privacy – Workforce

October 20, 2020March 1, 2021

PLEASE don’t tell your employees which candidate to vote for

This post at the Evil HR Lady Facebook group caught my attention yesterday:

Florida company’s president warns employees their jobs could be in danger if Trump loses election

Here are the detail:

Some employees at a Florida manufacturing company feel they were threatened with being laid off if they did not support President Donald Trump.…

Their paystubs included a letter from [the employer] warning them that their jobs could be in danger.

“If Trump and the Republicans win the election, DMC will hopefully be able to continue operating, more or less as it has been operating lately,” the letter read. “However, if Biden and the Democrats win, DMC could be forced to begin permanent layoffs in late 2020 and/or early 2021.”

While it’s not illegal for employers to talk to their employees about the upcoming election and suggest how to vote, there are laws regulating this type of conduct if it goes too far.

The federal government criminalizesintimidation, threats, or coercion for the purpose of interfering with one’s right to vote one’s choice in a federal election. A few states (Michigan, for example) expressly prohibit employers from discharging or otherwise coercing employees to influence their votes in political elections. Ohio is not one of those states.

Legal or illegal, however, you need to ask yourself whether holding meetings to discuss political issues, threatening employees’ jobs, mandating their attendance at political events, or otherwise telling them how they should vote is a valid business practice. How you answer the question of whether you think it’s okay to try to shape or influence your employees’ votes helps define the kind of employer you are. Voting is an intensely personal choice. I don’t think it’s my business how my family or friends cast their votes. I certainly don’t think it’s an employer’s business how its employees cast their votes. Voting booths have privacy curtains for a reason. Exercise some discretion by not invading the privacy of your workers regarding their choice of candidates or political parties.

October 5, 2020

Your employees should never learn about positive COVID-19 test from anyone but you

Ninety percent of the [White House] complex most certainly learned about it in the news, as has been the case ever since. There are reports that COVID is spreading like wildfire through the White House. There are hundreds and hundreds of people who work on-complex, some who have families with high-risk family members. Since this whole thing started, not one email has gone out to tell employees what to do or what’s going on.

– Anonymous White House Senior Official

If your employees are learning about a positive COVID-19 diagnosis from anyone other than from an official communication from you as their employer, you have failed in your duty as their employer.

They should not learn from other employees. They should not learn from social media. They should not learn from the professional media. Period. The should only learn from you.

What should this communication look like? Let me suggest the following.

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 are fever-free for at least 24 hours, your other symptoms have improved for at least 24 hours, and at least 10 days have passed since your first symptoms.

Anyone who has been in “close contact” with our ill employee has been separately and privately notified, and will be required to quarantine for at least 14 days from their last close contact.

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 physical 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).

Employees 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.

August 25, 2020August 25, 2020

Coronavirus update: This example of WFH is WTF

Alison Green, who pens the super engaging and helpful Ask A Manager blog, reached out to me to help with a reader question.

You should jump over to Alison’s post to read the whole bonkers scenario, but the TL;DR is that an employee’s spouse asked about the legality of an employer-installed app on her work-from-home husband’s phone that audio recorded everything happening in the home (whether work related or not).

My answer:

First things first. Legal or illegal I’d get away from that employer right now. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Just get your resume in order and start job hunting ASAP. This is a horrible HR practice that tells me this is not an employer I want to work for any longer

As for the legality of the practice, it depends on the state in which you live. Recording or otherwise listening to the conversations of others are covered and regulated by state wiretap statutes. These laws come in two flavor – one-party consent laws, and two-party consent laws.

Most state wiretap statutes are one-party consent laws. This means that as long as one of the parties to the conversation has consented to the recording, no law has been violated. In the scenario presented, I’d want to know whether the husband has consented (expressly or implicitly) to the recording. If so, in a one-party consent state, no statute has been violated. I would still, however, have concerns over a common law invasion of privacy tort claim since the employer is unreasonable intruding into the private lives of your family, legal wiretap notwithstanding.

A minority of states (11 to be precise — California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington, plus Hawaii, which requires two-party consent if the recording device is in a private residence) have two-party consent laws. This means that unless all parties being listened to or recorded have consented to it, an illegal wiretap is occurring. If you are in one of these states, the recording described would likely be illegal, since the spouse and anyone else within earshot of the phone other than the employee would not have provided consent. In this case, I’d raise the issue with the company, and if you can’t get satisfaction, I’d talk to an attorney.

A recent story in the New York Times asked if COVID-19 has forever changed the office. It has, and largely for the better. For example, lots of companies who were resistant to work-from-home have had to bend.

But this example bends so far that it breaks the employer/employee relationship.

If you have so little trust in your employees that you need to monitor everything they do by eavesdropping on conversations in their homes, you shouldn’t be in the business of employing others. You are simply not suited to be an employer. The employer/employee relationship is one of mutual trust, and without that trust there is no relationship of value, period.

November 19, 2019June 29, 2023

Monitoring Emotions at Work

With emotional well-being in the workplace, “prevention is better than intervention,” said one author and entrepreneur.

Marc Brackett, founder and director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, argues in his new book “Permission to Feel” that the workplace tends to deny healing.

“You check your feelings at the door because you’re there to do business,” he said. “What people have to realize is emotions don’t get checked at the door. They are at the seat of every table. They’re on the phone with every client and are influencing all aspects of performance.”

Emerging technologies are helping employees assess the impact of their emotional state on work performance.

One platform in the development stage, Evolve Biologix, uses the heart’s electrical signals through an ECG measurement tool wrapped around the chest to correlate with a range of emotions to develop emotional awareness and learn techniques to manage it individually and in relationship to others.

People already are using devices connected to the body such as a watch, but having something connected closer to their heart is new, said Evolve Biologix CEO Steve Curtis.

Evolve Biologix differs from other platforms in that while others are self-reporting, its focus is on gathering real-time electrical signals from each heartbeat.

“An ECG wave has different peaks with electrical signals firing through our brain,” said Curtis, whose company is in a corporate environment beta stage as Curtis seeks partners to collaborate on the notion that it can serve as a health benefit. “We’re utilizing data science and machine algorithms to understand the specific signatures of these body systems to draw out emotions, build a group performance dashboard and optimize algorithms that drive content interventions and suggestions at an organizational level.”

An Evolve Power Index score, which is displayed on a phone, represents the user’s emotional level. The higher the score, the more the end user is believed to be in alignment with their emotional state, which can range from shame and guilt to peace and enlightenment.

Regarding privacy concerns, Curtis said results aren’t connected to individuals but provide a picture of group dynamics down to work groups of three.

“[HR] departments are continually challenged with how to keep innovation alive in their organization, increase the change readiness, manage empathy in environments where people are becoming progressively more technical in nature and how to get people to care about each other and function as a cohesive team,” he said. “It’s imperative to be able to view these kinds of metrics.”

Brackett foresees a time when employee benefits will include more emotional wellness technologies.

“There’s a benefit-cost analysis to taking seriously people’s development of skills, teaching emotional self-awareness and emotion regulation as opposed to treating it once you have a full-blown anxiety disorder or depression,” he said.