remote work – Workforce

April 6, 2021

Is work from home not all it’s cracked up to be?

coronavirus, remote work, COVID-19, remote workforce

Three weeks ago I returned to the office. That return matched my start date at Wickens Herzer Panza. I decided that it’d be difficult, if not impossible, to learn a new firm and its systems, and build camaraderie and teamwork with my new co-workers, if I’m working remotely. Thus, I made the decision to break free of my self-imposed COVID-19 cocoon and start working most days in person in the office.

I thought about this decision as I read this article in the Wall Street Journal: After Covid, Should You Keep Working From Home? Here’s How to Decide.

Consider these conflicting stats.

54 percent of employees say that they would want to work remotely if permitted post-COVID-19.
Yet, over 60 percent of employees report that remote work has increased their time spent in meetings and their work hours, and nearly 50 percent report that it has decreased their work-life balance.

In other words, employees are in favor of remote work as a concept, but in practice, they may not understand that it is doing more harm than good.

Without a real physical separation between work and nonwork, people won’t ever stop working. They will be on the clock 24/7, ultimately burning themselves out at great cost to themselves and their employers. The most recent episode of Depresh Mode with John Moe expertly addressed this issue.

What does this mean for your remote employees? It means that they are likely working too much, some to the point of burnout. If you value your employees’ mental health and wellbeing, factor it into your decision when and whether to bring your employees back to your physical workplace, at least part time. They might think they want to keep working remotely, but they may not necessarily know what’s best for them.

In the meantime, if your employees are going to continue working remotely, consider these tips to help them maintain the balance they need to avoid overworking and burning out.

1. Set a schedule for your employees and strongly encourage them to stick to it. Alternatively, make available technology that allows employees to designate when they are available and not available. In either case, it must be clear to managers, supervisors, and coworkers that these boundaries must be respected except in the case of a 911-level emergency.

2. Require that employees take breaks during the workday, including a lunch break.

3. Prioritize days off so that employees can recharge their batteries.

4. Remind employees who might be struggling with their mental health of the services you have available for them, including an EAP and counseling and other mental health services via your health insurance plan.

March 24, 2021

How to choose which remote work employees to bring back

For the past year, an astounding 44 percent of employees have been working remotely full time, and two-thirds of employees have done remote work at least one day per week. With vaccination rates on the rise and offering a light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, employers are starting to plan for bringing employees back to the physical workplace.

These decisions involve a lot of key questions an employer needs to answer in planning for where employees will work in a post-vaccine, post-pandemic world.

Here are four questions to think about.

1. How have employees performed during the pandemic while working remotely?

Has an employee been less productive, as productive, or more productive? Have they stayed connected and in communication? Can you trust them to continue to work remotely, or do they need closer monitoring? Have you gotten more productivity out of employees during the pandemic because of the resulting blurring of work time and personal time (i.e., if one’s home is now the workplace, do they ever really disconnect from working)?

2. What is an employee’s preference?

Do they want to continue working remotely, would they prefer to return to a physical office or workspace or do they want some type of flexible or hybrid arrangement? Do they have long commutes that eat into their available working time, and will remote work create greater productivity as a result?

3. Does remote work makes sense for your business moving forward?

How interactive do your employees need to be in performing their jobs? Is their work highly collaborative, and being with people, in person, will assist in getting the job done quicker and at a higher quality? Or does your business involve production processes that cannot be done or effectively managed remotely? Or can employee “get it done” just as well without being face-to-actual-face with others?

4. What about high-risk employees and working parents?

COVID-19 more disproportionately severely impacts older people and people with certain underlying health conditions. And, working parents who lost child care during the pandemic had other reasons to remain at home. Thus, separate from stay-at-home order and social distancing rules that have kept everyone home, these employees have a greater reason to have worked remotely and remain remote. As individuals are vaccinated and schools and childcare reopen, these concerns should melt away, but employers still need to be mindful of not discriminating on account of age, disability, and parental/caregiver status as they bring employees back to work and reintegrate them into the workplace.

COVID-19 has changed how most businesses think about work from home. That genie is likely never going back in the bottle. Each business will have to answer all of the above questions in deciding what work from home looks like for them and their employees as we move into a post-pandemic world and workplace.

October 21, 2020June 29, 2023

Progressive Insurance gives interns an entry-level lesson in the new reality of office work

interns, internship, Progressive Insurance, remote work, remote workforce

A well-run internship program often enables college students to gain skills they wouldn’t otherwise attain in a university classroom.

Typically interns draw a new perspective on work while in a structured corporate environment, learning the processes, strategies and plans that lead to organizational and personal success. If properly executed, an internship can provide experience, inspiration and potentially an entry-level job as they embark on their budding career.

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of an internship is building relationships with mentors and executives while observing an organization first-hand from the inside. But since the pandemic took hold, many internship programs have been suspended or even eliminated.

Rather than abolish its internship program, Progressive Insurance Co. gave its interns a dose of corporate reality in a pandemic-stricken global workplace. Rather than intern inside its corporate offices, the insurance giant quickly created a program of remote out-of-office-terns.

Going to a virtual platform

Mayfield, Ohio-based Progressive employs some 40,000 people and like many organizations immediately pivoted to a largely remote workforce in mid-March. Gabe De Leon, Progressive’s program manager for collegiate and MBA recruiting, said that their approximately 100 hourly interns were among those suddenly cast into a remote-work environment.

Also read: Enrich your employee onboarding experience and say goodbye to paperwork

“We needed to spend extra time ensuring our interns felt like they were a part of the Progressive family given these circumstances,” De Leon said.

Time was actually an advantage since the new round of summer interns hadn’t yet come onboard. Executives made the remote work call with interns in mind, De Leon said. “Our interns were thrilled to know that we were going to honor our commitment to their internships,” he said, “albeit, 100 percent virtual.”

Progressive’s summer internships run from May through August to mirror university schedules with roles in data and analytics, IT and accounting business groups, De Leon said. Progressive interns are there to do more than just get someone’s coffee or stuff envelopes, he added.

“Our interns are assigned unique and necessary problem-solving projects that allow them to work closely with company leaders and foster their professional development.”

Learning to use remote technology

Emily Holroyd, who studies actuarial science at Ohio State University, recalled the uncertainty as she transitioned to being a remote student at Ohio State University and simultaneously finding out her summer 2020 internship in Progressive’s claims department would be fully virtual as well.

“Going into the summer it was very clear that my internship was going to be virtual, but I do remember being a little nervous about what this was going to look like,” recalled Holroyd, a data analyst intern. “I was hearing stories left and right from my peers about losing their internships or even just having weeklong programs as a substitute. I knew how important to my career this experience was going to be, so I was relieved to hear that Progressive was going to allow us to partake in the full 12-week program virtually.”

Case study: COVID-19 causes Radial’s 25,000 seasonal hires to practice safe shipping

De Leon said that interns typically get the opportunity to work alongside industry professionals, receive career advice and mentorship, and attend educational, networking and social events. They also incorporated virtual events including a roundtable with Progressive President and CEO Tricia Griffith.

Interns received a working experience as if they were on site, De Leon said. Besides one-to-one mentorships and networking with peers as if they were in an office, they learned the new realities of working during a pandemic.

“Our interns learned new virtual technology to accomplish their job responsibilities,” he said. “Learning how to navigate a large remote conference call is also a valuable skill.”

Remaining in a remote environment

The vast majority of Progressive employees will remain remote until 2021, De Leon said. Still, the internship program’s future is bright. The fact that they bring in qualified candidates through their recruiting process even in the middle of a pandemic is reassuring, he said, adding that they have made some adjustments and created a robust virtual college strategy for the fall recruiting season.

And some interns, like Holroyd, who never set foot inside Progressive’s offices, are offered full-time positions as their internship ends. Holroyd is set to begin a full-time position in the analyst development program beginning in June 2021.

“I quickly learned that I was only going to get out as much as I was willing to put in, and this motivated me to try and talk with as many other analysts as possible,” Holroyd said. “I think the fact that I was able to submerge myself into the Progressive culture, even remotely, speaks volumes about the people that work for this company. This year has thrown a lot of curveballs with school and work, but I hope to look back on 2020 warmly as I remember my internship at Progressive.”

What will Holroyd’s “I remember when …” recollections be decades from now about her pandemic-influenced internship?

“My story will definitely be, ‘I remember when I spent an entire summer working for a Fortune 100 company from the basement of my parents’ house.’ ”

Whether you have a staff of 10 or 10,000, Workforce.com offers the leading scheduling app to optimize staffing levels, forecast wages and manage shifts with ease.

August 31, 2020June 29, 2023

Workforce tracking solutions do not always track with company culture

Workforce tracking solutions for employers continues to grow, especially as remote work has become more commonplace in 2020.

One reason for this is that organizations worry that employees aren’t as productive when they’re working remotely and that managers can’t peek around the office to see who’s working and who’s online shopping, said Matt Stevenson, partner and leader of Mercer’s Workforce Strategy and Analytics practice.

Additionally, now there’s just more data as more people work online. For example, with more health care delivered through telehealth now, he said, there’s much more data on patient interactions that used to just be recorded in doctors’ notes. And it’s possible to connect this data with actual patient outcomes.

Also read: Labor analytics add power to workforce management tools

In health care and beyond, organizations are beginning to invest more in this technology, Stevenson said. As workforce tracking becomes more commonplace, there are some key considerations employers must keep in mind to use it correctly.

Track productivity, not activity

There is a lot of metadata that organizations and vendors can track, like how many clicks per day or meetings per day an employee has. Either party can tap into this data and interpret it, but one important consideration is they are tracking the right thing, said Matt Stevenson, partner and leader of Mercer’s Workforce Strategy and Analytics practice.

“if your’e just tracking activity and micromanaging activity, that probably won’t end well. But if you have a way of seeing whether activity is a leading indicator of productivity, that’s fantastic,” Stevenson said.

He gave the example of judging athletes’ “productivity” by how much time they spent on the field rather than how many goals they scored. There is a big distinction between activity and productivity, and it can be a difficult distinction to make in the workplace.

Also read: Monitor Responsibly: How Employers Are Using Workplace Surveillance Devices

Consider how much you trust who you’ve hired

John Lacy, chief operating officer at Idea Grove, said that at his organization, they do not believe in workforce tracking. Rather, there should be a culture of trust.

“We don’t believe monitoring tools of that nature are necessary to ensure people are doing their jobs. It comes down to the culture we’re building. When we looked at going fully remote, that question came up as not so much ‘What technology do we need to track them?’ but ‘How will we know work is getting done?’ and ‘How will we know we’re still meeting client needs?’ ” he said.

“It came back to that level of trust,” he added. “If we don’t trust [employees] to do what they need to do — whether they’re working at the office or from a remote location — we believe we’ve hired the wrong person.”

To ensure that people are getting work done, Idea Grove instead uses a series of tech tools that help with project management. Team members track their progress on projects with the project tracking tool Teamwork. They communicate with each other via Slack. And the organization regularly gets employee feedback about how employees are feeling about the office culture through the culture tracking tool Officevibe.

Lacy also said that the organization uses The Great Game of Business to help educate employees on how to run a business, how their work contributes to the organization and how exactly their successes can lead to rewards and bonuses.

“A philosophy I truly believe in is that everyone can understand business. It’s not that hard,” he said. “A lot of companies hide that from their employees, but we want to empower employees with that knowledge so that they understand that if they want long-term employment with the company, we have to make sure we have a company that is healthy, profitable and engaging, and they can participate in that directly.”

Avoid micromanaging

A real risk of workforce tracking is the presence of micromanaging, Stevenson said. He suggested “nudging” as a solution to micromanaging.

For example, perhaps a company found out that employees’ sending emails after 10 p.m. led to burnout and lower productivity. If a manager finds out through workforce tracking that an employee is regularly sending emails at this time, the solution wouldn’t be to have a stern discussion with the employee and tell them to stop. Rather, the employee could receive “nudges” through pop-ups on their computer that encourage them to sign off at a certain time.

Also read: Employee performance shines bright with valuable, continuous shift feedback

There’s a good deal of research supporting that nudges help with behavior change rather than direct orders. Stevenson said.

With this logic, what organizations should do first is find that link between activity and productivity. Once they’ve figured out that link, they could use that insight to create nudges rather than try to directly guide employee behavior, he added.

“It’s a two-fold problem,” he explained. “What predicts the things you care about, and if you have those predictions, what do you do about it without making things worse?”

The conversation about micromanaging ultimately comes back to trust, Lacy said.

“Everything starts with culture,” he said. “If you’re in an environment where trust is not the baseline, I could see a more command-and-control type manager having trouble with not knowing if everyone’s doing what they need to do.”

“My advice to them is to take an inward look,” he added. “What is it about your internal self that is not trusting your team to get its work done?”

How to calm employee’s concerns

Some employees may have concerns about workforce tracking, which comes down to is company culture and how employee data is being used, Stevenson said. Some cultures may breed more suspicion in employees while others are more trusting.

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

Things get tougher in organizations where there is a more adversarial relationship between employees and employer. “And, in my personal opinion, that’s where you may see more labor organizations showing up,” Stevenson said.

He gave the historical example of Henry Ford and the creation of assembly lines. Strikes would often happen when factory operators sped up production. A similar trend happened with coal miners, who were paid by their output of coal every hour. They would strike when the number was supposed to go up, if they were concerned it was unsafe for them to do so.

Using “speeding up the assembly line” as a metaphor for “increasing productivity” in the 21st century, Stevenson said that when organizations attempt to “speed it up” by tracking emails or whatever other metric, people notice.

“If you’re the sort of organization that will take this data to speed up the assembly line, you’ll get pushback,” he said. “If you’re on the sort that will use this data to make the product on the assembly line better then you won’t get push back.”

Further, he added, sometimes it’s legitimate to speed up the assembly line and look for higher productivity. What’s key here is how an organization shares the benefit of increased productivity. If it speeds up productivity and shares the profits with employees, those employees may very well be satisfied. But if profits mostly go somewhere else, like to shareholders or executives, then there will be less of a positive reaction, he said.

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.

July 2, 2020May 16, 2022

Employee claims his remote work request got him fired

An employee suffers from high blood pressure and lives with his 81-year-old mother. He’s an engineer and began working from home for his employer in mid-March when his state shut down non-essential businesses. His employer, however, remained open, and several weeks later required him to return to in-person work in the office. He refused, requesting continued work from home. The company refused that request and fired him for job abandonment. The employee sued for disability discrimination.

The employer argues that the employee’s high blood pressure is not a disability warranting accommodation, and it has no obligation to accommodate the employee because he lives with his elderly mother.

Also read: Permanent working from home works well if you have the right technology

As to the latter argument, the employer is likely correct—it doesn’t have to accommodate an employee because of the employee’s association with someone with a disability, even if that family member falls into one of the COVID-19 high-risk groups.

I also think, however, that this employer may have issues with the denial of the employee’s work-from-home request for his own alleged disability. It’s possible that this employee was entitled to work from home as a reasonable accommodation. We don’t know, however, because the employer never asked for any medical information from the employee as to the need for the request.

According to Tchankpa v. Ascena Retail Group, “Employers are entitled to medical documentation confirming the employee’s disability and need for accommodation.” If on-site attendance is presumed to be an job essential function (as noted by the Tchankpa court) then an employer would have to consider offering an accommodation to meet that essential function. Telework might be one such accommodation. But the employer won’t know that unless it engages in the interactive process with the employee.

And that’s where this employer failed. The employee asked for an accommodation and the employer refused it without consideration and without gathering the necessary information from the employee.

Also read: Keys to effectively managing a remote workforce

So, yes, you might be able to deny an employee’s work from home request. To be clear, in most cases I don’t think you should. But it is possible. You just have to do it the right way, which will always include the interactive process to determine if the employee is disabled and if the request is medically indicated to permit the employee to perform the essential functions of the job. For high-risk employees with a doctor’s note, however, denying the request takes a huge legal risk.

May 28, 2020April 11, 2023

Permanent working from home works well if you have the right technology

Remote work is not a new concept. Telecommuting grew as an acceptable business practice as technology rapidly advanced through the late 20th century and into the early 2000s.

Perhaps more importantly, working outside an office gained credibility as employers realized remote work increases productivity, improves employee morale and saves money.

Debating remote work pros and cons

The debate over the value of remote work has remained largely the same even as a wider swath of employees spend time outside a traditional office environment. One lingering argument against it is that there are too many distractions and the lack of a quiet place to focus on the task at hand. Yet a 2017 FlexJobs study found that just 7 percent of workers say they are more productive in an office setting.

As employers deliberate a remote workforce, the rapid evolution of workforce management technology has enabled more people to work outside the office. Professions once considered as chained to punching in and out immediately become more productive by starting and ending their day on the job.

Influencing expectations through technology

Innovative GPS-enabled technology now empowers remote employees to clock in and out simply by using their mobile device. Workforce.com’s GPS Clock-in features the longitude and latitude and provides employers with a real-time glance at each remote employee’s precise location.

With such dynamic, easy-to-use technology available, the challenge then becomes shifting organizational and managerial expectations surrounding remote work. Security is understandably a concern that can be allayed by a trustworthy, safe platform. Here is some insight to appease curmudgeonly employers that a remote workforce is indeed a boon to business.

Choose and vet the right employees for remote assignments. You don’t want your fledgling remote work program to be DOA.
Consider the effect on customers, co-workers and management.
Productivity expands since time is spent on the job, not traveling back and forth to punch a clock.
Set regular goals and objectives to be evaluated monthly, weekly or even daily.
Encourage ongoing feedback between management and the remote employee.
Online video programs allow for remote workers to visually participate in staff meetings and events.

No guessing where they are

Managers will quickly and easily know where remote staff is with the GPS Clock-in platform’s photo-verified system. While this provides peace of mind for employers knowing their workers are on the job, there also is a safety component involved.

In the event of an unpredictable natural incident, be it a sudden tornado warning, freak ice storm or an earthquake, employers can find peace of mind in knowing that resources are instantly available to check the location and safety of their remote employees.

The federal Office of Personnel Management cited improved emergency preparedness planning as a benefit of expanding its remote workforce. The agency also stated that remote work reduced employee commutes and provided cuts in real estate costs and energy use. Other positive outcomes included:

Improved employee attitudes.
Better recruitment and retention.
Improved employee performance.

As the number of employees working remotely increases every year, change long-overdue attitudes and adopt the right technology to build a vibrant, dynamic remote workforce. Enhance your business and put your remote workers in a position to excel in their jobs and boost productivity with Workforce.com’s GPS Clock-in platform.

May 22, 2020June 29, 2023

The most pressing workforce management issues of 2020

workforce management 2020, mask, COVID-19

While the buzzword “the future of work” is often thrown around as if it’s the new, exciting, sexy thing, it just refers to a reality that’s always been true. The economy changes, technology changes, and social trends impact the way people want work. Workforce management — as a field that relates to employees’ wages, schedules, promotability and more — can be impacted by large economic and social trends as well as technology.

Smart workforce management professionals pay attention to what trends impact their organization and workforce and plan ahead. Some trends relate to the COVID-19 pandemic and others relate to forces that existed much before that.

Based on information from various reports and expert interviews, these workforce management issues are some of the most immediate for 2020 and what practitioners should be thinking about.

Employee safety

In environments like factories, workplace safety has always been a point of focus, while the same could not be said for the average retailer or office setting. “All of a sudden, that’s changed,” said Matt Stevenson, partner and leader of Mercer’s Workforce Strategy and Analytics practice. Due to COVID-19, employers are concerned with how the work environment must change to ensure employee safety.

Also read: COVID-19 and workers’ compensation

Currently, this is one of the most significant workforce management issues, he said. I’s impossible to predict how long this hyper-focus on employee safety will last. He surmised this depends on whether a COVID-19 vaccine is developed and when.

Stevenson gave the example of polio. Before the vaccine it was a serious threat, and there were polio epidemics globally. After the vaccine was created, safety issues related to polio stopped being a concern. On the other hand, he added, viruses like HIV still don’t have a vaccine decades after being identified in 1981.

Also read: When employees return to work, consider these guidelines

Shifts in the way work is done

One outcome of COVID-19 is that certain jobs are done differently, Stevenson said, especially with remote work. Some organizations did not change their operating models because they didn’t have to, and the pandemic made it so they did not have a choice.

For example, the use of telemedicine has grown since the pandemic started, Stevenson said. Telemedicine has existed for years, but there was some resistance to it, and it was often underutilized. With a pandemic that limits physical contact, people began embracing telemedicine. It’s possible this trend could continue after the pandemic ends.

That’s what happened with retail stores, Stevenson noted. Online shopping for goods of all types is the norm these days, although consumers still can visit brick-and-mortar locations.

Industries like hospitality, leisure and travel have been especially impacted by the pandemic, he added. It’s difficult to imagine how a shift to something more online-friendly would look for these organizations.

The future of the physical workplace

Whether remote work will be as accepted after the pandemic ends is still unknown, but there’s a possibility that organizations will be more open to a largely remote workforce.

As employers think about their return-to-work plan, they may start with only bringing people in they have to, Stevenson said. From there, a large portion of the workforce may remain remote. This could lead to a big picture question of, “Do I need this big, expensive office space if I can just have employees work from home instead?”

This is already happening in the tech sector. Twitter recently announced that staff can work from home permanently.

Not enough flexibility for employees

Deloitte’s “2020 Global Human Capital Trends” report highlighted organizations that took employee-friendly approaches — giving employees more jurisdiction over their work schedules and offering them new flexible time off programs. These approaches are designed to allow employees to “live and work at their best” ultimately had positive impacts for companies. Company culture was improved, and teams saw better communication and collaboration.

More flexibility is good for worker well-being, which is good for business, according to the report. It surveyed respondents on how they have redesigned work to promote well-being in the organization. The top three answers were “giving workers more autonomy in how they do their work” (45 percent of respondents), “using technology to promote connectivity and collaboration” (41 percent) and “increasing flexible and/or predictable scheduling” (39 percent).

“Worker input is critical to understand what changes to work practices may have the greatest impact on well-being,” the report noted. For organizations who want to take this route, they need to think about how to get that employee input and act on it.

Interestingly, the report also noted that forward-thinking organizations should “stop obsessing about generations,” which leads to too many oversimplifications about employees. Ultimately most people, regardless of their generations, want many of the same things in a workplace — including their preference for flexible schedules.

A larger focus on workforce science

Mercer’s “Global Talent Trends 2020” report highlighted the need for HR and workforce management professionals to get better at workforce science — a practice that can help professionals address many workforce management issues. For example, the survey found that only 24 percent of respondents said their organization has data on who is at risk of burnout. Only 43 percent of organizations surveyed used metrics to identify employees likely to leave, and only 18 percent have looked at the impact of pay strategies on performance. This is an area organizations can improve on in future years.

The report didn’t paint a grim picture, though. Mercer’s surveys have found that the use of predictive analytics has increased from 10 percent in 2016 to 39 percent in 2020. While there’s more employers can be doing with analytics, they’ve also been stepping up their game the past five years.

“The good news is that the workforce science discipline is gathering momentum,” the report stated. “That said, insights into workforce management could be adopted more widely.”

April 14, 2020June 29, 2023

Telecommuting as a reasonable accommodation during the coronavirus pandemic

Telecommuting has become the coronavirus norm.

The CDC recommends that employees who can work from home do so, and state stay-at-home orders are requiring telework whenever possible.

The larger questions, however, are whether COVID-19 will change our national outlook on the viability of telework, or when this crisis ends will businesses return to their pre-coronavirus telework hostility?

I hope it’s the former but I fear it’s the latter. And if it’s the latter, Tchankpa v. Ascena Retail Group, which the 6th Circuit Court decided in the midst of the growing coronavirus outbreak and just five days before the World Health Organization declared a viral pandemic, gives us some insight into the future issues.

Kassi Tchankpa, a database administrator for Ascena, seriously injured his shoulder while transporting laptops to work. The injury limited his ability to bathe himself, cook, wash dishes, open the refrigerator or drive normally. Yet, with a variety of accommodations from Ascena (such as arriving late or leaving early as needed to attend medical appointments and flexible scheduling), Tchankpa was able to work in the office for the first 10 months after his injury.

When he asked to work at his home three days per week as further accommodation (something he argued Ascena allowed other employees to do), the company balked. Tchankpa’s supervisor made clear that Tchankpa needed medical documentation to support his request for regular work from home.

Tchankpa’s doctor, however, never provided that documentation, and instead advised the company that Tchankpa could continue to work from the office as long as he took frequent breaks for his shoulder. Ascena thus denied the work-from-home accommodation request. As a result, Tchankpa quit and sued for disability discrimination.

The lack of documentation supporting Tchankpa’s telework accommodation request doomed his claim:

Employers are entitled to medical documentation confirming the employee’s disability and need for accommodation. And Ascena invoked that right in early 2013. Yet Ascena did not receive documents discussing Tchankpa’s medical restrictions until October 2013. Far from showing a necessary accommodation, Dr. Stacy’s report stated that Tchankpa could work eight hours per day, five days per week. Without medical documentation showing that Tchankpa’s disability required work from home, Ascena had no duty to grant Tchankpa’s request. After all, we presume on-site attendance is an essential job requirement.

Thus, an employee seeking telework as a reasonable accommodation must provide a requesting employer documentation as to the medical necessity of that accommodation. This is true of any reasonable accommodation. Unless the need for a reasonable accommodation is painfully obvious, an employer never has to take an employee’s word for it, and should always request medical documentation to support that need.

Which has nothing whatsoever to do with telework during this pandemic emergency. Everyone who can be teleworking should be teleworking, period, no questions asked.

The bigger question is what happens after we all return to our physical places of work. Currently, about half of employed adults are working from home. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, before coronavirus only 19.5 percent of the workforce performed some paid work at home. We should expect the numbers to meet somewhere in the middle after we are all allowed to safely return to work. Indeed, the Brookings Institute predicts that telecommuting will continue long after the pandemic ends.

While working from home hasn’t been perfect over the past month, it’s still been work. With email, remote access, cloud storage and Zoom, I’ve been able (more or less) to accomplish everything I’ve needed to. Still, I miss my co-workers and can’t envision doing this from-home thing on a permanent, full-time basis. But I can envision it a day or two a week.

So here are my questions on the heels of the Tchankpa court’s declaration that “on-site attendance is an essential job requirement.” Is it still? If employees are currently working productively from home, will an employer still be able to make a future claim that on-site attendance is essential to those employees’ jobs? Or will remote work finally take its rightful place alongside in-person work as accepted and acceptable?

While telecommuting has been the exception by a vast number, my hope is that the wall that has separated exception from rule will evaporate, as this pandemic has shown that we can productively work without being at work.

March 4, 2020June 29, 2023

What employers need to know about coronavirus and the workplace

COVID-19, coronavirus, public health crisis

The United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention has been closely monitoring the spread of coronavirus, a respiratory illness first detected in Wuhan, China. Now that the coronavirus has taken a deadly turn in the United States, many employers are looking for guidance as to how they may protect employees while continuing to adhere to their legal obligations in the workplace.

Here are some suggestions that employers may take to protect themselves and their employees.

Allow employees to work from home as a precaution

In January, the CDC confirmed that the virus may be spread through person-to-person contact. In light of this information and the understanding that the incubation period is between two and 14 days, employers should consider allowing employees concerned about possible exposure to work from home, to the extent practicable.

If remote work is not possible, employers could alternatively consider providing paid leave during that incubation period.

Consider alternatives to business trips

At the time of this publication, the CDC has issued a level 3 health travel notice — recommending that individuals avoid all unnecessary travel to China, Iran, South Korea and Italy. For those employers with employees traveling to any of these areas for business purposes, consider whether postponing or moving the location of the trip is a suitable alternative. Other options may include telephone and/or video conferencing.

Similarly, if an employee expresses concern about business travel to other affected areas, employers should consider reasonable alternatives, mindful of OSHA’s requirement that employers provide “a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm to . . . employees.”

Assess risk on a case-by-case basis

With regard to those employees showing what could be early-stage coronavirus symptoms — which are similar to that of a cold — there is a risk of overreaction and business disruption if employers take a one-size-fits-all approach, requiring all employees with those types of symptoms to stay home.

Instead, employers should assess risk on a case-by-case basis and encourage employees to seek and follow professional medical advice in a manner consistent with the employer’s usual sick leave policies.

Similarly, employers should broach the topic of employees’ symptoms carefully as state and federal anti-discrimination laws limit medical inquiries by employers if doing so may reveal an employee’s disability. In light of these limitations, we recommend employers do what they can to ensure a healthy, safe working environment by encouraging any employees showing symptoms of the coronavirus to follow public health guidance and professional medical advice and by reminding employees about applicable human resources policies and procedures.

Also read: Can an employer require an employee with a serious health condition to take FMLA leave?

Take care to avoid discriminatory behavior or actions

An employer must be mindful of all its legal obligations, balancing the requirement to ensure a healthy and safe working environment with its concurrent obligation to maintain a working environment that is free from unlawful discrimination. For example, an employer should seek to avoid any stereotyping behavior by employees, such as inquiries related to the coronavirus that can be linked to an employee’s national origin. Such inquiries could result in claims of unlawful discrimination.

Also read: COVID-19 and the role of businesses in a public health crisis

As another example, if an employee discloses their diagnosis with the virus, employers should work with them to determine what steps to take to prevent the spread to other employees in the workplace, as well as to enable the employee to recover and return to work. Options may include a remote work arrangement, paid or unpaid sick leave or another form of leave of absence.

Importantly, employers should ensure supervisors are trained to avoid overreaction and are informed about the applicable laws that restrict inquiries into the health status of employees. They should also be trained on the importance of adhering to company anti-discrimination policies (including avoiding stereotyping based on race, ethnicity, and national origin).

Communicate regularly

By regularly communicating with employees as to current policies and procedures for managing the virus, employers will be best equipped to balance their legal obligations. If, in accordance with CDC or local health official guidance, an employer decides that any employee showing symptoms of the virus will be encouraged to stay home until they are fever free, this should be communicated to all employees uniformly.

If an employee approaches management with specific questions, the employer should proceed with caution and avoid asking questions that may lead to the disclosure of an employee’s disability. Instead, the employer should focus on the employee’s job duties and what adjustments, if any, can be made to enable the employee to perform those duties.

Balance safety and legal compliance

Employers cannot prioritize OSHA health and safety requirements over state and federal privacy and anti-discrimination laws. The threat of the virus does not excuse the employer from its other legal obligations, and claims are bound to arise if an employer lets one of its responsibilities slip.

Please note that the above information is based upon what is presently known about the coronavirus. This is an ongoing issue and employers should remain informed of further updates from the CDC and other local public health officials.