Category Archives: Employment Law

If your Company sucks offline – your employees will talk about it Online!

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YourCompanysucks_landingpage_03Yesterday I had the opportunity to sit in on several fantastic Google+ Hangouts over in My Community Manager group on Google. One of the sessions was with Yammer and we all (through the hangout and Twitter Chat) discussed issues related to social media at work and incorporating internal collaboration tools.

Here is the actual recording of the hangout in case you’d like to get the exact scoop. I think you’ll find it very engaging and answer a few of your questions on how folks went through the process of adopting social and internal collaboration tools into the workplace – slowly, easily and steadily.

If you still have a problem with unleashing your employees on social you may want to read this new post from the NY Times in regard to trying to regulate social media at work. The title could have been better but it’s a pretty informative post.

If you know me at all, you’ll know that I am all for incorporating social media and technology into our workplaces, that we stop trying to see how we can block it and instead try to make it work toward our advantage – for the greater good of our organizations.

The thing is, if you’re worried that your employees are going to tell everyone about their crappy workplace, that you are making them work 12 hours a day without a break, that you fired someone just last week because they told you they were expecting a baby – you need to really rethink a few things.

If your company sucks offline, folks are going to talk about it online. If your management style sounds a little like Nazi Germany, your people are going to realize you are the worst manager while they are discussing this with other folks – online or off.

The thing to do if you’re lying awake at night worried about blocking Facebook at work because you’re afraid of what your employees will say about you – is to start making better choices. Stop being an ass. Abide by rules (especially the NLRB) and start working on internal (that means inside you) changes.

Bottom line, most folks are worried about what their employees will say online out of fear of being exposed. Those organizations and managers who are doing it up right – aren’t usually worried and actually encourage their folks to share with others how great they are.

Employees are using their phones to get on Facebook and Youtube at work even if you don’t allow them to get online through their office devices. And if you don’t – they’re prepared with excuses in case they get caught READ HERE!

So the next time you or your Executive Management Team sit around the proverbial table – you may want to discuss how to create a better culture. One that will promote trust, team-building, and authenticity and how you can create a better working environment all around.

Photo Credit: MSCO

Kudos to Michael VanDervort for the heads up on the Times article. Love my community!

Getting knocked up in the employee parking lot does NOT allow you Workmen’s Comp

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batmanrobinYesterday I had a mini conversation with one of my HR buds (who shall remain nameless – to protect the not-so-innocent), who shared with me a story about an employee who did the “dirty deed” in the parking lot and later found out she was pregnant.

As if that wasn’t horrible enough, she decided she would try to file for “Workmen’s Comp.” Wait, what?

Yes, you heard correctly.

Perhaps because I’m not in the trenches every day I don’t hear things like this too often but stuff like this does happen. Whether workers are careless, accident-prone or just plain dumb, we’ll never know. And right along with all the sure-enough valid comp claims there have been some unbelievable claims.

Here are a few I found throughout the webs:

  • One individual told of an employee who was chasing his wife around the kitchen table, and took a turn too sharply and damaged “Mr. Happy.” It was covered by Workers’ Compensation because the only reason he was chasing his wife was because she had playfully snatched one of his reports off the table while he was working on it.
  • Another individual relayed how her brother, a sheriff’s deputy, was playing basketball on the back of a donkey and blew his ACL trying to do a slam dunk. He was off duty for a year and covered by Workers’ Comp because it was a required event. At least the department wised up and cancelled the donkeyball tournaments.
  • One employee (a nurse, no less!) claimed she tore a rotator cuff while…ummm, while “wiping herself off” after going to the restroom.
  • Recently, a mechanic try to file a workers comp claim after he bent over to tie his shoe, sneezed and threw his back out.
  • A female warehouse associate who claimed her back had begun to itch. She was convinced she was being tormented by paper mites. After a few days she requested to see a doctor for her papaer mite bites. The physician, however, denied her condition as a work-related injury when he examined her back and found a three-day-old tatoo which covered the majority of her back…
  • One HR Manager said, “I received a WC report on a young lady who was rather endowed. Somehow she was leaning over and she pinched her nipple in a desk drawer as she was closing it. Her supervisor (also a female), in the action taken to prevent a re-occurrence, wrote “Employee was advised to wear a bra.’”

We could go on and on I’m sure. What’s your funny or weird WC story?

Credits for stories to LegalWorkplace

Photo Credit: RolandLegal

Allowing your employees to roll a dubie – Medical Marijuana and the Workplace

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dubieWelcome to end of 2012 where 18 states and the District of Columbia now allowing the use of medical marijuana – and two states, Washington and Colorado, recently approving the use of recreational marijuana in spite of the Federal laws still in place that do not adhere to State approved legislation.

It appears that Illinois may be the next state to pass the medical marijuana law. In fact, it was scheduled to be voted on this past November, but it may not happen until after the holidays.

So how does all that play into work?

According to a recent Employment Law Blog, many employers are ignorant about what the law provides and really should look into how this will affect the workplace in 2013 and beyond.

Here are some key facts employers ought to know now:

What does the weed law provide?

  • It is legal for certain individuals to possess limited quantities of marijuana for “palliative use.”
  • “Palliative Use” refers to the alleviation of a “qualifying patient’s” symptoms of a “debilitating medical condition.”
    • A “Qualifying Patient” is a resident aged 18 or older who has been diagnosed by a physician as having a debilitating medical condition (within the allowed approved States).
    • A “Debilitating Medical Condition” includes cancer, glaucoma, AIDS or HIV-positive status, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, certain spinal cord injuries, Crohn’s disease, PTSD, and any other medical condition approved by the Department of Consumer Protection pursuant to regulations to be adopted.
  • Persons who may possess marijuana include qualifying patients and their “primary caregivers.”
How are the pot laws being implemented and enforced?

What is the impact for employers?

  • Employers may not refuse to hire a person or discharge, penalize or threaten an employee based solely on such person’s or employee’s status as a qualifying patient or primary caregiver.
  • Employers may discriminate if required by federal funding or contracting provisions.
  • Employers MAY continue to prohibit the use of intoxicating substances, including marijuana, at work.
  • Employers MAY continue to discipline employees for being under the influence of intoxicating substances at work.
  • But employers MAY NOT presume that a drug test result that is positive for marijuana means that the employee used at work or was under the influence at work.

This is certain to create chaos in our drug policies, for sure.

What about the interaction with the ADA and Accommodations?
A recent case from the Ninth Circuit suggests the answer to the question: “What do I do if my employee asks to be permitted to smoke medical pot at work as a reasonable accommodation for a disabling medical condition?”
  • Because federal law still prohibits possession/use of marijuana, the court concluded that the ADA does not require this accommodation.
A few considerations
I can see now how employees will be rolling dubies in the parking lot on their designated smoke breaks or passing out brownies at lunch. Having a system in place before you’re faced to deal with these issues is key. We should start by educating staff on the requirements of the new medical marijuana laws and update policies and really get a handle on how this will affect our future workplaces.

Heck, maybe some folks will chill the heck out.

Is it okay to spy on your employees?

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Hey guys! I’m on vacation and trying to unplug (YEAH RIGHT) from the Webs this whole week. I thought I’d share a few previous posts for your enjoyment. Catch you on the flip-side.

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While less than 10 percent of companies now are monitoring employee use of social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and others, that is likely to change over the next few years.  Gartner predicts that 60 percent of companies will be monitoring how their employees use social media by 2015.  Employers are interested in monitoring the posting of comments from employees about the company.  Companies say they monitor employees for reasons such as brand management, sentiment analysis and reputation purposes.  Oh and let’s not forget that social media checks are often  run on candidates before job offers are made.

The week I was heading to SHRM12, and since I was part of the official “HR Blogger” team, I was receiving mass emails from HR Tech companies hoping to connect with me at the conference. One of the folks that contacted me represented a tech company that helped employers monitor social media in house and they were trying to sell me on the idea from an aspect of monitoring “employee productivity.”

I didn’t buy it and I told them so. They of course, came back with several bullet points of continuing to try and sell me on the whole shabang and I told them I would give them a few minutes of my time to hear their viewpoint, but then I was so busy at the conference I just plain forgot. My apologies, if they’re reading this.

Snooping on employees is not a new thing. I used to work at Zales corporate where I was a collector who sat in a room of 120 or so collectors. We had certain daily quotas that had to be met and our phone conversations were constantly being monitored by our employer. I’m sure their reasons were the same as those today with social media and monitoring – to make sure our employees are productive. The thing about it though is that our numbers spoke for themselves. I was top collector for several months, and yet my calls were still being monitored. I was bringing in the revenue, but I was still being treated like I wasn’t.

What this did to all of us was create a sense of sneakiness on the part of our managers and it started to affect how we did our jobs and how we felt overall, about our company. It decreased loyalty and engagement and created a crappy working environment.

IMHO, if you are having to spy on your employees you have a greater problem at hand.  Perhaps you have control or trust issues yourself, and it’s affecting your team and creating a culture of distrust and disloyalty and you should seriously consider revamping your strategy.

With every employer trying to figure out the whole social business thing, there is a tech company out there trying to come up with a way to monitor that. I get that. That’s how new business comes about. And the process of monitoring employees is becoming easier as increasing numbers of surveillance products and services are available which allow companies to keep tabs on their employee internet activities.

Andrew Walls, research vice president at Gartner, said that “The growth in monitoring employee behavior in digital environments is increasingly enabled by new technology and services.  Surveillance of individuals, however, can both mitigate and create risk, which must be managed carefully to comply with ethical and legal standards.  Security monitoring and surveillance must follow enterprise information assets and work processes into whichever technical environments are used by employees to execute work.”

The National Labor Relations Board has also publicly declared a policy that employees should have the right to be able to engage in online discussions about work conditions and even complaints about their employer or working conditions on social media.  A recent NLRB statement said that “the NLRB has filed unfair labor practice charges against employers who have social media policies that the NLRB felt might be construed as ‘chilling’ employees’ rights to engage in concerted activity.”

John Simpson, Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project director, said that actually much of what is discussed [in the Gartner report] is unwarranted snooping in people’s personal lives.  There is no valid reason for it and companies that engage in such activities should be called out for their unethical activity.”

What’s your take on the whole snooping thing? Do you think it’s ever okay to spy on your employees?

Photo Credit: KosMedia

Are Social Media policies really necessary?

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We’ve been debating for a couple years now, the relevance of having a social media policy and what to put in it. There are those (even in the Legal Field) that have opposing or differential views on the subject.

When I first started hearing and reading about social media policies, I too, jumped on that bandwagon and began writing and sharing content on the “must-haves” of social media policies for companies doing social business. But I have since evened out on that and am not really sure it’s the right way to go about it.

While I was attending the Society for Human Resource Management’s annual conference in Atlanta, I was able to sit in on a discussion about this very topic with several industry experts including one of my online connections Heather Bussing, who is an Employment Attorney, Law Professor and writer extraordinaire over at HRExaminer.com (not to mention a fabulous photographer) who had several great points when talking about this issue.

Right after the conference I sent her a message to see if she would be interested in sitting in on a LIVE VIDEO discussion with another Employment Attorney connection of ours Mary McClure Wright,  who works alongside HR to help make sure their employees get a fair shake in the courtroom. She’s been practicing for over 25 years and knows her stuff.

I thought, if I could gather two employment attorneys who know the legal aspects and ins and outs of this subject for a LIVE discussion, it would be the shizzle. They agreed and we just participated in a LIVE WEBCAST discussion on just this topic – you can find it over on my SpreeCast Channel.

Here are a few of the items we discussed:

  • Is there a need for a social media policy at work?
  • Should Companies simply block social media, altogether?
  • Training vs. Policy
  • What does the NLRB have to say about it?
  • Should progressive companies allow people to be people and not try to monitor their online behavior?
  • Should HR be allowed to spy on their employees?

So if you want to gather great insight click the link below. It was a dusy. 

 

Is there a “GAP” in your Social Media Policy?

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I am going to have to take today off on my #Friday Follow spotlight series. Why? I’m trying to do those with video and my video software is acting like a teen-age girl (fickle). So, I’ll proceed with that another time.

Meanwhile, I came across this great piece on the retailer GAP and its social media policies that I wanted to bring to your attention.

When I talk with companies about incorporating social media into their culture and NOT banning it altogether out of fear, the first thing I get is “How will we ever police that?” Obviously, the thought of their “Ya-hoos” being unleashed is enough to make them go into cardiac arrest.

But here’s the thing: You can’t stop your employees from going online. Especially now that we’re mobile. Instead of thinking in those terms why not look at it as an opportunity to drive engagement for your brand and your employees?

Smart companies

Gap Inc., is turning its workforce loose on social media in an attempt to re-create some of the buzz they had back in the 80′s and 90′s. It gives each of its 134,000 employees a no-nonsense social media policy, and NOWHERE does it recommend to “take down that internet thingy.” The policy is broken into three categories, “Keep in mind,” “How to be the best,” and “Don’t even think about it.”

Above is the picture of the brochure handed out to employees titled “OMG you will never guess what happened at work today!!” Talk about a real-world manual on social media! Even the warnings to employees are conversational stating:

“These guidelines are important – because if you don’t follow them a few things could happen: your posts can get deleted, we could lose customers and investors, we could get in trouble, or worst of all, you could even lose your job… So do the right thing, stick to the guidelines..”

Here are some highlights from the manual:

Keep in mind… 

There’s really no such thing as “delete” on the Internet, so please—think before you post.

Some subjects can invite a flame war. Be careful discussing things where emotions run high (e.g. politics and religion) and show respect for others’ opinions.

It’s a small world and we’re a global company. Remember that what you say can be seen by customers and employees all over the world and something you say in one country might be inaccurate or offensive in another.

Respect other people’s stuff. Just because something’s online doesn’t mean it’s OK to copy it.

Your job comes first. Unless you are an authorized Social Media Manager, don’t let social media affect your job performance.

How to be the best … 

Play nice. Be respectful and considerate, no trolling, troll baiting, or flaming anybody, even our competitors.

Be yourself. Be the first to out that you are a Gap Inc. employee – and make it clear that you are not a company spokesperson.

If you #!%#@# up? Correct it immediately and be clear about what you’ve done to fix it. Contact the social media team if it’s a real doozy.

Add value. Make sure your posts really add to the conversation. If it promotes Gap Inc.’s goals and values, supports our customers, improves or helps us sell products, or helps us do our jobs better, then you are adding value.

Don’t even think about it… Talking about financial information, sales trends, strategies, forecasts, legal issues, future promotional activities is not okay.

Gap, inc. has done a bang-up job on their social media policy. It’s straight-forward and conversational and non-aggressive.  Do you know of more great examples on policy?

Can Social Media hinder you from getting that new job?

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Ten years ago, the mere thought of using social media to hire or fire someone was completely unheard of. Today employees wonder if their next update on Facebook will also mean the unemployment line for them. How can social media play such an important role in employment today?

It’s a proven fact, that more than half of employers today will use some form of social media to network and screen potential employees before offering them a position with their company. While there are very popular social media sites to choose from, almost 50% choose to use  LinkedIn, just a little over half choose Twitter, and almost 80% decide to use Facebook.

Even bosses sometimes try to avoid any type of confrontation if they can when using social media services, they do not have to depend on meeting the prospective candidate up front. Using social media allows them to feel more comfortable and help them to focus more on the real situation at hand.

Employers will most normally consider and interview a potential candidate for the job shortly after receiving their application. Most employers will have a special group of personnel in human resources to handle this daunting task for them so they can continue to work. There are several ways that HR can handle hiring an individual. Some may choose to use certain HR software, however if the business is run online they may choose to use an online software. This special software for HR professionals is not cheap but once you purchase it you may never go back to hiring people the old fashioned way.

Even positions that are available at a local location are sometimes found online first in order to find someone to fit the description of the ideal candidate and essentially take up less time of employer’s who already have a jammed pack schedule.

Today potential employees must worry about their presentation which all starts with a piece of paper listing who you are.

At the same time, employees who already have a job need to worry about what their bosses may say or do if you start venting on the social media sites about something that is not going right at work. Whether you mean to or not, what you say online can affect your entire future.

Be careful and think it through; you may only get one chance to make the right impression. (Liam Condit)

Susan’s Two-Cents

Here’s a little video I captured from one of Charlie Judy’s posts on Recruitment and HR that scared the padooky out of me!

While I’m at it, what’s your take on the subject?

About the Author:

Liam Condit, an HR Professional, has been writing industry related news and comment since 2006. Other interests include jobs, marketing, politics and sport. He works with Computers In Personnel specializing in recruitment and HR system hostings.

Photo Credit: Flickr

4 Legal problems you could have when rescinding a job offer

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You don’t hear about employers rescinding job offers very often, but in this unstable economy you’ll want to protect yourself if you’re on the losing end. There are ethical issues when it comes to reneging an employment offer as well as legal issues that you should be aware of if you are leaving a current job for a new one. And a potential employee may be able to sue their almost employer for monetary damages with the help of a personal injury attorney under the following circumstances:

1. Discrimination

Discrimination protects all qualified candidates as far as race, background, religion, age, disability and gender. If a person covered under any of these categories can prove that an employer reneged on a job offer and then hired a person outside of the protected categories, the employer can be found guilty of discrimination.

2. Fraudulent misrepresentation of the position or company

Fraudulent misrepresentation is difficult to prove, as the individual must prove that the job offer was falsified—for example, say an individual quits his or her job for a promised new job, only to discover the company is moving offices and is rescinding their employment offer on their first day of work. If it can be proven that the move was known by the employer before the job offer was made, the individual can seek monetary damages for fraudulent misrepresentation.

3. Breach of contract

A breach of contract occurs when an employer or employee violates a signed employment contract, which outlines the terms of employment as well as the company policies. If the potential employee can prove that the employer violated the employment contract, for example, the employer makes you work hours outside of what was agreed upon and then rescinds employment because you won’t work those hours, they are guilty of a breach of contract.

4. Promissory estoppels

To prove promissory estoppels, the potential employee must prove that the loss of employment has resulted in a larger financial loss—i.e., if an individual leaves an existing job or pays to relocate only to be left without a job. In this case, the individual may be awarded damages suffered as a result of the reneged employment offer.

Photo Credit: gPrep.net

About the Author:

Colleen Harding is a freelance writer and guest blogger who specializes on writing about law. Her passion for the legal realm started with a job as a Legal Aid for a personal injury attorney and continued when she accepted a role as a Human Resources Coordinator for a mid-sized U.S. manufacturing company. Colleen is always looking of more freelance writing work and can be contacted at colleenaharding@gmail.com.