Category: Commentary & Opinion

Posted on

Measure Twice, Cut Once and Don’t Email Porn to Everyone on Your Company’s Contact List

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

In what may be the greatest (or, depending on your perspective, worst) employee mistake of all time, the Utah State Bar emailed a photo of a topless woman to more than 11,000 of its members.

For its part, the Bar has apologized, and has said it is investigating how the incident occurred and will publicize its findings.

Speculation on the cause of the unfortunate email ranges from hackers to a disgruntled employee.

It’s neither.

Readers, let me break this case for you.

This is nothing more than a good ol’ fashioned mistake, or a series of mistakes.

Employee has porn on his work computer (Mistake No. 1.)

He is tasked with sending an email to all of the organization’s members regarding its spring convention.

Part of that email was to be an attached flyer.

Employee attaches a file to the email that he thinks is the flyer. It’s not; it’s the porn image. (Mistake No. 2.)

He then clicks “send,” without realizing his error and without checking to see if he attached the correct image. (Mistake No. 3).

I’ll be floored if the investigation reveals anything different.

So, what lessons can we learn from this unfortunate story?

First, let’s please, as part of our annual harassment training, remind our employees that they should not be viewing porn in the workplace, let alone storing it on their computer. Nothing good ever comes from that.

Second, let’s remind our employees to slow down. Yes, we are all busy, and, yes, we are all under a lot of pressure to complete a lot of tasks on a daily basis. But, as if often the case, it’s so much better to get it right than to get it done.

Yes, emailing porn to everyone on your employer’s mailing list is not great, but it could have been so much worse. Imagine if, instead of an image of a topless woman, it was a confidential business plan, or the employer’s financial records.

“Measure twice, cut once” applies to just about anything anyone does at work. A simple double checking of the attachment could have saved everyone involved a whole lot of embarrassment.

Or, this employee simple could have kept his porn at home. Just sayin’.

Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.

Posted on

The Legal Implications of Employee Tracking Devices

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

I once knew of company (not a client) at which its CEO would sit in his office all day and watch a bank of monitors connected to cameras all over the workplace so that he could track the productivity of his employees.

He even had one outside the bathrooms to record how frequently and for how long his employees were taking potty breaks. Needless to say, morale among his employees was not great.

Monitoring of employees has gone even more high tech. The Chicago Tribune reports that Amazon has developed wristbands to track worker hand movements as they fill and ship orders in its warehouses and distribution centers.

Employers have legitimate business reasons for tracking employee movements — e.g., enhanced operational efficiencies, improved customer service, securing accurate time records, and improved safety.

The counterbalanced risks? For starters, there’s the creep factor. How much will your employees mind Big Brother tracking all of their movements, and how will it impact morale?

Additionally, there are some legal risks.

Privacy: Provided employees consent to wearing these tracking devices as a condition of their employment, there should not be any privacy concerns. Indeed, in Quon v. Arch Wireless, the Supreme Court suggested that employees may lack any reasonable expectation of privacy in employer-provided technological equipment. Yet, the law is not quite settled on these privacy implications. Moreover, state privacy laws may vary. Additionally, the more data you record, the more risk you take that such information will be compromised or targeted by hackers.

Medical Information: Tracking employee movements could reveal a host of medical information. Who visits the bathroom more could be pregnant or suffering from a bladder infection? Who smokes? Who visits the vending machine and eats unhealthy snacks? This information could be used, for example, by employers to discriminate, or by insurers to charge higher premiums.

So, what are some suggestions if you wish to use devices to track employee movements in your workplace?

1. Document your reason(s) for tracking to support your legitimate business interest.

2. Disseminate (and explain) an Employee Tracking Policy, which should describe the need for the program, the nature of the tracking device, the data you will be tracking, how you will use (and, more importantly, not use) the data, and how you plan to keep it secure.

3. Obtain employee consent before deploying the device.

4. Limit the data to those that need to know, to minimize the sphere of individuals who could learn or infer medical information.

5. Don’t sell or otherwise disclose the information to insurers or other third parties.

6. Ensure that your data security is updated.

And finally, call your employment lawyer. Cutting edge practices are always risky and should be vetted by counsel.

Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.

Posted on

A Lesson on How to Terminate an Employee, Courtesy of David Brent

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

In my opinion, the original British version of The Office is far superior to its American counterpart, in large part because David Brent is so much more cringe-worthy than Michael Scott.

I thought I’d start the week off with a little humor (and a little lesson), care of David Brent, via one of the most awkward employee terminations ever.

This meeting violates one of the cardinal rules of terminating an employee:

Don’t debate the decision or supply a lengthy explanation.

If you have previously communicated to an employee documented performance issues, there is no point in rehashing them at termination. It accomplishes nothing and is cruel. Instead, simply remind the employee that you’ve previously discussed the issues, which have not approved.

In a reduction in force, the conversation is even more simple: “The company has eliminated your position, and is prepared to offer the following severance package.”

The more detail you provide, the more penned in you will be in later litigation. Your goal is to be honest with the employee, yet, in the event of litigation, provide your counsel with the most flexibility to support the termination.
And, for God’s sake, don’t debate the disabilities or other protected statuses of those who have not lost their jobs.
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
Posted on

Giving Employees Permission to be Well

As you likely remember, last fall there was a huge data breach at Equifax, the nation’s largest credit bureau.

We were heads down, working though our busiest time of year: open enrollment. Amid all the chaos and advice about what people should do to protect themselves, my business partner, Isabelle, was concerned about our team taking steps to protect their credit. She knew that with our busy work schedule, they probably wouldn’t.

So in January, after things had settled down, Isabelle reminded our team about the breach. She encouraged them to take time during the workday to review their credit score and set up credit freezes and monitoring. She explained the urgency of the situation and how to access each of the three major credit bureaus. And most notably, she specifically asked our team members to carve out time to do this during the workday and block it on their calendars. That time “on the clock” was key.

It’s a simple but often-overlooked aspect of encouraging well-being. Focusing on our own well-being — whether it’s going for a walk outside, signing up for a class on stress management or understanding our credit — takes time. And that time has to be juggled along with everything else in life.

Encouraging employees to take care of themselves needs to come with permission to do so during the workday. Whether it’s taking steps to improve their physical health, their mental state or their financial life, finding the time to do what they know they should do is one of the biggest barriers to engagement. 

That’s why we loved a recent financial wellness campaign called #SaveABillion from Movement Mortgage, a South Carolina-based company with more than 4,000 employees. As part of its campaign to get its employees to save more, the company’s CEO assigned them a very specific task: take a financial wellness assessment and retirement checkup. He also gave them the time to do it by creating a 20-minute companywide “blackout” on a Friday. During the blackout, no one could access their email or other systems. This empowered employees to schedule the task on their calendars and eliminated a huge barrier to engagement: time.

Not every company can literally block out time for employees like Movement Mortgage did. But all employers can do more to encourage employees to balance their work and personal lives in ways that make sense and help them be productive.

Increasingly, benefits programs are asking employees to make thoughtful decisions about complicated topics — and to engage in programs throughout the year. As part of your strategy, think about how and when employees will take the time to use these programs. And help them prioritize the time they need to take action.

It helps tremendously to use a goal-setting technique from behavioral science called “implementation intention.” Simply explained, it involves writing down your intention to do something, including when and under what conditions.

You’re more likely to complete the task because by writing it down and specifying a time, you’ve made the act of getting started that much easier. And as we all know, the first step is often the hardest to take.

We frequently use this method in campaigns — asking people to write down when they will do something, sending calendar invites or including a simple “commitment” form on a print piece — because it increases engagement.

Still, if you want to succeed at creating a culture of well-being, you also have to continuously look at removing obstacles.

In focus groups for our clients, we have heard employees call out the hypocrisy of asking people to take care of their health while, at the same time, asking them to meet business needs such as working 70 hours a week to meet a target.

We hear about bad managers who want employees to stay at their desks all day, despite company encouragement to take walks during lunch or use the on-site fitness center. Employees are quick to notice the inconsistencies between messages that come from the company and what their manager is requiring of them day in and day out. This is one of the reasons why senior leadership support, while valuable, doesn’t automatically change everyone’s behavior.

As you review your well-being and benefits initiatives, ask your team: Have you been realistic about how much time employees need to engage? And have you simply and truly given employees permission to take advantage of all of these programs at work?

Posted on

Save Money on OT Payments With the Fluctuating Workweek

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

In my never-ending quest to show you how many different ways you can screw up paying your employees under the federal wage and hour laws, today I am going to talk about how to properly calculate overtime payments for salaried, nonexempt employees.

An employer has two choices in how to pay overtime to a salaried nonexempt employee: by a fixed work week or by a fluctuating work week.

For reasons that will be illustrated below, the latter is a much more cost-effective option, and is your best way to save money overtime payments for this class of employees.

Spoiler alert: there is some math involved.

By a Fixed Work Week

    1. If you pay an employee a weekly salary, you must calculate the regular hourly rate of pay by dividing the weekly salary by the number of hours worked in that particular week.
    2. For example, if you hire an employee at a weekly salary of $525, which is intended to compensate for a regular 40 hour work week, the employee’s regular rate of pay will be $13.13 per hour ($525 /40). If that employee works overtime (let’s say, 45 hours that week), you will have to pay that employee $19.70 for each overtime hour worked ($13.13 *1.5). Thus, in a 45-hour week, the employee would be paid $623.50—the $525 salary + $98.50 in overtime ($19.70 * 5).

On a Fluctuating Work Week

    1. Oftentimes the number of hours a salaried employee works will vary from week to week, depending on the given needs of the job. One might work 40 hours one week, 45 the next, and 38 the week after that. An employer and employee can agree that a salary will cover all straight time pay for all hours worked in a given week, no matter how few or how many. Payment for overtime hours at one-half such rate satisfies the overtime pay requirement because such hours have already been compensated at the straight time regular rate as part of the salary. And, that overtime premium will vary from week to week depending on the number of hours worked.
    2. To use this method of overtime calculation, there has to be a clear mutual understanding of between the employer and employee that the fixed salary is compensation (apart from overtime premiums) for the hours worked each work week, whatever the number.
    3. This “fluctuating workweek” method of overtime payment may not be used unless the salary is sufficiently large to ensure that there will be no work weeks in which the employee’s average hourly earnings from the salary fall below the minimum wage.
    4. For example, taking our $525 salary from above, in a 45-hour work week, the hourly rate would be $11.66 ($525 / 45). But, for the extra 5 hours the employee would only be owed an additional $29.15 ($5.83 * 5), for a total weekly compensation of $554.15. The fluctuating work week saves this employer $69.35 in wages for the week. Thus, it is easy to see why the fluctuating work week is the preferred method for calculating overtime premiums for salaried non-exempt employees.
Just this week, in Hall v. Plastipak Holdings, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the validity of the fluctuating work week as an overtime payment method for salaried non-exempt employees, provided that:
  1. the employee clearly understands that the straight-salary covers whatever hours he or she is required to work;
  2. the straight-salary is paid irrespective of whether the workweek is one in which a full schedule of hours are worked;
  3. the straight-salary is sufficient to provide a pay-rate not less than the applicable minimum wage rate for every hour worked in those workweeks in which the number of hours worked is greatest; and
  4. in addition to straight-salary, the employee is paid for all hours in excess of the statutory maximum at a rate not less than one-half the regular rate of pay.
What do we take away from this wage-and-hour lesson? If you have non-exempt salaried employees whose work hours fluctuate from week-to-week, give strong consideration to implementing a fluctuating work week, via a written agreement that explains, in plain English, the arrangement.
Otherwise, you might end up paying three times more overtime than you otherwise could legally pay.
And who wants that?
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
Posted on

Joint Employment Rules Takes Another Turn With NLRB Decision

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer
Small-business owners, pay attention. This update on the issue of joint employment will be one of the most important things you will read this year.
Joint employment has been on a bit of a roller coaster ride at the NLRB over the past few months.
I’m going to sort it all out for you and try to explain where we might be headed next.
What is Joint Employment?
Joint employment is the sharing of control and supervision of an employee’s activity among two or more business entities, such that each is liable for the legal wrongs of the other to its employees (e.g., discrimination, wage and hour, OSHA, unfair labor practices … ). It’s what would hold a franchisor liable for the wrongful acts of its franchisee, a contractor for its sub and a business for its staffing company.
What are the Historic Joint Employment Rules?
For decades prior to Aug. 27, 2015, it was uniformly established that for one entity to be a joint employer with another, it had to exercise direct and actual control over the terms and conditions of the other entities employees. Do they supervise? Are they subject to the same work rules? Can they hire, fire, and discipline? Who pays and how? Who provides benefits? Who assigns schedules and otherwise directs work? If one employer maintains control over these issues, then the other would not have been a joint employer.
Given this strict test, entities such as franchisors and general contractors felt reasonably comfortable that they were not liable for the acts of its franchisees and subs relative to their employees.
What Changed on Aug. 27, 2015? 
Browning-Ferris Industries of Calif. 
In Browning-Ferris, the NLRB ignored and tossed out 40 years of precedent and expanded the definition of “joint employer” not only to include those that exercise direct and actual control, but also those that exercise indirect control or reserve the potential to exercise control. OSHA and the DOL soon followed suit and announced similar standards under their respective statutes. Small business owners as well as other employers, (justifiably) panicked. If a franchisor, for example, is liable for the legal wrongs of its franchisees towards employees that the franchisor does not hire, fire, discipline, pay, or otherwise direct, why franchise at all? Why not just run the businesses, control the liabilities, and cut out the middle man?
Dec. 14, 2017 — Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss
Hy-Brand Industrial Contractors
In Hy-Brand, the NLRB expressly overruled Browning-Ferris and restored direct and actual control as the lone test for joint employment:

[W]e overrule Browning-Ferris and restore the joint-employer standard that existed prior to the Browning-Ferris decision. Thus, a finding of joint-employer status requires proof that the alleged joint-employer entities have actually exercised joint control over essential employment terms (rather than merely having “reserved” the right to exercise control), the control must be “direct and immediate” (rather than indirect), and joint-employer status will not result from control that is “limited and routine.”

Bravo. Employers rejoiced.

The Celebration was Short-Lived

On Feb. 26, 2018, the NLRB vacated Hy-Brand, restoring Browning-Ferris (and its potential/indirect control tests) as the law of the NLRA on joint employment.

Why?

Because current NLRB board member Bill Emanuel, one of the three votes in Hy-Brand in favor of overturning Browning-Ferris, was a partner at the law firm that represented Browning-Ferris in 2015. This decision followed the report of NLRB inspector general David Berry earlier this month, which concluded that Emanuel should have recused himself from Hy-Brand, not because Emanuel engaged in anything improper, but because the appearance of a potential conflict should have caused his recusal.

What Now?

For now, Browning-Ferris remains the law on joint employment under the NLRA. And, it likely will continue as such, as without Emanuel, the highly politicized NLRB will almost certainly split 2-2 on any rehearing of Hy-Brand.

Browing-Ferris had been pending on appeal and awaiting decision. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, however, dismissed the appeal and remanded the case back the NLRB for disposition consistent with Hy-Brand. You should now expect more litigation over that issue in the D.C. Circuit.

As you can see, this issue is a muddled mess.

One easy solution is the federal (and bipartisan) Save Local Business Act. It expressly defines a “joint employer” under the NLRA and FLSA as one that —

directly, actually, and immediately, and not in a limited and routine manner, exercises significant control over essential terms and conditions of employment, such as hiring employees, discharging employees, determining individual employee rates of pay and benefits, day-to-day supervision of employees, assigning individual work schedules, positions, and tasks, or administering employee discipline.

It passed the House last November, and now awaits action in the Senate.

This past summer, I asked if joint employment was the issue to unite our divided country. For the sake of America’s small-business owner, I certainly hope it does. If you are concerned about this issue (and you should be), call or email your Senator and Congressperson to urge their support of the Save Local Business Act.

Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.

Posted on

Court Holds That Title VII Expressly Bars Sexual Orientation Discrimination as Sex Discrimination

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

The 2nd Circuit federal court of appeals (which covers New York, Connecticut, and Vermont) on Feb. 26 held that “Title VII prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation as discrimination ‘because of … sex.’ ”

With its decision in Zarda v. Altitude Express [pdf], the 2nd Circuit joins the 7th Circuit and the EEOC in interpreting Title VII as such.

My thoughts on this issue are well documented throughout the archives.

Yet this issue is far from settled.

There is no federal mandate on the issue, as Congress has refused to act to amend Title VII to clarify the issue, and other federal circuits disagree with the 2nd and 7th. Also, there are still 29 states that do not expressly prohibit LGBT discrimination under their civil rights laws.

Ohio aims to take itself off that dubious list. H.B. 160 (the Ohio Fairness Act) would extend Ohio’s workplace discrimination protections to sexual orientation and gender identity or expression. It’s also supported by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce:

In advancing Ohio’s business climate, the Ohio Camber recognizes the value and power of diversity. We believe that employees deserve robust protections from discrimination and that discrimination of any type has no place in the workplace. Everyone deserves the right to do their job without fear of being discriminated against and every person, regardless of their race, color, religion, sex, military status, national origin, disability, age, ancestry, sexual orientation, or gender identity, deserves equal opportunity and equal protection under the law.

As I applaud the 2nd Circuit for its decision in Zarda, I hope I will soon be able to similarly applaud Ohio’s legislature and Gov. John Kasich after H.B. 160 become law. All the while, I wait for the day when we finally have national uniformity on this important civil rights issue.

Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.

Posted on

‘Exhibit A’ for What’s Wrong With the Fair Labor Standards Act

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

Consider this scenario. Employer and Employee have a good-faith dispute over whether Employer owes Employee for unpaid overtime for time Employee spent traveling.

Employee sues.

Court awards Employee $608.08 for unpaid overtime (doubled to $1,216.16 as liquidated damages).

So far, this all seems kosher.

Then, however, Employee files his petition for attorneys’ fees.

$141,236.50 in attorneys’ fees.

Ultimately, the court reduced the fee award to a still-shocking $41,333.70.

Why? Because there is no rule that an award of attorneys’ fees be proportional to an employee’s recovery.
As noted by the court:

Defendants correctly observe that fees should not overwhelm a case. In FLSA cases, as noted, the amount of damages is often less than the fees awarded. Indeed, in recent years this court has seen a spate of FLSA cases brought by low-wage workers seeking paltry sums. The proper measure is not proportionality.

Quite frankly, this is BS.

Wage-and-hour cases under the FLSA are often high-stakes games of extortion-by-litigation.

Plaintiffs rely on the disproportionately high attorneys’ fees to extort settlements of these cases. For small businesses these cases, and the risk of paying their lawyer plus the plaintiff’s lawyer, causes almost all of these cases to settle, no matter the legal merit (or lack thereof) of the wage claim.

No small business can afford the six to seven figures these cases end up costing.

I can see the counterargument coming a mile away. “But Jon, we need to force employers to pay the employee’s attorneys’ fees as a deterrent to force compliance with the FLSA and to stop them from stealing wages.”

This argument, however, rests on two huge assumptions with which I strongly disagree:

  1. That employers are stealing wages from their employees.
  2. That employers are intentionally violating the FLSA.
As I’ve written before, the idea of “wage theft” is a fraud. Employers aren’t intentionally stealing wages from their employees. They are struggling to comply with an 80-year-old law that is too complex for any employer to fully understand.
If you discredit the notion that employers are intentionally violating the FLSA by stealing wages from their employees, then the deterrence argument for awarding attorneys’ fees in FLSA cases goes out the window.
The FLSA is broken and needs to be fixed. A great place to start, instead of huge fee awards in wage-and-hour cases, is reinvesting that money back into education so that employers can begin to better understand their compliance obligations.
Otherwise, all we are accomplishing is lining attorneys’ pockets, which serves no one’s interest but theirs.
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
Posted on

Time of Possession and the Interview

Based on what I do for a living in the world of HR, a portion of my network is always approaching me for advice when it comes to job search and career issues. I’m sure many of you have the same experience.

When it comes to interviewing strategies, my advice to amaze hiring managers is simple to understand by my friends looking for their next gig:

“If the hiring manager wants to talk the whole time during your interview, let him. After the interview is done, he’ll think it went great.”

The advice for your hiring managers/executives, of course, is the direct opposite. The best interviewers across your management teams understand that effective selection on the recruiting trail is more about listening than speaking.

But the ol’ “listen more than you talk” platitude oversimplifies the game of interviewing. Simply letting the candidate talk more doesn’t make you an effective interviewer. The real value is found in the following concept:

Time of Possession 

In football, “time of possession” tracks the amount of time one team has the ball. The thought process behind it is that if one team can keep the ball longer than the other team, they’re apt to score more points and have a fresher defense, which contributes to winning.

The inverse is true in interviewing. Success doesn’t happen by dominating the conversation, it comes by finding the sweet spot that allows you to facilitate as an interviewer in a way that provides you with maximum information.

I’ve seen great interviewers and I’ve seen the huddled masses who repeatedly fail to get the information they need. Here’s how they break down related to time of possession (how much they talk versus allowing the candidate to talk) and the nicknames I’ve tagged them with:

  1. The Friendster (hiring manager who talks 40 to 50 percent of the time): A lot of your managers would be satisfied with this time of possession. “It was a peer-based conversation,” he said. “I felt like we had some great dialogue,” she said. They’re wrong. They didn’t make the candidate talk long enough to gain meaningful information, and as a result, their miss rate on hires is going to be too high.
  2. The Cyborg (hiring manager who talks 5 to 10 percent of the time): If talking too much is wrong, then a manager who only controls less than 10 percent of the interview airtime must be good, right? Nope. The Cyborg represents the manager who gets the official question in, then displays a general tone-deafness to interrupt rambling candidates or ask smart follow-up questions. In other words, you can count on the Cyborg to ask the question you put in front of them, but don’t expect anything else. They’re out of their element, and they won’t get any more information than interviewers who talk all the time.
  3. The Narcissist (hiring manager who talks 65 percent or more of the time): Speaking of talking all the time, meet the Narcissist. The Narcissist loves himself. He loves his ideas. He’s got a worldview that is not only unique, it’s profound. He’ll talk all interview long and as I mentioned previously, he likes people who let him talk. If you’re interviewing with him, don’t fight it. Let him talk and you’ll be in good shape to get the job. Of course, you might think carefully about whether you want to work for him.
  4. The Investigative Reporter (hiring manager who talks 20 percent of the time): The sweet spot of interviewing, the Reporter understands the balance that is required between talking and listening. She’s prepped with interview questions, but understands that’s simply a starting point and quickly spends most her time of possession saying things like, “tell me more about that” and “why did you decide to do that?” She’s an evolved interviewer, understanding the need to be agile, probing and interrupting as necessary to get maximum information.

Do you see your managers of people in these profiles? Sure you do. Interviewing skills tend to follow behavioral trends that impact managers in other areas as well.

Your most effective managers are generally your best interviewers. Coaching skills and interviewing skills are highly related, placing a premium on relationship building, making others comfortable to get the best possible outcome and demanding more without coming across as a jerk.

Divide the managers you support into these interviewing profiles, then look at turnover trends across multiple years. You’ll find the managers with the most effective time of possession strategies don’t miss in hiring nearly as much as their peers.

To be a great interviewer, talk less. But ask for more.

Kris Dunn, the chief human resources officer at Kinetix, is a Workforce contributing editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.

Posted on

Effects of Dementia Inside and Outside of the Workplace

Andie Burjek, Working Well blog

Kaiser Health News held a Facebook Live conversation Feb. 13 about living well with dementia, which is “one of the most challenging chronic conditions for individuals and their caregivers,” according to the health news site.

Although this conversation was more about the caregiver and individual as citizens, not as employees, I still found some valuable insights for employers. If none of your employees have this chronic condition, they could be caregivers for someone who does.

Since the aging workforce is a ubiquitous workplace topic nowadays (and, hey, so is chronic disease management and sandwich generation caregivers), it’s worth understanding that conditions like dementia, in most cases, happen after the age of 65.

Some background: the people in the Facebook discussion provided a wide range of points of view. Mary L. Radnofsky is a former professor who was diagnosed 12 years ago with dementia and now acts as an advocate for people with dementia. Yvotte Latty is a journalist and a professor currently caregiving for her mother who has dementia. Nancy A. Hodgson, Helen Kales and Katie Maslow are experts on dementia at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan and Gerontological Society of America, respectively. That combination of personal experience and medical expertise made for a fascinating conversation.

[Also read: Early-Onset Alzheimer’s: Too Soon to Forget]

One point the panelists stressed is that Alzheimer’s, the most common type of dementia, is more than just memory loss. It also means hallucinations, depression, anger and verbal abuse, according to Latty. It’s not like how pop culture often represents it. Movies and books like “The Notebook” or “Still Alice” don’t give people a realistic picture of what dementia looks like. It’s not a quiet, elegant, gradual loss of memory. “There’s nothing quiet about it. It’s been raging,” said Latty.

Radnofsky said that when a person has dementia and is acting in a way that society considers odd, it’s not because that person is trying to misbehave or be difficult. For example, if you tell them something and they throw something in response. “It’s because we’re trying to communicate,” she said, adding that if you’ve gone a decade of being misdiagnosed or misunderstood, sometimes your frustration levels might be high. “If you treat [it] like communication and not a behavior, things will go better in the future,” she said.

Finally, another point I found valuable is a discussion about caregiver challenges, especially isolation. In one example, the panelists said that in the case where a parent with dementia has multiple children, the child closest to the parent can end up being isolated even from their own siblings. Things like a family counseling program is one way to help siblings solve friction among one another.

Communication can also be a challenge for the caregiver, not just the patient. One panelist, both a caregiver and a doctor, talked about when patients lose the ability to communicate, they also lose the ability to advocate for themselves. The caregiver then becomes the main advocate for that patient, but even that can be tricky. The woman found that doctors did not seem to listen to her concerns until they found out she was also a doctor, and what helped her was that she knew the right things to get a response from health care professionals. There needs to be a way for caregivers to know the right language and terminology to use with the patient’s health-care team.

My takeaways for employers: If your employee is a caregiver, he or she could be dealing with social isolation, estrangement from family members, communication barriers/confusion and not knowing what terminology to use with the patient’s physician, among others.

If your employee has dementia or is beginning to show signs of dementia, remember a few things. It’s not just a memory disorder and there could be other symptoms. What you might perceive as poor behavior might be communication. And many of these people are still capable of performing many aspects of their jobs.

Hopefully this helps clarify some misconceptions of dementia. I know it helped me. Since I am not expert on the topic, here are additional resources on more practical steps employers could take moving forward if someone in their organization is impacted by dementia:

Andie Burjek is an associate editor at Workforce. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.