.
That my wife and I remain gainfully employed.
My daily lunches and walks with my wife, the absolute best perk of us both working from home.
My kids, who have endured the pandemic, and being stuck in the house with mom and dad, as best as they can.
My dogs, who will have absolutely no idea what to do with themselves when we finally go back to work outside of the home.
The slower pace of life and all of the family time I’ve been able to enjoy as a result.
That I’ve been able to work from home since March without anyone batting an eye.
Fast WiFi.
Zoom, which has allowed me to stay connected to family and friends even though I can’t visit with them IRL, and to continue to conduct business without the risk of in-person meetings, hearings, and depositions.
A dry spring, summer and fall, which allowed me to see some family and friends IRL and in small groups.
Democracy.
My renewed love of cooking.
My kids’ school, and its commitment to safety and remaining open for full-time in-person instruction.
The Rockin’ the Suburbs Friday Night Hootenanny, which continues to provide my daughter a valuable virtual outlet to share her music weekly with a group of very appreciative listeners. (Pro tip: it’s free to join, and you can just sit back and listen if you have no music to share.)
The scientists who worked tirelessly to deliver the COVID-19 vaccines we desperately need.
Essential workers who risk their lives every day so that we can continue to live ours.
Season 2 of The Mandalorian, the best show currently on TV and a Friday bonding ritual with my son that I very much look forward to.
Jackbox, which has provided hours upon hours of entertainment on family game nights while allowing my kids to demonstrate their mastery of four-letter words in the safe space of our home.
Curbside pickup.
Red wine, gin, and bourbon.
I’ll be off the remainder of this week, and will return after the Thanksgiving weekend to open the polls for voting for the Worst Employer of 2020.
Everyone, please have a healthy and safe holiday. If you are considering getting together with family or friends for a meal or otherwise, please reconsider. I live in abject fear that if we do not behave with the appropriate level of respect for this virus, responsibility for our role in limiting its spread, and care for others we will lose all hope of controlling this virus until vaccinations reach a critical mass sometime in mid-2021.
By then, a half million of us will be dead, millions will be grieving those losses, and millions more will be suffering long-term debilitating health issues. We can still beat this virus, but it will take a concerted effort from all of us to do so.
For last night’s dinner, I decided to use the leftover meatballs from the prior night’s spaghetti dinner to make meatball subs.
The only problem? No hoagie rolls, which led to the following conversation with my wife:
Me: I need to stop and get buns for dinner.
Her: Ooh, will you toast them?
Me: I’ll toast your buns alright.
Her: That’s sexual harassment!
Me: Take it up with HR.
All jokes aside, does a company’s obligation to take corrective action when it becomes aware of sexual harassment in the workplace extend to an employee’s home when that home is also the employee’s workplace?
A harassment complaint is a harassment complaint, regardless of the alleged perpetrator. An employer cannot treat a complaint by an employee against a non-employee any differently than an intra-employee complaint. Indeed, in the words of the Ohio Administrative Code:
An employer may also be responsible for the acts of nonemployees (e.g., customers) with respect to sexual harassment of employees in the work place, where the employer (or its agents or supervisory employees) knows or should have known of the conduct and fails to take immediate and appropriate corrective action. In reviewing these cases the commission will consider the extent of the employerâs control and any other legal responsibility which the employer may have with respect to the conduct of such nonemployees.
There is no reason to think these protections don’t extend to employees who are working from home ⌠although the ability of another’s employer to control my conduct as a nonemployee in my own home is pretty much nonexistent.
Which begs the question: If my wife goes to HR to complain about me offering to toast her buns, what are the potential consequences? Let’s hope I don’t have to find out, but I’m guessing the risk is pretty low.
MaryJo Delaney is suing her former employer after it demoted her from her management position following her return from a COVID-related layoff, for which she had volunteered so that she could stay at home with her 9-year-old son whose school was closed.
When her governor locked down the state early in the pandemic, her employer remained open as an essential business. It offered a voluntary layoff to anyone who wished to avoid the risk of contracting the virus. Delaney chose that option to care for her son.
She returned to work in May when the company recalled all laid-off employees. She requested to work limited hours, again because of her need to care for her son, but was told that reduced hours would result in a demotion. Instead, her employer permitted her to shift her hours to account for her child-care needs.
According to her complaint, however, her employer started to “overly scrutinize and nitpick [her] work performance and subject[ed] [her] to unfair criticism” upon her return to work. That criticism led to her demotion, which led to her resignation, which led to her lawsuit claiming violations of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act.
If your business has fewer than 500 employees, your employees have a right under the FFCRA to take leave to care for their child(ren) whose school is closed or whose childcare provider is otherwise unavailable because of COVID-19. If you interfere with that right or retaliate against an employee who takes such leave, you are violating the FFCRA.
That said, an employer isn’t powerless in this situation.
You can offer remote work for employees who can perform their jobs away from the workplace. If you make remote work available, an employee does not qualify for FFCRA leave.
You can offer a flexible work schedule to allow an employee to flex his or her hours around their childcare-related needs, which would also obviate an employee’s right to FFCRA leave.
If you have fewer than 50 employees, you might qualify for the small-business exception to the FFCRA’s childcare-leave provisions and may not have to offer such leave at all.
What you cannot do, however, is outright deny leave if an employee qualifies or retaliate against an employee who takes such leave. That’s illegal and will get you sued. Take heed, because as COVID number skyrocket, if this isn’t an issue with which you’ve had to deal, it’s more than likely that you will and soon.
Today’s nominee for the Worst Employer of 2020 is beyond description. NBC Bay Area provides the details:
A Gilroy (CA) couple has been charged with human trafficking after forcing a man to work 15-hour shifts seven days a week for no pay at their liquor store and then locking him inside the store overnight, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office said Monday.
The victim slept in a storage room and bathed in a mop bucket, authorities said.
Amarjit and Balwinder Mann, both 66, allegedly threatened the victim with deportation if he reported them to law enforcement. The Manns have been charged with felony human trafficking, witness intimidation and wage theft involving four victims, the DA’s office said. They face prison time if convicted.âŚ
The victim had flown from India in 2019 expecting to travel to the U.S. with the couple. Instead, the Manns took his money and passport and put him to work without pay or a key to leave the store at night, investigators said.
You’d think I’d be numb to these atrocities by this point, but this level of cruelty just leaves me speechless.
Voting for this year’s Worst Employer will open on Dec. 1. This year, however, we will have two categories and two winnersâThe Worst Employer of 2020, and the Worst COVID Employer of 2020. Please come back then to make sure to cast your ballot.
Challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic have affected most people in the workforce in one way or another.
Working parents have not only coped with their own retooled job responsibilities as many of them adjust to working from home, but in many cases they have also added daycare worker and classroom instructor to their resumes.
New research from Microsoft Corp. revealed that 54 percent of parents reported that itâs been difficult balancing household and professional demands while working from home. And according to a recent WalletHub study, 54 percent of parents with young children at home donât think they are being more productive at home than they are in the office.
VF Corp., a Denver-based publicly traded global company of 50,000 employees, realized the plight facing many of their workers as summer was ending and as parents faced the specter of another school year of distance learning for their children. Leadership of the apparel and footwear company, whose brands include The North Face, Vans and Dickies, quickly prioritized providing educational resources to alleviate the extra pressure and stress that working parents whose children would be learning remotely may be experiencing. The pandemic created significant uncertainty and posed new challenges for everyone, said Anita Graham, executive vice president, chief human resources officer and public affairs at VF Corp.
âThrough conversations with associates and responses to our employee surveys, we knew that many of our associates were struggling with balancing work and the responsibilities of caring for their families,â she said.
Technology partnerships ease remote learning
One program, Laptops for Learning, provided more than 500 reconditioned laptops at no cost to eligible U.S.-based employees at VF Corp.âs distribution centers, retail stores and customer service centers, providing children with the technology necessary to participate in distance learning. The organization also implemented Rethink, a resource for parents with special needs children, Graham said. Another initiative, Guidance Now, provides employees with access to tutoring support and free access to SitterCityto help identify baby-sitting resources that could serve as a substitute for traditional child care.
âWe believe that a good education is a critical and significant stressor for parents, and we wanted to help alleviate the added stress,â she said. âVirtual learning has posed challenges that working parents havenât previously encountered. How do associates keep their children engaged in virtual school while also doing their own work? How do they afford reliable technology needed for virtual learning? The laptop program emerged from this need.â
A boost for those needing elder care
VF Corp. also amped up its communications so that employees were aware of resources such as telehealth and the benefits available through a partnership with Bright Horizons, which provides backup child care as well as elder-care support.
âThe coronavirus pandemic has been particularly impactful on older communities,â Graham said. âAdult children have had to take on more responsibilities for their elder parents, from running errands to providing full-time care. Our partnership with Bright Horizons has provided help to those employees who are providing elder care.â
Through the partnership, employees can take an online needs assessment, find information on selecting elder care resources, and utilize a search tool for finding and evaluating care providers, Graham said.
Moving to flex schedules and remote work
The pandemic has tested organizationsâ agility to adjust to new ways of living and working. VF Corp. recognized early in the pandemic that it would need to introduce new programs and resources to keep morale up and employees engaged. Placing emotional and physical well-being at the forefront, they partnered with employee assistance program provider ComPsych to offer emotional well-being webinars to equip employees with the tools to keep themselves mentally healthy.
They also implemented new schedules and training programs to help employees put themselves first. Understanding that working from home poses child- and elder-care challenges, VFCorp. encouraged employees to rethink the traditional workday and create a flexible schedule that works best for them and their families.
âThe flexible scheduling program is an initiative we introduced at the start of the pandemic as a result of the stressors we were hearing from employees,â Graham said. âAn employee can work with their manager to develop a schedule that allows them to take afternoons off to take care of children before resuming work in the evening.â
Considering that within the United States 70 percent of VF Corp. employees are hourly, 17 percent are salaried and 13 percent are contingent workers, Graham said they are sympathetic to accommodate employee needs while maintaining organizational operations.
âWe have a wealth of initiatives and programs available to all our employees, no matter their role, location or level,â she said. âHowever, we do recognize that there are different needs across the enterprise, so we have developed unique programs for employees in retail stores and distribution centers.â
Remote work into the future
Rather than declare an âat least untilâ date, VF Corp. intends to remain flexible as a permanent approach and launched a future of work workstream called âWorkplace Nextâ to define their vision for how they work in the future. The outcomes will be shared with employees in early 2021, Graham said.
Placing the needs of employees at the forefront of their actions is crucial to VF Corp. successfully navigating the pandemic, she said. Itâs important to listen and itâs OK to over-communicate, she added.
âBy listening to our people and taking action, we have been able to successfully keep morale high and our employees engaged and ultimately meet our consumersâ needs, and weâll continue to listen to them to understand how we can help support them moving forward as our world continues to change.â
Whether you have 10 or 10,000 staff, building schedules is easier and faster with Workforce.comâs scheduling platform. Optimize and automate your complex scheduling patterns and provide peace of mind and know that you are in compliance.
You are literally making COVID-19 worse if you are refusing to permit employees to work from home.
According to a recently published CDC study, employees who work in an office setting are nearly twice as likely to contract COVID-19 than employees who work from home.
ABC News summarizes the study’s methodology and findings:
Researchers interviewed roughly 310 people who took a COVID-19 test in July, about half of whom tested positive, and compared them to a control group of people who tested negative. The majority of both groups, all adults, held full-time, non-essential jobs outside of critical infrastructure and had similar community exposure to COVID-19 independent of work.
The groups had some differences in behavior: Only a third of the COVID-19 group reported working from home or teleworking at least part of the time before their diagnosis, while half of the control group participants reported at least sometimes working remotely. In the two weeks prior to getting sick, members of the COVID-19 group were more likely to report that they exclusively went to the office or to school than control group members were. Researchers also found an association between going to the office regularly and attending church or religious gatherings.
What does this data tell us? In the words of the CDC, “Businesses and employers should promote alternative work site options, such as teleworking, where possible, to reduce exposures.”
Unless you absolutely need employees to perform their work from your workplace, let them work from home. COVID numbers are not getting any better.
In fact, they are getting exponentially worse and are predicted to continue to do so until plateauing as late as January or even February. We all have a role to play in stopping the spread of this deadly virus.
Allowing employees who are able to work remotely to do so is just about the least you can do.
The Society for Human Resource Management describes itself as “the foremost expert, convener, and thought leader on issues impacting today’s evolving workplaces.” Physician, heal thyself!
According to a recent lawsuit filed against SHRM (as reported by The New Yorker), SHRM may have a huge whistleblower retaliation problem on its hands.
Here are the key allegations, which SHRM denies:
Bailey Yeager, a former director-level employee with a history of glowing performance reviews and promotions, expressed concern when the organization asked her in May for feedback about its proposal to return employees to the office after two months of working from home.
Expressing concern about potentially infecting her two daughters, she requested that she be allowed to continue working remotely “until returning to work is both more widespread regionally and there is a decline in the metrics regarding cases/hospitalizations.”
She also asked to see SHRM’s plans for reopening safely.
Two weeks later she, along with three other employees who had expressed similar concerns (including two with pre-existing medical conditions), were fired.
According to her OSHA complaint, SHRM CEO Johnny C. Taylor Jr. held a conference call during which he outlined plans to “outsource” job functions in departments in which employees had expressed resistance to returning to work in person.
Yeager’s complaint also alleges that Taylor bragged that he had spoken to his friend Eugene Scalia, the Secretary of Labor, and that an OSHA representative contacted Yeager to implore her to withdraw her complaint. (To be fair, it unclear if there is any nexus between Taylor’s call to Secretary Scalia and OSHA’s call to Yeager, but it is definitely implied in her complaint).
If you fire employees who reportedly dare ask for the ability to continue working from home, and potentially wield your influence with the federal government in an attempt to leverage the dismissal of the resulting lawsuit, while at the same time holding yourself out as the “foremost expert on issues impacting today’s evolving workplaces,” you might be the worst employer of 2020.
Itâs a common headline this time of year: Retailers and distribution centers staff up as holiday shoppers begin their quest for the perfect gift.
While the news is a huge relief, particularly during a time of record unemployment, 2020 brings new challenges for companies that sell and ship sought-after holiday gifts like Fingerlings, ugly sweaters and smart gardens (yes, itâs a thing) across the country. Recruiting and training tens of thousands of new employees is one thing; doing so in the midst of a pandemic is compounded with an extreme new level of health and safety risks.
Radial Inc., which provides multinational e-commerce services to retailers including Dickâs Sporting Goods, Keurig and GameStop, announced in September it is adding 25,000 seasonal employees to its fulfillment and call centers this holiday season. The Pennsylvania-based company emphasized the safety measures it is implementing in its 20 distribution centers and eight call centers, five of which are in North America.
âThe executive team has been proactive about addressing COVID-19 safety concerns since the very beginning of the pandemic,â said Eric Wohl, Radialâs chief human resources officer and senior vice president. âWeâve revamped processes and procedures and researched and tested numerous types of emerging technologies to enforce social distancing and maximize safety.â
Since the annual holiday shopping crush comes as a surprise to exactly no one in the retail industry, Radial is skilled at scaling its workforces four to five times the normal size every peak season to handle the increased demand in e-commerce.
âWe expected that there would be even more e-commerce demand this holiday season as the impact of COVID-19 has made shoppers more comfortable buying online,â Wohl said. âWe developed hiring projections and safety protocols to account for that going back to the second quarter.â
Wohl said that all seasonal employees being hired for the holidays are hourly workers. Of the current Radial employees, the hourly population represents around 75 percent of its workforce. Including the seasonal staff already onboard, hourly workers account for over 85 percent of all workers at Radial. In peak season, that percentage is even higher, he added.
Implementing mobile tech on a large scale
Technology is aiding Radialâs safety measures for current employees and new hires. Radial has thermal temperature devices and Instant-Trace Contact Badges, Wohl said. The badges utilize Ultra-Wideband technology for proximity measurement to help enforce social distancing requirements by alerting the wearer if someone else is within six feet.
âAs we scale for peak season, these technologies are incredibly valuable to ensure safety procedures are carried out in traditionally high-traffic areas, such as training groups,â he said.
Enhanced robotics in distribution centers utilizes autonomous mobile technology to assist employees who are packing and shipping orders as they comply with socially distanced headcount capacities and reduce interaction with one another, Wohl said.
Visual camera projection systems at certain sites are also helping onboard new hires with mobile training stations that optimize training layouts and processes to ensure safety. Wearable microphones and speakers also help workers more easily hear their managers across the warehouse while remaining socially distant, he said.
âRadial is offering more work from home positions than ever before and moved to proactively transition the majority of our team to home in March and April,â he said. âWe are looking to have 50 to 70 percent of our customer care workforce work remotely this holiday season, which is over 2,500 employees nationwide.â
Radial also has implemented changes to the interview and training process for call center employees, including virtual formats to reduce the need and number of seasonal workers in previously onsite-only training classes.
Training for COVID-19 and the holiday rush
Still, training 25,000 new hires not only in how to do their new jobs but also in how to act in a COVID-19 work environment can be a challenge. Wohl said thatstarting with the interview process, they have worked closely with staffing companies to provide low-contact, socially distant interviews at agency offices, drive-through job fairs and other interview formats.
âWe have also invested in socially distant interviews and virtual training so customer care and fulfillment workers are set up for success on the job,â he said. âEach site has the resources to ensure socially distanced training of new-hire groups through several voice and visual training projection solutions for trainers, along with Instant-Trace badges.â
Distribution and call centers have their own dedicated training teams for seasonal and full-time employees, he said, retooling their entire process and technology platforms to manage COVID-19 impacts.
Radialâs human resources department, which consists of 47 employees as well as 13 employees on the HR Partner team, also has played a pivotal support role ensuring that training teams and new hires have what they need to be successful, Wohl said.
âWe conduct regular assessments of training and onboarding effectiveness for continuous improvement and partner with our training teams to share best practices and collaborate on program development,â he said.
Support for all employees
Everyone has a role to play in slowing the spread by following basic precautions and looking out for one another, Wohl said. Radial has assigned a social-distance champion at distribution centers who regularly monitors the facility to help remedy problems through coaching or procedural changes.
âWeâre also continuing to find ways to adapt perks to boost morale and in ways that fit in with todayâs new circumstances including flexible work schedules and enhanced support for employees dealing with the impacts of COVID personally or within their family,â he said. Boosting morale also is important, he said. Trivia contests, raffles, quarterly awards and dress-up days have helped, he said.
âWe try and maintain a family-like environment in all our sites and teams,â he said. âWe listen to our employees. We ask for regular feedback on how we are doing to support their needs during COVID and adjust our plans when we can.â
Retailers still must hire seasonal workers to help ramp up for the holiday season. Data shows that despite the impact of COVID-19, shoppers wonât significantly change their holiday spending compared to 2019. With this high level of activity in mind, employee health and safety must be the top priority for every retailer right now, Wohl said.
âIf they canât keep their employees safe, they canât deliver on their promises to customers,â he said. âFulfillment and customer care centers are where the behind-the-scenes holiday magic happens. Dedicated employees are behind every package, phone call or text.
âFor retailers to meet their holiday goals and make sure packages arrive on time, safety needs to be the mantra at every single store, warehouse, customer care center and delivery center.â
Whether you have 10 or 10,000 employees on staff, make building schedules an easier and faster process withWorkforce.comâs scheduling app. You can optimize staffing levels, forecast wages and manage shifts with ease.
Mobile technology continues to help remodel the construction industry.
From drones snapping aerial photos to safety improvements toemployee clock ins, construction sites have become far more efficient in their day-to-day operations in part because of mobile technology.
Few construction executives, however, could have predicted that mobile technology would play such an important role as COVID-19 disrupted job sites across the nation. Employee safety was the primary concern for construction company BNBuilders. And Shawn Namdar, solutions engineer for the Seattle-based company, was deeply involved in creating a novel form of mobile technology that allowed his employer to keep people safe on the job.
âWhen the initial lockdown went into effect in March, a small subset of our jobs and workers were categorized as essential, so we needed to determine a set of procedures for keeping them open and active while maintaining social distance and the recommended health checks,â Namdar said.
Contact tracing mobile solution
Contact tracing presented a particularly difficult prospect to monitor, Namdar added. BNBuilders executives realized they needed a process to document people on location. With 850 total employees â 485 of whom are hourly and 730 assigned to job sites stretching from Seattle to the Bay area, Los Angeles and San Diego â they needed to track who came in contact with whom and whether anyone had been exposed to someone with symptoms.
Senior leadership sent everyone home and met for back-to-back working sessions to come up with a solution âfast,â Namdar said.
The meetings helped determine and establish a safe standard of job-site processes and operations that are compliant with government regulations, he added.
Separate solution from clocking in
âIt was clear that we needed a sign-in process for all individuals on a job site,â Namdar recalled. The company had transitioned to digital time cards about six years ago, so this was a completely separate challenge, he added.
âOur IT director was in the meeting and interjected that a technology-based solution would allow us to maintain social distancing and prevent the spread of germs through shared pens and a sign-in sheet. Thatâs where I came in,â he said.
In one day, Namdar pulled together an on-site mobile check-in form developed using process automation software Nintex and presented a demo to his HR director and executive superintendent.
Shawn Namdar, solutions engineer for BNBuilders.
âThe next day, the executive team approved the process and we were off to the races on the production side,â he said.
When workers arrive at a job, there is a specific QR code and once scanned, the form populates with the specific information for a particular job site. Namdar also created a database for workers, and by just typing in their phone number, their information is pulled so multiple pieces of information donât have to be re-entered each day.
âIn just a few days, we went from zero entries to thousands,â he said. âIn the six months since implementing this mobile check-in process, we have seen 144,000 form submissions.â
Complying with government guidelines
Initially HR played a large role in ensuring that the processes were compliant with government regulations and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, he said.
âThey paid close attention to the types and phrasing of the questions we asked,â Namdar said. âHR had a big hand in the vetting and rollout process to make sure it was a solution that was easy to use by all.â
As a general contractor, BNBuilders executives are responsible for the safety of everyone on the job site. Safety is the absolute top priority on their job sites and the contact tracing process is one key reason they can continue operating, he said.
BNBuildersâ offices are operating at minimal capacity and serving as a command center for safety and critical departments such as IT and accounting, he said.
âWeâve seen a lot of success with our office workers working from home,â Namdar said. We didnât experience the initial productivity slump that was common within the industry because our organization had prioritized digital transformation before the pandemic.â
Adopting the mobile check in
Pivoting so quickly to the on-site mobile check-in process happened quickly since they had previous success with Nintex digital forms and workflows, he said. âWithout it we would have been contact tracing with pen and paper and manually inputting that information at the end of each day,â he said. âI could create a custom web app in only a day, which could have taken three to four weeks if I was starting from zero.
âTechnology speeds everything up and if organizations arenât leveraging it, they are limiting themselves.â
Use a mobile solution to build and send your employee schedules in seconds. Workforce.comâs leading scheduling app allows you to optimize staffing levels and manage shifts with ease.
Prada v. Trifecta Productions, filed a few weeks ago in federal court in Ann Arbor, Michigan, asks whether an employer can legally fire an employee with COVID-19 based on the perception that the employee’s out-of-work activities placed the business at risk.
The facts are fairly simple. Nicolas Prada worked as a waiter and assistant manager at Tomukun Noodle Bar. On June 24 he began experiencing COVID-19 symptoms and stayed home from work. He tested positive three days later. After 14 days of isolation, Prada texted his employer about being medically cleared to return to work.
During a follow-up phone call, Prada claims the restaurant’s owner interrogated him about his activities before falling ill. According to the complaint, “Mr. Yon asked Plaintiff how he contracted the virus,” interrogated him about whether he had “been out partying and acting irresponsible,” told him “there was evidence on social media of Plaintiff being in a crowd,” and that he should “begin looking for work” because for “PR reasons” it was best for him “not to come back to work.”
Prada quit the next day, and later sued for interference and retaliation under the FFCRA.
In a vacuum, Prada had a right to job restoration under the FFCRA. However, there is at least one key fact missing from his complaint â was he “out partying and acting irresponsibly” before contracting the virus. If so (and it’s a big if), his employer had a legitimate non-discriminatory and non-retaliatory reason for terminating his employment.
I’m not sure I’d terminate in these circumstances, but I can understand why an employer might. Here’s what I wrote two months ago discussing the Cleveland Indians’ suspension of two pitchers for violating team rules during a road trip by leaving the hotel to party:
Your business may not be able to dictate how your employees spend their free time, but you can hold them to consequences if they choose to act irresponsibly when “off the clock.” We are living through a pandemic. Every employee has a responsibility to their employer, their co-workers, and the business to make sure that they do what they can to avoid bringing COVID-19 into the workplace, and every employer has the same responsibility to take reasonable steps to prevent an at-risk employee from entering the workplace when it’s discovered.
These are strange times for sure, and I will not fault any employer that errs on the side of caution in how it manages its employee respective to mitigating workplace coronavirus exposures. I’m not advocating for, or in favor of, employer monitoring of employee off-duty conduct. If, however, irresponsible, reckless or dangerous behavior comes to an employerâs attention, it shouldnât ignore it in the name of privacy either.
In this case Prada had served his isolation, and according to his complaint was medically cleared to return to work. The risk this employer was mitigating was not the risk of an employee bringing an active virus into the workplace, but according to the complaint, the public relations risk of an employee being seen partying on social media. For a public-facing employer, I’m not going to backseat-drive its decision.
This will be a fascinating case to watch, which I’ll be updating everyone as it winds its way through the courts.
âThe coronavirus pandemic has been particularly impactful on older communities,â Graham said. âAdult children have had to take on more responsibilities for their elder parents, from running errands to providing full-time care. Our partnership with Bright Horizons has provided help to those employees who are providing elder care.â
