Sign New Hampshire Banking Confidentiality Agreement Simple

Industry sign banking new hampshire confidentiality agreement simple

good morning my name is kelly trudell as the director of business development at she infini it's my pleasure to welcome you here this morning this morning our program is managing remote workers and avoiding ffcra kobit related retaliation please check out our website for many upcoming programs on employment law and much more but first a few housekeeping items the program today is being recorded we will post the audio and all slides later today on our website and linkedin information on hrci credits is also included on the final slide we encourage you to post questions using the q a tab at the bottom of your screen questions will be addressed at the end of the presentation the presenter today is attorney liz bailey liz has practiced in the area of management side employment law counseling and litigation since 1992 her client base ranges from private corporations to municipalities and counties liz works closely with hr professionals management teams and in-house council to develop effective risk management strategies and cost-effective ways to avoid employment related problems thank you for sharing your morning with us liz the floor is now yours thank you everyone and i joined kelly in thanking you for sharing this morning of all mornings with us when many of us have been up late or up early as the case may be um so thank you for your time um what i'm going to do is to go through a couple of different but interrelated concepts today um and kelly sorry kelly andrea if you can have the next slide um so my my topics today are two different topics but i think they're interrelated in the sense that as employers in this current time that we find ourselves in the issue of remote work is now more relevant than ever and also the issue of retaliation and employment retaliation which has always been a very significant issue for employers to be aware of becomes even more pertinent because now we have other issues that come into play concerning the families first coronavirus response act and coven 19 related issues in the workplace so i think this is a timely presentation um for employers uh throughout new hampshire and and new england um and in addition to my presentation my law partners jim reedy mark ventola and karen whitley talked on similar topics and touched upon some of these issues in their presentations last week in our reboot of our annual employment law seminar so those october 29 presentations are available for you on our website and please feel free to use those resources as well so remote work um i think we have all read and seen the discussion in the dialogue in the media that employers who might have been skeptical about whether remote work was a good idea or really involved or had the same degree of employee productivity as work in the workplace pre pandemic are now coming to realize that there are a lot of good things associated with remote work and obviously remote work in the time of this pandemic has some added benefits in terms of keeping people distance from one another keeping people safe being consistent with uh guidance or suggestions in the various states emergency orders um so i'd like to talk for the first part of my presentation about some considerations concerning remote work as employers may be looking to institute remote work as part of kobit 19 safety measures or um now that that's been done becoming more intrigued by the concept of remote work on an ongoing basis once we find ourselves outside of the pandemic hopefully sooner rather than later so um some people already have got the the jump on this pre-pandemic and they had a remote work policy uh maybe other employers did not because remote work wasn't anything that really lent itself to your your place of employment or something that you had encouraged so i think that now is a great time to be looking at this and asking yourself as an employer uh is it time for a new policy we never had one before or time to look at what we have and improve upon it what are some overarching considerations um one thing i think you want to be thinking about no matter what your policy is is that you are giving yourself a lot of flexibility as an employer um what we have seen is that this landscape we find ourselves in changes from sometimes from day to day sometimes from week to week certainly from month to month and it's always nice when you can have a policy and you you make it you implement it you kind of dust off your hands and you say okay that's it my work here is done i think with a remote work policy that is um in part based on your operational needs due to cobit 19 and due to what you are encountering as part of the pandemic in your your operations as part of the pandemic it is great to have give yourself a degree of flexibility you want to be sure that your policy sets out that you are going to be able to modify it based on your operational needs and based on evolving cobit 19 best practices what you may need or want to do today may not be something that you need or want to do in the next three months or six months or a year you also want to have flexibility to discontinue your remote work policy if you like if you want to do so and if you think the circumstances weren't again based on considerations about what is the evolving landscape with the pandemic and what are your operational needs so i think it's important that any policy you implement takes into account as much flexibility as you can for yourselves as the employer i'm orienting this as you can see from the employer's perspective because we normally work with businesses and employers and help them and advise them but certainly these concepts are something to be considering no matter who you know what line of industry you come from uh next slide please so what are some considerations about remote work arrangements um i talked a little bit about a policy and i also want to talk about in addition to a policy how you may want to have um individual agreements with employees that address these considerations that i'm outlining here a policy is great and i think you should have it but it's also a great idea to take the concepts in that policy and tailor them further to the individuals in question who will be remote working there may be a great deal of overlap and any sort of agreements that employees would sign off on might contain much the same provisions as your policy but as you can appreciate people will have different things that they're doing for the company or for your organization they will have perhaps different schedules they will have different expectations about their job responsibilities and about their availability so it's a great idea if you're trying to bring forward a greater degree of organization to a remote work arrangement to try to distill those expectations into a document that you and the employee can review and share and be on the same page about so you avoid misunderstandings you avoid confusion about what the employee will be doing for you and what the employee won't be doing for you and i think that all of us who have been reading and trying to keep up with the trends have recognized that a lot of the big businesses out there who have come to embrace remote work some who never embraced it before are realizing that this is a good way to go about things and it's also good to be soliciting employee feedback um as well as you're trying to develop policies and think about your remote work arrangements so what are some considerations um what is your expectation about the employees work time um you know it's important particularly with hourly employees um to be understanding what that expectation is about when they will be working and when they will not be working for you uh martin tola had touched upon this last week in his presentation and that goes to a couple of other issues we'll be talking about but it goes to when do you think they what they should be doing and and what hours they should be working so that they are not being overworked underworked they are not um generating overtime hours that you didn't want and there's a feeling of some parameters about what the expectations are when i say locations in terms of remote work i think there ought to be a discussion about where that person is going to be working within their home within their off-site location what that entails what that entails for office equipment and we'll touch upon technology in a second but have an understanding about what that workspace is supposed to be limited to and look like um you know for instance i think that could come up in a couple of different ways if somebody is down at their refrigerator getting a snack which can happen when you're working remotely are they taking a break are they working the expectation is they're going to be in a certain location while they are performing their work and you have that understanding with one another about what that's going to look like what is the work output going to be in terms of your expectations in terms of theirs i think that there has been a recognition with a lot of people's individual needs such as becoming in addition to an employee also a stay-at-home parent and a stay-at-home school teacher for kids that are at home being schooled during the pandemic that sometimes the work hours might not be the same as they have been before and but you still would have an expectation about what is the output what is the expectation about the outcomes of your work so perhaps there's a greater flexibility about when work is being done but you would want to be very clear as an employer that the expectation is that the job is still going to be performed the outcome is going to be there maybe it's delivered slightly differently than if you were in a eight to four nine to five arrangement at your place of business but those outcomes are still going to be observed and expected um workplace communications it's great to understand going into a remote work arrangement what those communications are going to look like when they're going to occur how they're going to occur are you going to have zoom meetings to keep in touch is it going to be primarily by email how are you going to get together as a team are there going to be periodic communications from the employer about operational updates about proven 19 safety issues about expectations of how the company is doing about just general morale boosting issues how do we all when we're working remotely not lose the good things about being together as a team how can we accomplish that so thinking about those workplace communications and how they will be done and when they will be done um are i think really important going into it so that you don't have employees out there who are feeling isolated who are feeling kind of stranded and without direction without feedback without any degree of camaraderie or teamwork and also from the employer's side you are feeling that we have a good communication going here um if somebody is working remotely i would expect them to be responsive just as if they were sitting in the office next to me and i stopped over and said hello and asked them how a project's going so what are those expectations about the back and forth of smooth communications what are the expectations about employee availability and you see that a lot of these concepts are overlapped to them but i think a frustrated you know a good thing about remote work is it gives people greater flexibility perhaps than they otherwise have if they needed to be in an office environment at a company environment uh at an organization with in a particular set perimeter of time however the flip side is that does that turn into you know inadvertently people never getting away from work because they're always considered to be available because we all know where everybody is they're working from home so there has to be i think a good balance and a good discussion about what that availability is going to look like so that employees are being responsive uh within a time frame that's expected but employers are also engaging them in a way that is effective and professional and leads to responsiveness and good outcomes it doesn't lead to burnout doesn't lead to people being unresponsive because they're they're never you know off the clock that is particularly important um as smart petola discussed last week when you're talking about hourly employees because for instance if you have an hourly employee it's going to be very critical i think in terms of your operations that you're managing your overtime issues you're going to want them to appropriately record their time they work you're going to want to be able to monitor that make sure that you're not seeing kind of mission creep where your overtime expenses become you know slowly but surely higher and higher so you're going to want to have an understanding with them about when they are expected to be available and when they are not available when they are expected to be off the clock and not respond that's going to require some discussion with your managers as well so that they are not emailing employees um off of the parameter of hours that you set they are not engaging them because if you suffer or commit somebody to work that needs to be paid so there needs to be an understanding about what are the boundaries of employee availability how can we do this professionally how can we talk with employees to make sure they are getting pre-approval for any overtime so we're not having that creep up on us and also what are the expectations of managers so that they are not engaging hourly employees or employees out of outside through the parameters of what the expectation had been with workplace um remote workplace arrangements um technology is huge as we've all experienced um [Music] we at shane finney have been blessed by a wonderful i.t team um and and i hope you have experienced the same success but technology is critical as to what technology are remote work workers going to be provided with how are you as the employer going to support their ability to be effective and functioning from a remote setting what does that look like what equipment is going to be provided what are the platforms going to be used how you are going to be ensuring the security of the information how you are going to be providing the support to remote workers to make that experience as effective and efficient as possible next slide please this goes into the confidentiality of information um that's something to be thinking about and i i'm sure um in any remote work setting prior to the pandemic or certainly now uh you have been thinking about this issue pretty critically it goes into the technology that you provide how can we maintain the confidentiality of information and make sure that our technology systems enable us to continue to do that and what is the expectation of you as the employer concerning the confidentiality of information i mean certainly if you would in no way expect your confidential business information inside the four walls of your of your company would be compromised you likewise are expecting that that confidentiality will not be compromised because of a remote work arrangement so it's a great time to be educating employees reminding employees of their obligations some people may have signed confidentiality non-disclosure agreements as part of their their normal employment i would wager that most of you have confidentiality policies in place to safeguard the confidentiality of your information so this is a great retraining or reminder opportunity for people if they are going into a remote work arrangement to talk about those expectations again to refresh them about what documents are out there that they're expected to abide by other considerations are wage and hour compliance as i've already discussed it's going to be very critical that employees are keeping track of their time uh the hourly employees that's something that needs to be done but understanding when employees are working when are they not uh for instance it will be important even for salaried employees if they needed to take a vacation day if they needed to take some pto to make sure that there is a recording going on in terms of the time worked or not worked so that you can keep tra k of that time appropriately and credited against pto banks or make sure for hourly employees they are in fact being paid appropriately for hours worked and for overtime and lastly some other considerations are workers compensation issues it's critical that if you're keeping a safe workplace for your employees if somebody had a workplace related injury just as if they were at your site of employment or off-site at another business setting um the fact that they're working remotely doesn't change the fact that those injuries should be promptly reported so that you can take steps necessary to report to the appropriate state agencies or to make sure that you put your workers comp carrier on notice and this will be where some of the work you're going to be doing in your remote work policy and in your remote work agreements um with employees will come come in good stead for you because there will be discussions that you will have in your policy or in your agreements about essentially what what it what are the working relation arrangements so you can determine better did something happen when somebody was working or did something happen when somebody was on their own time in their home you know getting the the diet coke from the fridge versus being in their home office or being in their work area doing work for the company next slide please uh flexible work arrangements um this is not the same as remote work but i think it does talking about the flexibility factor of what you're trying to do as an employer in this new and changing environment we find ourselves in not to lose sight of flexible work arrangements as maybe being an option maybe uh somebody is working remote remotely on a hybrid basis but coming into the office for particular um reasons or coming into the company for particular reasons maybe you have an arrangement with somebody where their normal work hours are changed due to their personal needs due to their considerations with uh maybe child care maybe uh you know closure of schools or closures of daycares maybe just because it's a better system in place because it allows you as the employer to have less people on site at any given time and helps you with issues like social distancing um disinfecting the facility those sorts of issues where you're trying to put in to play your covet 19 compliance and safeguards it does might help to have less people on site at any given time and flexible work arrangements may be a big help for you in that regard and it may improve employee morale a lot to know that you as the employer are helping an employee work just as hard for you but in a different way next slide so now i like to turn on to the second part of the program which is um the family's first homovirus response act retaliation issues and i'm going to really focus on retaliation for purposes of this discussion um but i'm going to just go through a couple of quick points which are available to you in our other presentations we have done and also on our covid19 resource site we've got a lot of good information about the family's first coronavirus response act and that's been the subject of several articles by um members of our of our shin finney team so a great um i'm gonna get to retaliation pretty quickly here but just quickly some great uh resources that you are probably aware of but if you if you haven't been using regularly they're a great thing to return to are the usdol has published and periodically updates without sometimes with fanfare sometimes without the link to the regulations themselves and the link to frequently asked questions about the ffcra and i just gave you a site to the frequently asked questions and great resource they have these sorts of issues broken down by the fmla by the lfl essay and also by these frequently asked questions so wonderful resource if you have a kind of a thorny question you're trying to get through what you're going to find with the frequently asked questions and answers is there is a great degree of pretty granular detail for you for many of the common questions that you would have and those are updated so it's a great thing that they will be refreshed you can return to them as much as you would like um next slide so um i think most of us are aware there's two types of leave available there is paid sick leave there's six reasons which i'm going to have in the next two slides and then there's expanded family medical leave for the care of the child due to school closure day care closure because of coven 19. so we had a little bit of a rest uh you know respite over the summer um where there wasn't a school issue but there might have been summer camp issues or other day care issues that were impacting expanded family medical leave but these these leaves are remain available um they're sunsetted for the time being um on december 31st of this year um we don't know what will happen as we near the end of the year if there's going to be some expansion of the ffcra so we'll all need to stay closely tuned to that but for right now at least we have until december 31st for these two types of leave next slide and as you are familiar with um there are six reasons i'm not going to read them here but they are essentially the uh the first three really deal with the employee uh being sick themselves and the next slides and the next three deal with other situations such as the employee caring for a person who's subject to the same restrictions as items one through three above um or you have the employee caring for the employees under daughter as those terms are defined due to closures of the school place place of care um and there's not another care provider that's available due to cover 19 issues the sixth item remains um nebulous to say the least so the real discussion has been on items one through five when you're dealing with ffc era issues um next slide some ffcra considerations that um we have discussed in the past including karen whitley and some of her presentations uh is something to think about as you're going through the ffcra and it's great to have these considerations some of them in advance if you have some time to really sit down and think about it if you have i hope it's true for you all you've had the luxury where somebody has you've got a workforce that is healthy that is well that this has not come up uh that would be a wonderful situation to be in but to take a look at your own organization to ensure you are a covered employer which small employers generally would be to see if you're exempt from the ffcra um what if you're looking at an employee coming to you with ffcra um a request or a need to sit down and try to to do an individualized review look at what this person's situation is what's going on are they covered by ffcra or not based on the circumstances at hand look at the reason as to why they need fcra um is there interplay with regular fmla lead so that's why it's really important to look at each person as an individual because there could be different outcomes from person to person with the same exact problem but maybe one person has fmla available to them the other person does not is intermittent ffcra available under the circumstances what are the pay caps which will vary depending on the reasons for the ffcra leave as you've seen um what are your existing policies and benefits is there an interplay that goes on here to allow an employee to use those benefits uh contemporaneously with ffcra leave or not and what can you be asking getting back in return to confirm the need for the lead a lot of these larger issues are something that you should be thinking about right now but certainly when you are looking at the specific reasons for uh the individual you are really tailoring your analysis to the individual in question next next slide so just to remember the ffcra provides some employee protections i'm going to be talking about retaliation but it does allow an employee to return to work to return to their job it allows an employee to continue to have health care benefits and we're going to turn to retaliation there is in the ffcra itself non-retaliation provision you can't retaliate as an employer against an employee who needs to use ffcra leave or who has used ffcra lead and that's going to be really critical to remember because as people are coming off of ffcra leave as people are needing to use it your interactions with them may be misinterpreted as retaliation if you don't have in mind some red flags to be thinking about not going to happen all the time hopefully not ever to the employee employers in the group but something to bear in mind that there is an individual non-retaliation provision in this law like many others that we're going to turn to in a minute uh next slide so uh before we get to retaliation uh issues something else just not to forget um the fact that we're in this unprecedented landscape doesn't mean that some of the things that we have been used to have gone away or changed coven 19 and the ffcra and where we find ourselves today has not changed the legal prohibitions against employment-related discrimination harassment and retaliation and what we have seen is the eeoc in particular has got some great guidance and updates out there about how the coven 19 pandemic situation um impacts interplays with some of the other existing discrimination or retaliation or harassment laws such as national origin or race discrimination at the beginning of the pandemic you may recall there were discussions about other countries before the pandemic really hit the u.s and about avoiding perceptions or discriminatory issues because of where a person came from uh or where a person had traveled from uh age discrimination it still remains in play um not making assumptions about an employee uh due to their age making assumptions that they're in some must be in some high risk category so you are doing things differently with that employee than you would do with anybody else uh so not to lose sight of those issues disability discrimination always remains uh an issue thinking about how if an employee has coven 19 issues how that interplays with an overlap of disability discrimination concerns disability considerations such as reasonable accommodations not losing sight of those issues um not forgetting that we need to be mindful about the existing fmla law about no interference and no retaliation for somebody exercising fmla rights or ffcra rights and also be mindful about the concepts that continue to exist about disparate treatment or just disparate impact related to who you are and that can happen in any number of ways um but it also can happen in in terms of layoffs furloughs return to work why are you selecting the people you are selecting to return to work or to be included in a furlougher layoff those considerations should always exist but with the issue of covid19 and people being out in much greater numbers than in the la you know in the very recent past those issues continue to be at the forefront next slide so to talk about retaliation um retaliation can come in a lot of forms again this is nothing new but just something to be thinking about and reminding yourself about um i'm gonna spoiler alert i'm gonna talk at the end of the presentation about this could be a great opportunity for you as an employer to train your employees particularly your supervisory employees and managers about concepts of retaliation but retaliation can come in many forms it could be a reduction in somebody's hours it could be a change in job duties um it could be for instance um you know a classic case in retaliation involved an employee who needed to work a particular shift due to child care issues and the employer changed the ship to a third shift which was a real hardship for that person changing your your job duties a reduction in your job responsibilities or assigning duties that are um disfavored um a denial of opportunities denial of training or promotional opportunities demotion uh discipline it doesn't have to be termination although you see that on the slide that's the ultimate form of discipline it could be um discipline such as a suspension or a write-up um termination of employment or inclusion in or extension of a furlough so i'm included in a furlough as an act of retaliation uh or i could have been brought back and i'm not as some form of retaliation so the next slide so in addition to the ffcra we also need to be thinking about retaliation on other fronts that can overlap including the americans with disabilities act the disability discrimination piece we need to be thinking about the fmla if the fmla is involved is going to be an appearance of retaliation because somebody has asked for fmla leave or is out on fmla leave or has recently come back from fmla leave we have title seven of the civil rights act of 1964 which is a federal law that many of you are familiar with that talks about sex discrimination pregnancy discrimination is a form of sex discrimination race national origin religion color and state laws many of which many states including new hampshire massachusetts and vermont have laws that address the same discriminatory areas um also address leave issues as well so when we're thinking about retaliation although my focus is covid19 be mindful that when you're dealing with a kobit 19 situation and an employee that these other laws could apply i didn't put the age discrimination and employment act up there but that could be another form as well so please don't lose sight of the very basics that we already needed to observe going into our our current situation uh next slide so the biggest thing um i would have you take away from the discussion about retaliation is timing is everything uh that and talk to your hr team please i'm a huge proponent of uh employers managers supervisors if they feel that they have an issue with an employee to employees interact with hr before decisions are made so that hr can be helping as a support identify potential retaliation issues that the manager the supervisor may have been completely unaware of but to have that discussion beforehand because with retaliation cases timing gets to be particularly significant um you've probably been at seminars at webinars at our presentations where you've heard read that retaliation claims are some of the most commonplace claims in employment matters that remains the case that hasn't changed and what we've discussed repeatedly is that what that means is a practical matter is that you could have an employee come to you and they feel that something has happened that is illegal that they were discriminated against or harassed because of a protected status that they have or because they engaged in protected activity and your obligation as an employer is to look into that to understand what has happened to respond appropriately and to make sure that the problem doesn't reoccur if there's any inappropriate conduct occurring to the best of your ability so many times that whole interaction happens very successfully uh you as the employer are working on it very diligently you're responsive the situation resolves itself life seems to go on and it's a good thing and in many instances there could be misunderstandings there could be unprofessional conduct and nothing illegal and you work through those issues really very effectively but then it's very easy to kind of let things go to the wayside and it's very important to be following up and making sure that things continue to go smoothly with a person who's brought forward a concern with people that have participated in that process of looking into that concern with uh the supervisors involved to make sure that the workplace is is professional and proceeding in a very effective appropriate manner um it's very understandable i think if somebody who had been involved in in such a process complaining participating in a complaint proceeding and something negative happens to them soon on the heels of it they may make the assumption perhaps completely incorrectly that there is some retaliation going on it doesn't mean that there is it doesn't mean that there is at all but it's an honest discussion to be had about whether that is uh something that is negative is retaliation so that's why as a employer it's very important to be mindful of these considerations so that as you're making business decisions as you're addressing operational needs and things that come up in your business you are not uh inadvertently tripping over a retaliation issue or creating a misunderstanding you didn't need to create about potential retaliation next slide please so again i'm a big proponent about a great collaboration interaction with supervisors and management and hr and i think it's really important for people when they have a difficult situation with an employee and for our purposes we're talking about kobit 19 impacted employees whether they're out on ffcra leave or recently returned or have indicated they need it or have indicated that whether or not they have that leave available to them there are things going on with them that are covet 19 related that you essentially need to address if they have you've got some issues with that employee it's really helpful to draw back and coordinate with hr and talk about where you are first of all look at what it was the information you have um is there information that is verified that you've already looked into that you can objectively confirm or are you getting hearsay information are there more questions out there than answers at this point do you need to look into whatever the situation is further to get a better understanding about the facts to understand whatever the problem is what do you think is going on do you have a legitimate business reason for thinking that there is some action that should be taken against an employee you know what is that legitimate business reason is it a policy or a contract violation as i have up there or are there other things going on and again because retaliation can be many things other than discipline or termination there may be things going on with your business where we need to have a reduction in force we need to have a furlough we need to scale back people's hours we need to change responsibilities because we need to be more nimble in our organization what are those business reasons going on and you know presumably there are legitimate business reasons but verify why you are thinking you need to take a particular action how does an employee that is impacted by an action be it disciplinary or non-disciplinary how do they compare to other similarly situated employees so for instance it it's in particularly in in areas of discipline if you're saying okay we need to discipline this person due to a policy violation due to behavioral issues due to conduct okay let's draw back and think about this are we being consistent with how we have treated other people this person is dealing with a copen 19 related issue or working with them on that issue how how with what we are thinking the action ought to be how does that stack up to how we've treated other people who've done the same thing who've had the same problem who had the same policy violation um what is the status of employment records if you're talking about an action specific to the employee related to discipline or some form of demotion or changing responsibilities is that well documented is this going to come as a surprise to the employee or is this going to be something that absolutely you can demonstrate this has been an ongoing problem we've tried to deal with this the employee is fully aware of this is an issue i've had multiple discussions multiple sit downs multiple documentation and this comes as no surprise to anybody that this is an action we need to take ask yourself the question why now um i think we can all understand that if somebody uh is going through a kobit 19 related situation um is there a need to take a particular action immediately or not uh why does it need to be now and for instances where the action that you are undertaking as an employer is more kind of of a macro operational issue it absolutely might need to be now you need to do various things to keep your business running you need to make cuts to people's hours you need to realign responsibilities or do other things just to keep you operational keep the lights on keep your product going out the door but think about that and think about is it really necessary to to do whatever i'm thinking about that might impact this employee right now the answer may be yes but at least you've thought about that and is there any different action possible to avoid a perception of retaliation so for instance maybe you do have an employee that has just done something that is inappropriate but maybe you have a range of of responses that you could have and you're going to opt to do something that is more counseling or more educational versus something that is disciplinary um the big point here is that it's very important i think to be thoughtful in understanding that when you have someone who is in a situation involving kogin 19 it may be implicating a variety of laws that have non-retaliation provisions and so you're making a thoughtful decision you're making this decision that's based on your legitimate business needs and you're not doing something lightly you're just being mindful about how you are approaching the issue and the person uh next slide please um again a little little uh full employer full lawyer employment act dig if i could if you do have the ability to work with in-house counsel or lawyers who generally uh represent the company this is a great time to pick up a phone and have a discussion privately attorney-client privilege before any communicating any action it's just a good another sound way to go through a process and those those discussions can be very effective to kind of head off trouble or just approach a problem in a way that is fair to to you as the employer fair to the employee as well next slide please and again consider employee training um many uh supervisors managers are not um they're they're wonderful at what they do but they are not hired to be hr representatives they're hired to do the job that they're hired to do and they're great at it but it's easy in all the work that is being done in trying to keep things on track during the pandemic to be focusing on putting out fires and maybe not be mindful of some of the things that you ought to be mindful about in terms of actions taken with employees it is very helpful to in addition to coordinating with hr before any action to give your managers some refresher training about retaliation about discrimination about families first and again my advice has been consistently in my mind at least that the training is really to educate those managers to help them understand what is out there what are some red flags what your policies are what their obligations are but also to help them know okay i'm hearing something from an employee they have a particular need they have a particular concern uh it's kovan 19 related what am i doing to um you know engage hr as quickly as pos possible in that discussion in that analysis and make that handoff nobody's expecting the supervisor or manager to be an expert at everything but it's great for them to know what your policies are what the ffcra is what the expectations are about how they can coordinate effectively with hr very quickly to address issues as they arise um next slide and those are my the formal discussion for the day i do see some questions and answers which i will do my best to try to address um let's see here um the a good question is i'm sorry if i'm squinting and looking very closely at the screen but i will try to address the questions as they come in um one person had asked you know what types of injuries might one sustain at home other than ergonomics if someone tripped over a rug at home while going to the bathroom for example would that be something considered workers comp um i think that's a great question and i think it again it does come back into you know what what they were doing at the time and where they were doing it and what they were in the midst of doing so for instance um i think those specifics would be scrutinized very carefully situation to situation so somebody you know getting up and they're in the process of making a copy at their home copier and they slip and fall is that really any different than if they were doing the same thing on site versus somebody you know going getting up to get a snack at 8 30 at night as they're watching tv um just because they were in their home that doesn't convert it to a worker's comp injury so the the answer is i think it will be very fact specific and it will be helpful to you to kind of have set those parameters so that there's something that you can refer back to versus trying to address those issues for the first time um the next question is how do we handle job workload when an employee is extensively out on ffcra when tasks cannot be reassigned do we hire if so what happens when the employee is no longer using fcra the great question the employee does have a right to return to their job from their ffcra leave um so i think that if you and there may be depending on the circumstances the employee has some ability to work intermittently um while using ffcra leave it doesn't sound like that's what the question is talking about so if somebody is out is truly out and they need to be out extensively um i think that really comes back to what would you be doing if they were out on an extended leave on fmla leave on maybe an ada leave of absence if you need to have somebody come in and do the work there needs to be an understanding that that person who is out and protected leave has a right to get their job back so it doesn't mean that the work doesn't need to get done but it does mean that they need to have their job back when they're ready to get back to it um let's see here i'm going to keep reviewing these so if you just bear with me for a minute um this person has an f an employee who's out earlier the um this year on fmla she's now out on the ffcra to care for her son um um there's some specific situations um that are being addressed in this question that i'm not going to repeat um just because it might get a little bit of a personal identifier um but the i think where the question is is how are you balancing and taking into account the fmla and ffcra the fmla provides the amount of leave completely possible for the employee if they are out on ffcra it counts into that amount of fmla leave of 12 weeks available to them so it is something that you're going to need to be monitoring that they may run out of the ability to take um the the extended family medical leave the employee may run out because of fmla we've previously used within the measuring time period that's why it's important to be keeping track and having this be an individualized assessment because you could have two people in your company both have kids in the second grade at the same elementary school with the same needs and one person may have a different outcome than the other depending on assuming you have fmla available to you as a company depending on the person's fmla use within the measuring time period i know that's generic but i think that's the general principle to take away to be concerned about the individualized assessment um so i think what the next question is about is the discussion about uh perhaps remote work um it is along with the policy should there be a document the employees and supervisor sign if so what should it look like um i do think it's helpful to have a separate document the policy is going to give somewhat of an overview of the expectations of the employer concerning remote work to have that flexibility to continue or discontinue it or modify it as you need i think the document that the employer the employer supervisor or hr or whoever is the appropriate signatory and the information sign is really taking those concepts and getting more specific about hours of work about what equipment will be provided about what will be reimbursable expenses or not about the expectation of where the work is going to take place about the expectation of availability and communications some of those things we have just discussed about the fact that the employees still expected to adhere to your policies and to behave appropriately just because they're remote working they don't get to start to violate your discrimination policy or to do things that would not be appropriate if they were in the office so i think that separate document is something that is can be a pretty streamlined um not overwhelming but effective document to have the employer and the employee review and sign just to lay out the expectations it isn't an employment contract it doesn't mean that the employee is not an employee at will that's the case but it does help people know what the rules of engagement are for one another uh the next question is um some positions in our office are able to work remotely while others are not should we be concerned with fairness in deciding whether or not to let someone work remotely versus using ffcra um i think i guess i would rephrase that a little bit um there are definitely issues and perceptions of fairness sometimes um but there may be many jobs where you simply remote work is not an option or at least complete remote work is not an option no you need to be on a manufacturing floor you can't do that from home um you might be a first responder um you might need be an essential employee in terms of the work uh being done in the organization you know somebody needs to be on site to do various things or we're not going to be able to function so to some extent there may always be jobs that will lend themselves to remote work and there may be jobs where it just isn't it just isn't going to be feasible that may not be perceived as fair by some but as long as i think you have a legitimate business reason to be saying no you know we're sorry but this job you need to be on the production floor we need to have you there that is not something that you can do from home i think that is certainly an understandable legitimate business decision if somebody thinks that's unfair perhaps they're not really thinking it through enough you know from the perspective of an employee if somebody um so i don't think the issue is can somebody use ffcra or not if somebody is eligible for it uh has a need for it that is available to them the question is are they otherwise able to work remotely so i don't think it's it it isn't that you're kind of picking and choosing who uses the ffcra lead i think more the issue is you're appropriately determine determining who can work remotely and it may be uh that although you you don't have a system in place where that particular person is working remotely [Music] but that can be an accommodation to them for a limited circumstance because of what's going on with their particular needs so just bear that in mind remote work may be something that can be an accommodation to the person and do bear in mind that the ffcra presumes that the person cannot be working including remote working because of a coven 19 related issue so i think you're looking at who can remote work you're looking at does somebody who otherwise normally wouldn't remote work do they need to do so for a period of time can they do so uh as an accommodation and if remote work isn't possible is that person eligible for ffcra it does get intertwined but i think the two can be distinct concepts that you are you may be talking about but you can have ffcra leave and still be a person that normally may be able to remote work but perhaps they're so ill they can't do so at that point just be thinking that the two are not an automatic equation with one another um let's see here um are there restrictions for regarding remote work from another state for example the employee wants to work remotely from their camp in maine when the employer is located in new hampshire i think there's a couple things going on there one is are there state emergency laws in place that would somehow impact that situation in terms of your workplace um and do they or does it does it really not terribly make a difference if you have somebody that is able to work remotely and that is going to be a situation for you that's going to go on indefinitely um and you're fine wit that i think you can be talking with the employee about again where is that remote work going to take place is that appropriate under the circumstances um if however you may have a situation where you need to have the employee come back into the office and they their choice of where they work would impact their ability to do that because of guidance about quarantining or other restrictions or other simple logistics um you may be talking with them about no look the remote work arrangement we're for seeing is gives you the ability to perform the functions of your job within that arrangement and there may be some components of what you're suggesting here that give us pause that you're not going to be able to do that you know for instance if they said i'd like to this is separate from this question but just by way of an example they were saying um i would like to remote work or you would like them to remote work and they're saying i really am a night owl i really want to work from 10 p.m to 6 a.m i think you might likely say well you know depending on our business needs that's not a good fit because we need you to do xyz and the rest of your team or our customers are available during some other core business hours so that's not a good fit or it might be might be a perfectly good fit so i think that question really does come down to looking at what is proposed and if if it truly makes a difference [Music] and then the question is what if the state doesn't require quarantine but your work does so if i go to my private residence in another state and that's not the state mandated to quarantine when you return but my work makes me again i think that is going to be depending on trying to to balance those um workplace needs versus whatever is the current operative word current guidance from the various states we've seen it change you know we've seen it change um quickly and we've seen it you know go from in new hampshire three states to to the new england states there's a lot of changes that go on so i think that you are talking employer to employee with what does this remote work arrangement look like are there any concerns about it being not a good fit under the circumstances because what the employer's expectations are in relation to what the employee may want to do i think that is a discussion to be had um and in some instances it may make no difference at all and in some instances it may make a lot of difference but i think that's a fair discussion to be had because at the end of the day what is trying to be done here is that employers and employees are trying to keep the businesses running keep the operations going everybody keep their jobs everybody stay safe and safe and healthy um so that that that doesn't change and some of these conversations may have points that make it less effective or perhaps not effective at all that need to be discussed with the employer and the employee and again um i think that the employee it's a two-way street i think the employees ought to be understanding that ultimately the employer needs to stay in business and be making some good business decisions about what remote work looks like under the circumstances and whether it makes sense for the position uh in question and so i think that's the end of my presentation today um i really thank you all for being here on such a busy day um it's i wish i could see you all like we we would do uh before all this happened and i look forward to that time but thank you again thank you liz you