Category: Commentary & Opinion

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Will You Be Leading an HR Function in 2024?

I get it. You’re an HR manager/director and you’re wondering if you’re on track to take the big chair in HR in the next decade. As luck would have it, I’m equipped with a crystal ball and the right amount of confidence/swagger to predict your future. Lucky you!

The world is changing, and the people paying the bills want different things from HR. Here are five things to look at to examine and determine if you’ve got what it takes to lead an HR team and be a viable partner to the business leaders who will hire you in 2024. Remember, I’m talking about leading HR, not being a part of an HR team. I’m also providing a road map of what the 2024 HR leader looks like behaviorally — I’m assuming you’ve got the technical skills to do the job.

Let’s go to the list:

  1. You’ve got a world-class processor upstairs. This means you’re better than most at taking large amounts of information and making quick, accurate decisions. It’s OK to take your time in other roles, but as a future HR leader, you’ll be expected to be as quick as the strategy person with your opinions and proposed solutions.
  2. You’re as assertive as the salespeople in your organization. Great HR people have always needed to be assertive, but the need for comfort with confrontation continues to escalate. Chaos is everywhere, and if you’re going to operate efficiently, you’re going to need mix it up on a daily basis. You can be professional and still challenge others who are trying to play you, your department or your company.
  3. A comfort with no rules at all. HR people have always been good at creating structure, but HR leaders are increasingly being asked to value structure less as we get deeper into this century. You’ll find that as you create your HR team, it’s easy to find HR people to help you execute structured solutions. It’s harder to find HR people that don’t want anything to do with the operations manual and instead want to develop the best solution for the situation at hand. Things change too rapidly these days for the old status quo to stick. High challenge, low rules and slightly ADHD HR leaders are on the rise.
  4. You are organized enough at the leadership level to execute. Many of you would guess that low rules in turn means low details. The reality is that detail orientation exists outside of rules orientation, and low rules with mid to high level detail orientation is a very hot profile across executives of all types — including HR. Low rules/high details means you have the ability to dream AND to execute.
  5. You’ve got skin like a fat, old rhino. If you match this need for low sensitivity, when you receive bad news or the rare glimmer of negative feedback, you’re down for about 30 seconds, then you recover and move on. Companies are increasingly looking for HR leaders who aren’t afraid to fail. Failure is a necessary byproduct of attempting to add value. Safe sucks increasingly these days.

Want an easy way to score it?  Say “yes” or “no” to whether you really deliver each of these five features, add up the yes votes and use this key to score where you are:

+5 — Welcome to the club. If you are who you say you are, I’d like your résumé for my clients, even if you’re 28 years old.

+4 — Yes, please. You missed on one thing: You’re still a player.

+3 — I’m going to call you an HR citizen. Good enough to get what the business line owners are talking about. Missing a DNA strand or two, but serviceable. You’re probably going to be working for someone younger than you by 2024, but that’s OK because you’ll add value and they’ll still depend on you.

+2 — The world needs ditch-diggers, too. There’s still something for you to do in most HR departments with any size, but it’s not leading the function. You’re good enough, you’re smart enough and gosh darn it, people like you. But you’re going to cap out at the manager level.

+1 — Darwin called. He said the kids these days are growing the HR equivalent of opposable thumbs, and I don’t see any thumb buds on the sides of your hand stumps. Too bad.

That’s my list of the behavioral traits I see in play as we move toward the next decade. Will there still be +1 and +2 HR leaders? Yes.

Will the replacements for those leaders look like their predecessors? My intel says no way.

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

 

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Work Stress and the ADA

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about stress, and the anxiety it can cause.

Stress-induced anxiety can cripple someone. According to the Anxiety and Depressions Association of America:

  • 72 percent of people who have daily stress and anxiety say it interferes with their lives at least moderately.
  • 40 percent experience persistent stress or excessive anxiety in their daily lives.
  • 30 percent with daily stress have taken prescription medication to manage stress, nervousness, emotional problems, or lack of sleep.
  • 28 percent have had an anxiety or panic attack.

What happens, however, when the thing inducing the stress and anxiety is the workplace itself? What are an employer’s obligations under the ADA to accommodate this mental health disorder?

Let’s start with the basics.

Under the ADA, the term “disability” means, among other definitions, that an individual has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more “major life activities.” One such major life activity that an impairment can substantially limit is one’s ability to work. In this context, however, work means something more than one’s current position or workplace. It means a significant restriction in one’s ability to perform either a class of jobs or a broad range of jobs in various classes as compared to the average person having comparable training, skills, and abilities. It does not mean a substantial limitation in performing the unique aspects of a single specific job.

It is for this reason that almost all courts that have examined this issue have concluded that anxiety or other mental health issues caused by workplace stress are not ADA-covered disabilities that an employer must accommodate.

The most recent appellate pronouncement on this issue is from the 7th Circuit, in Carothers v. County of Cook, in which the plaintiff claimed that anxiety relating to an altercation with an inmate prevented her from working her job in the county juvenile detention center. The court disagreed that her job-related anxiety required the employer to make any accommodation:

Here, Carothers has presented evidence that her anxiety disorder prevents her from interacting with juvenile detainees at the JDC. However, interacting with juvenile detainees is a unique aspect of the single specific job of working as a hearing officer at a juvenile correctional center. There is no evidence that Carothers’ anxiety disorder would prevent her from engaging in any other line of occupation. Since the inability to interact with juvenile detainees does not restrict Carothers from performing either a class of jobs or a broad range of jobs, she has not established that she is disabled within the meaning of the ADA.

That said, suppose that either (a) the employee is restricted from performing a class or broad range of jobs; or (b) you want to offer accommodation to the employee even if not legally required to do so. What are you accommodation options? Let me suggest a few.

  • Referral to an employee assistance program to assist with stress management
  • Transfer to a less stressful position (if the employee is qualified and the position is available)
  • Modified work schedule (telecommuting if possible, revised work hours, more frequent breaks)
These are difficult issues without easy solutions, and I feel badly for any employee living with such debilitating stress and anxiety. That said, every employee isn’t always suited for every job and every workplace, and sympathy does not equate to legal obligation to 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.
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How Do We Start to STOP Sexual Harassment?

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Louis CK, Mark Halperin, Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes … the list of men accused of sexual harassment and other sexual misconduct seems to know no end.

I very much hope that we have reached the beginning of a cultural watershed against sexual harassment in America. Which is undoubtedly a good thing, especially when you consider a recent Washington Post survey reporting that nearly one-third of women have received an unwanted sexual advance from a co-worker.

All of which begs the question … if sexual harassment is so prevalent in the American workplace, how do we start having a conversation about how to stop it?
Thankfully, the EEOC has some answers. Or at least the beginning of some answers.

Last year, the EEOC spearheaded a Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace, headed by Commissioners Chai Feldblum and (current acting EEOC Chair) Victoria Lipnic. That task force published an 88-page report [pdf] on harassment in the workplace. That report, in turn, generated Proposed Enforcement Guidance on Unlawful Workplace Harassment [pdf], the final publication of which is imminent, and could not be more timely.

The comprehensive draft report covers all aspects of workplace harassment law, but it’s its last seven pages—entitled, Promising Practices—that are of particular interest in light of the recent spate of harassment allegations.

It offers five core principles that have generally proven effective in preventing and addressing workplace harassment:

  • Committed and engaged leadership
  • Consistent and demonstrated accountability
  • Strong and comprehensive harassment policies
  • Trusted and accessible complaint procedures
  • Regular, interactive training tailored to the audience and the organization
What do these principles look like in the real world? Rather than offer my own thoughts, I’d like to quote those of Commissioner Feldblum, from her prepared written testimony presented during the EEOC’s June 2016 Public Meeting on Proposed Reboot of Harassment Prevention Efforts, in discussing two key components of any successful harassment prevention protocol:

First: actions to prevent harassment must start from the top. Leaders of an organization—private or non-profit, large or small—must communicate a sense of urgency about preventing workplace harassment. They must communicate this through words, policies and procedures that create a culture in which harassment is not tolerated.
But that is not enough. For workers to believe their leaders are authentic—that they mean what they say—there must be accountability.

This is what accountability looks like: If an individual has engaged in harassment, that individual is sanctioned in a manner proportionate to the harassing conduct. For managers and front-line supervisors, it means that such individuals are measured by how well they deal with reports or observations of harassment, including receiving accolades when they deal with such situations well. …

I will conclude with … our most audacious, recommendation: that EEOC explore the launch of an “It’s On Us” campaign for the workplace. …

It is a campaign that encourages every person to become an engaged bystander…. To succeed, such a campaign would need the active engagement of many societal actors—including, at a minimum, employers, employees, unions, advocacy groups and community leaders. What we propose is that EEOC be a catalyst in helping to launch such a campaign.

And it’s the last point that is perhaps the most important. It is on all of us, men and women, to stop workplace harassment. When you see something, say something. It’s no longer OK to ignore harassment, to say, “Oh, that’s just good ol’ Ted. Can’t keep his hands to himself.”

“Good ol’ Ted” is a sexual predator, who has no place working at your business if he can’t keep his hands, or his inappropriate comments, to himself. When all employees of both genders understand (and maybe not until all employees understand) each’s role as key cog in creating a workplace culture where it’s not only acceptable to complain, but it’s expected that one will complain, we can begin to create the workplace where unlawful harassment is a relic of history.

To put it differently, if you’re not stopping harassment, you’re complicit in it, and that must stop.

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.

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Benefits Round-Up: Domestic Abuse, Extra Vacation and Ingrained Health Attitudes

Andie Burjek, Working Well blog

This month has been a rough month in the business news space, with sexual harassment in the spotlight and open enrollment stressing people out in both the individual and employer markets. I’m working on a separate post about open enrollment (feel free to contact me via email, twitter or the comment section below if you have valuable thoughts about open enrollment). Meanwhile, there are a lot of other things going on besides these big stories that are worth mentioning.

Domestic Abuse Victims and Paid Safe Time: A recent Time article gave me info on something I did not realize fell under the umbrella of paid time off: paid safe time for victims of domestic abuse, sexual assault, stalking and human trafficking survivors.

A few main ideas from this piece:

  1. Certain states are stepping up to guarantee paid time off to victims so that they can meet with law enforcement, move away from an abuser, and arrange for other potentially life-saving services without having to worry about the state of their employment or loss of income.
  2. Domestic violence can have a profound impact on victims, their job and their economic struggles. This is illustrated by the anecdotal lead in this article, which takes us through one woman’s four-year-long struggle with this problem. Also, there are statistics that back this up. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, victims of severe intimate partner violence lose about 8 million days of paid work each year.
  3. More than half of workplaces don’t guarantee paid safe time. But this is partly because of the isolating nature of domestic abuse. Companies might not be aware of how these situations can impact employees unless they witness it directly.

Meanwhile, advocates see the national conversation surrounding Harvey Weinstein and similar allegations and think this could be a catalyst for national change, according to the article.

Vacations for Non-Smokers: A Japanese company is giving nonsmokers six more vacation days than smokers this year, according to a recent article. Apparently the motivation behind this policy is that nonsmokers complained they spent more hours working than smokers, so the company decided to give them more vacation time. The article reported that it was not motivated by the health/negative side effects of smoking, although when you use phrases like “standing around sucking on their death sticks” and “the company hopes [this policy] will encourage smokers to quit their filthy habit,” it’s hard not to believe that was part of the motivation.

This story is interesting to me because I have a complicated relationship with wellness incentives, especially when it comes to lifestyle choices. Oftentimes, the example people give for unhealthy lifestyle choices is smoking. It’s the easy, straightforward example because no one could possibly argue that they’re not aware of the negative side effects of smoking nowadays.

A few thoughts come to mind for “lifestyle” based decision like this one. First, what constitutes a smoker? Does that include somebody who only smokes socially every so often? Second, the domino effect argument comes to mind. If this move is being attributed to time loss and not something related to health or incentives, are there actions other than smoking that could warrant the same response? Consider social media use, time spent on bathroom breaks, etc. Third, if this is based on the time argument, wouldn’t it matter how much break time each employee is entitled to? If smokers are using legitimate break time, and smoking is how they choose to spend it, then giving them less vacation days than other people would be unjust.

Maybe it doesn’t make sense to think this much about the policies of a Japanese company, but I don’t think it’s too off-kilter to see potential for similar policies in the United States. Smokers and non-smokers are treated differently in the workplace. Will U.S. employers go beyond shifting costs of health care premiums and begin shifting earned vacation days? Is that ethical? Feel free to share your thoughts below.

Ingrained Health Attitudes: Don’t underestimate how much work it might take to incentivize an employee toward a certain health behavior. For example, while out at an Indian restaurant with some friends the other week, they began talking about getting sick and going to the doctor. One girl mentioned that her parents ingrained in her from a young age that she should get a physical every year, no matter how healthy she feels. Now, every August “schedule physical” is on her to-do list. Another friend hasn’t been to the doctor since before college because her parents taught her the exact opposite. They were generally healthy, so why go to the doctor? This friend always manages to forget to make that appointment because it’s never been an item of importance on her radar.

Certain attitudes toward health care are more ingrained than you think. It takes more than a push from your employer to motivate someone to reverse a habit or attitude they’ve had their whole lives.

“Using Incentives to Drive Employee Wellbeing,” a recent episode of Health Advocate’s “Ask the Expert” series, explored this topic. “Behavior change happens over a long period of time. If you really are going to expect employees to make changes, it needs to be reasonable for them to be able to make those changes,” said Iris Tarou, director of wellness program services with Health Advocate. She added that employers have to realize they may not see a change for three to five years.

Something else that’s important is giving employees choice in the type of program they pursue. “With longer programs and more choices, people feel like it’s something that’s more realistic. They’re beginning to see that they want to make changes and that they have the time,” said Tarou.

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

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Cravings Are Key to Long-term Wellness

Humans are very bad at making good decisions about things that matter in the long term. Whether it’s choosing to workout over watching TV, a cookie over a salad, saving money or a new car, there are so many ways we satisfy our desires today instead of doing what we know will set us up for success tomorrow. 

It’s not that we don’t know what’s good for us. It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that if we keep eating those cookies every day, we’ll eventually gain weight. Rather, it’s that we value what feels good in the moment more than what we know is right for us in the long term. This phenomenon is widely studied by behavioral economists and is called “hyperbolic discounting.” HR leaders and benefits pros see this in action — and are frustrated by it — every day.

Much of benefits design and communication is about overcoming this incredibly ingrained human trait. We know employees can — and should — just do simple things today that would pay off big time down the road. But they don’t. Understanding why they don’t and how to counter this behavior can help you create more effective benefits programs and better outcomes for your organization.

One of our favorite experts on the topic, Nir Eyal, published a recent guest post on his blog “Nir And Far” by Lakshmi Mani on this topic. Titled “Why You Make Terrible Life Choices,” it explained hyperbolic discounting and the ways to overcome it. Mani summarizes the dilemma perfectly:

“A caveman did not have to contend with the same complex choices we do today. Cavewoman Lakshmi never had to choose between eating a pig today versus investing it in a pig 401(k) that would yield a 4x return in the future. Under harsher living conditions, we didn’t know if we would survive till the end of the day so our species evolved to choose the immediate option that most increased our chance of passing down our genes. Our brains are wired to choose immediate sure-things rather than the potential of a far-off future reward.”

So, there you have it — getting people to save more in their 401(k) requires overcoming the cognitive traits developed over thousands of years of evolution. No easy task!

But acknowledging this challenge gives us more perspective into how to help people make good decisions. We must remember that what we ask employees to do today for their health or financial security doesn’t come naturally to them. Simply not having to worry about surviving every day is a relatively recent development for humankind. Even more recent is the idea that you should stash away a lot of money over the span of 40 to 50 years so you can spend it in the future. Or that you should give up a meal today so that you’re healthier in the future.

Does this mean the situation is hopeless? Not at all. But we have to be realistic about what it takes to get people to trade short-term rewards for long-term potential.

One of the lessons we have learned time and again is that education isn’t enough. We can’t just tell people what they should do — they still won’t make the trade-offs between now and the future.

But we can make good decisions easier and bad decisions harder by taking a very deliberate and thoughtful approach to designing smart plans and systems. Whether that is by automatically enrolling employees in their 401(k) or putting the fruit on the counter and the candy in a drawer, there are countless ways to design programs and workplaces to support smart choices.

Another way we can do this is through the messages we choose to push out. Instead of focusing on what someone needs to do in the future, focus on the things they want to do now. Someone may need to lose weight to prevent the onset of diabetes a few years down the road, but that same person may want to lose weight now to look good in the designer clothes they’ve been coveting. That’s exactly where you should focus: what feels good now.

Most importantly, we can and should embrace HR’s role as the architect of these choices. We know what employees should do to protect their long-term health and financial security. Every choice about designing programs and communicating them should help nudge and influence the right behaviors.

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Parental Status Discrimination Is NOT a Thing. But Should It Be?

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

I received some great feedback on LinkedIn on last week’s post on New York’s new paid family leave law.

That law grants paid leave for the same general reasons one can take unpaid leave under the FMLA. What it does not do, though, is create a new protected class.

Indeed, discrimination based on one’s status as a parent is, in and of itself, NOT illegal.

Case in point? Spink-Krause v. Medtronic (E.D. Mich. 10/23/17).

In that case, the plaintiff, a medical sales rep and working mom, claimed sex discrimination. The alleged discrimination? Her boss made her job as working parent more difficult by reassigning all of the accounts close to her home to other reps, thus requiring her to travel further from her children.

The court dismissed her sex discrimination claim, because Title VII protects against sex discrimination, not parental discrimination:

If Plaintiff were to allowed to take her sex discrimination claim to trial by showing that she was treated differently than a female who does not have children, then the claim she would present to the jury would be a parental discrimination claim — not a gender discrimination claim.

This is not to say that “parental status” can never be a valid basis for a discrimination claim, but it must equate to sex discrimination. In other words, one can claim parental status discrimination, so long as one can show that the employer treated the parent differently because of the parent’s gender (i.e., the employer treats working moms worse than working dads, or vice versa).

So, here’s my Monday question for y’all. SHOULD parental status discrimination be a thing?

Leave me your comments below, or jump over to LinkedIn and let me know your thoughts there. I’ll curate the best thoughts in a future post.

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.

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Is New York the Beginning of the End for America’s Terrible Family Leave Laws?

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

It is freakin’ hard to be a working parent in America. It is even more difficult when both mom and dad work.

It’s not just child care, but also doctors’ appointments, kids’ sick days, summer vacations, winter and spring breaks, Labor Days, Memorial Days, and all the other “Days” (and don’t get me started on “teacher in-service days”).

Beginning Jan. 1, New York is implementing the start of solution for any employees that work in that state.

On that date, New York’s Paid Family Leave law — the nation’s most comprehensive to date — takes effect.

It provides job-protected and employee-funded paid leave (eight weeks in 2018, scaling up to 12 weeks by 2021) to care for a spouse, domestic partner, child, parent, parent-in-law, or grandparent with a serious health condition; to care for a newborn child during the first 12 months after the child’s birth or after the first 12 months after placement of the child for adoption or foster care; and for when a spouse, domestic partner, child, or parent is called to active military duty.

In other words, it takes the FMLA, adds “domestic partners,” and pays for the job-protected time away from work via insurance proceeds funded by mandatory employee payroll deductions.

If your business employs anyone in New York, this law, for obvious reasons, is a really big deal.

Yet, New York’s move on paid family leave should matter to all employers even if you never have and never will employ anyone in that state. This law matters to all because it moves the needle on this issue.

To compete in the job market against those employers that offer paid leave, other companies will have to begin voluntarily offering paid sick leave as a fringe benefit. Thus, over time, paid sick leave will spread to most, if not all, employers nationwide, whether by government fiat or voluntary adoption.

Those of you who’ve been reading for a while know that I’m not a fan of government mandates. Yet, it is embarrassing that America lags so far behind the rest of the world on employee paid time off.

This law illustrates what happens when the private sector delays making necessary changes. Because our nation’s businesses are so out of touch on the issue of paid leave, governments are compelled to step in.

Bottom line? It’s time to get ahead of the curve on the issue of paid sick leave. Given how far we have to catch up, it presents an amazing recruitment and retention opportunity for the American employer.

Or, look at it this way. Now is the time to board the paid sick leave train. It’s leaving the station one way or the other. The only question is who is going to be the conductor — employers or the government.

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.

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Apple Employee Gaffe Illustrates Risk Posed by YouTube Videos in Protection of Trade Secrets

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

An Apple employee lost his job this week after his daughter, Brooke Amelia Peterson, posted a YouTube video of her dad’s brand new, unreleased iPhone X.

ReCode has the details:

Peterson posted a five-minute video of a September day in Silicon Valley, which mostly included shopping for makeup and clothing. Harmless, and not unlike other YouTube videos posted by teenagers.

But then, in the video, she visits her father on Apple’s campus in Cupertino for what seems like dinner. As they munch on pizzas in the company’s cafeteria, Peterson’s dad hands her his iPhone X to test. That’s when YouTube viewers got about 45 seconds of footage of Peterson scrolling through various screens on the new design and showing off its camera.

After Peterson’s video went viral (including its republication on a variety of popular Apple blogs), Apple fired her dad. According to The Verge, Apple strictly prohibits filming on its campus, and the at-issue video not only revealed the unreleased iPhone X, but also information on other not-yet-released products.

The video itself may have seemed like an innocent hands-on, but it did include footage of an iPhone X with special employee-only QR codes. A notes app was also shown on the iPhone X in the video, which appeared to include code names of unreleased Apple products.

No company takes its trade secrets more seriously than Apple. This story is an excellent illustration of the steps that companies are compelled to take to keep their trade secrets, well, secret.

One of the key elements courts apply to determine whether a claimed trade secret is worthy of protection is the steps the purported holder takes to maintain its secrecy. While Apple cannot preemptively stop all video recording on its campus, it can terminate employees who violate that policy.

Courts have held that the public posting of a YouTube video of a purported ‘trade secret’ will strip said trade secret of its protection as such. For example, consider Madison Oslin, Inc. v. Interstate Resources, Inc., in which a Maryland federal court concluded that a company forfeited trade secret protections because of a publicly available YouTube video describing the purported ‘secrets.’

Apple really had no choice but to fire Peterson’s dad. An employee violated its policy, which resulted in secret information becoming very, very public.

Brooke Amelia Peterson learned a valuable, in her case, cruel lesson. When a company takes its trade secrets seriously, you best do so too, lest you cause a termination, or, worse, a lawsuit.

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.

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Not Everyone Is Open to the Open Office Space

Having recently completed my first video story “Modern Workspaces,” for Workforce, office space design has been constantly on my mind. So, it was valuable to come across a Twitter chat this month on trends in office design and see what other people had to say.  Although open office spaces gets a lot of love, others had strong opinions against open spaces that are worth noting.

Employees may feel distracted when they’re working so close to their coworkers with less personal space than they’re used to.

G&A Partners recently held this chat that allowed me to read HR pro’s praises and concerns about trends in office design. One Twitter user, @amoyal, wrote, “Don’t assume employees want flex space because it’s a trend. Ask them!”

You could say the same about any design trend. There are obviously some business/financial reasons for adopting a different type of office space, like the open office space. But what about the personal reasons? What about companies that just want to adopt a more open environment because it’s trendy? If you’re going to do something just to appeal to employees/job candidates, make sure they actually want it.

Some responses to the pitfalls of open plans included:

  1. Employees are more distracted because they want to chat with their neighbors and see what their coworkers are working on.
  2. Some types of people need isolation to focus and be productive.
  3. Increased competitiveness and pressure.
  4. No escape from certain coworkers’ behavior.

One user, Antonio Santos at @akwyz, mentioned that “#OpenOfficePlan is usually horrific for #neurodiverse employees,” so I asked him for more information on the topic. The article he sent me was fascinating.

It examines six potential barriers for neurodiverse employees in an open office plan and suggests some strategies to alleviate those barriers. Some examples of conditions that fall under that category include ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, Tourette syndrome, some mental health conditions and more. “What often seems unimposing and innocuous to the neurotypical employee can turn out to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing to the neurodiverse employee,” the article states.

Neurodiverse employees may be especially sensitive to light or background noise, making a sunny open space or a work station with distracting background noises (such as phones ringing and heavily used printers, shredders or photocopiers) difficult to work in.  Also distracting: when staff or visitors are constantly entering and exiting a door.

I mention this because, considering even employees who are not neurodiverse could easily be distracted by these stimuli, it should be obvious that neurodiverse employees find those distractions even more annoying or difficult to deal with.

Adding some practical light to this topic was Bonnie Scherry, director of corporate HR at G&A Partners. She helped plan the company’s headquarters in Houston. Although the office has an open layout, it also utilizes conference rooms and private rooms for employees who have different needs.

It’s wise to consider both the pros and the cons of the layout when you’re designing it, Scherry said. There are some things you can do to mitigate any challenges associated with the open plan, and you should address them as soon as possible in the planning process because it’s not a task you can easily redo.

She added that people involved in planning the design spoke to employees to gauge their concerns. Many design elements came out of this. For example, noise and privacy issues came up a lot among employees. “We spent a lot of time focusing on what we knew we could do to help out with those barriers,” said Scherry. “One of the things that we did is that our panels and our cubes absorb sound. We spent some extra time and money to make sure that we had something that would help absorb that sound rather than something that reverberates the noise.”

They also installed a white noise system to address noise concerns.

During this conversation, I had in mind many friends who simply dislike the open office idea because loss of personal space and similar concerns. Scherry had some advice on how to appease these types of employees.

First, the company first moved in and there was still some minor construction going on, they turned the white noise machines on higher than usual to make the transition easier. Second, Scherry said that most employees self-adjusted their voices in the new space. When they had tall cubicle walls, they were more likely to be louder. But when those cube walls became low, many employees lowered their voice.

Meanwhile, an informal conversation with loud employees can serve as a reminder to people who don’t self-adjust as easily.

[Also read: “Finding the Right Balance for Employees in Office Design”]
[Also read: “Millennials Opening the Doors to Communal Modern Workspaces”]

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

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When Should HR Call Its Lawyer?

Dan posits that there are some instances when a business almost always should get legal involved with an employee issue, such as when it receives a “lawyer letter”, receives service of an agency charge or lawsuit, needs to conduct a privileged investigation, or confronts a complex or novel legal issue.
I’d like to address this same question from a more macro level.
Many companies choose to do it alone, and not involve their legal counsel on employee issues, out of a fear of the expense of engaging counsel.
Yes, lawyers can be expensive. And, yes, I usually do not charge my clients for the five-minute phone call to talk through a quick issue.

Moreover, what these cost-conscious businesses fail to realize is—

  1. They are experts in their businesses, not the laws that govern them.
  2. They don’t always recognize the (fuzzy) line between a business issue and a legal issue.
  3. When the line from business issue to legal issue has been crossed, the longer you wait to involve counsel, the more expensive you make your problem.
I know what you’re thinking. “Jon, you are advocating for your own self-interest and bottom line.”
Wrong. In fact, the opposite is true. My bottom line increase when you ignore the above wisdom. Litigation is a profit center. Compliance is not. Yet, most companies ignore the latter, cross their fingers, and pray that the former does not catch up with them.
I’m not suggesting that every fly needs a sledgehammer, but some flies are baby dragons. Don’t let that dragon grow, especially if you’re not trained to recognize the difference between the fly and the dragon.
HR can handle many problems on their own, but if there is any doubt or gray area at all, I prefer that my clients pick up the phone (if for nothing other than a sanity check).
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.