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Transcript: How to Work Now – Part IScott MastleyThis transcript has been lightly reviewed for easier readability but may contain some grammatical errors here and there.Hi, this is Scott Mastley from Thread Engage. I'm here to talk about the future of work relative to some issues that are happening in the world right now, and what you can do as a small business, organization, or any employer to respond to these. How do you update policies, processes, forms? How do you educate your team to do the appropriate thing at work? How do you look at your culture, your values? What actions can you take? How do you respond to recent legislation and be prepared for the future of work? You do have to think that things have changed now. We need to be open to that because it is happening whether we want it to or not. And the world is a little different now. So what do we do? What do we need to know?You need to know about COVID-19. What is a business required to do? How do you keep your employees safe? What do you do if someone gets sick? Are there policies you need to update? Are there new government requirements that require compliance on your part?When it comes to race and protests and politics right now in America, there are things at work to talk about, evaluate, and be aware of. There may be prevention steps you can take, response steps you can take, training that might be required, policies that might need to be adjusted. And we're going to talk about those.In terms of sexual orientation and gender identity now protected by federal law, what do you need to know? We're going to provide you some information about what that means for you and your business, how to respond to it, what policies might need to be addressed, what training might need to be delivered, and how you prepare for that going forward?So what can you do in general? In general, you want to be able to update your existing forms, policies, and processes, to make sure you're in compliance also to make sure that they reflect your current culture and your organizational values and represent the kind of company and culture that you want to have for prospects, for job candidates and also your current employees and even your vendor partners. You want to think about how you're going to train supervisors, managers, and employees. Once you've changed any kind of process or policy, you want to make sure that everyone knows what that change is and what the expectations are going forward. If there are any consequences from deviating, from those expectations, things like that. So you want to share all of your information as much as you can, as clearly as you can, sometimes in various formats so that everyone gets it. And then we're always here at Thread Engage to give you any help you need to get through that process. And I'll talk a little bit about more about that towards the end.When it comes to COVID-19, there are many things to think about here. One is, what is your safety plan for your office? Are you rearranging furniture, spacing furniture, purchasing dividers? Are you testing temperatures? Are you paying for extra cleaning in the office? Are you having all virtual meetings instead of in-person meetings, staggering who can or cannot come to the office, identifying who the essential employees are and who non-essential positions are? In other words, with regard to employees being in the office or not. So essential positions that need to be in the office are positions that really can't be performed as well at home. They need to be physically in the office to do their job. Loading a truck is hard to do from home. So if that's someone's position and the office is safe, the warehouse is safe, the dock is safe, then that's where they need to be to perform that job.We're going to talk about procedures you need to have for reporting and quarantining and testing. Do you have a policy that talks about how employees should self-monitor, or are you, as an organization, monitoring for them? For example, testing temperatures when people walk in the door, it's okay to do that. If you are doing that, you don't want to write down "Scott's temperature," you just want to give people access or not based on their temperature. You can log that you have taken a temperature, but we don't want to record detailed medical information. The CDC guidance is always good to follow, and it talks about a time-based or a testing-based strategy. So if you have an employee who gets sick or is exposed to someone who is diagnosed or has symptoms, or has been exposed to someone who has symptoms, there is CDC guidance available for that. For example, if you've been exposed to someone, you should probably quarantine for up to 14 days because of the time that it may take for the COVID virus to take hold.If you have been diagnosed already, you could quarantine for ten days from the date your symptoms started. And the last three days before you returned to work should be symptom-free without fever-reducers, or things like that. Those are just two examples of time-based approaches to that. You could also require a negative test before people return to work. That may be challenging because of the availability of tests.You need to look at your leave policies. So the family's first Coronavirus response act as established some new kinds of leave related to COVID-19. One is the emergency paid sick leave. That's up to 80 hours of paid leave for people who are eligible based on various criteria. It could be that they were diagnosed, they've been required to quarantine by a doctor, by an employer, by the state. It could be that they are unable to work due to COVID-19 because of childcare. So that's the emergency paid sick leave. The expanded FMLA is another kind of new leave that most normal FMLA leaves family medical leave act leave is always unpaid. This newly expanded FMLA is only for people who cannot work remotely or in the office because of their childcare responsibilities being challenged because their childcare is unavailable. That may include a summer campus closed, daycare's closed, or grandpa is unavailable for childcare.You also need to look at your PTO and attendance policies. Do you want to extend extra vacation or paid time off to employees who might need it? For example, those who may be in a high-risk category don't feel safe returning to work or might not be safe returning to work yet. So you look at those policies in terms of attendance, do you have a job abandonment policy that says, if you're not at work three days in a row you're fired, you might need to reword some of those policies if you're choosing to be flexible in these situations.Also, do you have a remote work policy or work from home policy? If you don't have that and have employees working from home, then contact us, and we can help you establish an excellent policy for that. We have attached several resources to this presentation for you. There is a big return to work plan with several sample policies in it, including safety policies and other types of policies. And then we've also attached policies and information relative to some of the other topics we're going to discuss today.Travel policies: Do you want to limit the amount of travel only to essential travel or required travel? Do you want to require employees to quarantine for a certain period after they've traveled to specific locations before returning to work?You want to make sure you have returned to work documentation, so that is, if you have furloughed or laid off employees and wish to return them to work, you should have a recall letter. We have samples of those where you offer employees their jobs back, the terms of that offer, and they can either accept or deny that. That way, you have it documented because there are tie-ins to things like the PPP loan, and you can record the employee's refusal to come back to work. That is relative to unemployment claims as well.You need to think about how you are going to adjust the way you do things going forward. If we continue to have a work from home or virtual situation, like many organizations are facing right now, you need to think about how you will do your interviewing process, your hiring process, onboarding, and training going forward. Do you have a plan to adjust for virtual interviews using Zoom, RingCentral applications, like, video interviews where employees have to submit videos there's software for that? You could also just do it using iPhones or however you want. How are you going to adjust your orientation for new employees? When they come in, do you have a plan for day one, week one, month one? It needs to be very structured and planned out with pre-approvals from everyone involved, and commitments from everyone involved so that you can make it happen. Because what you don't want to do is hire a new employee and then have him or her sitting at home, not knowing what to do next. So it's a little more challenging when you don't have someone right in front of you in your office, and you need to look at what your procedures are for that, plan for that. And again, the HR advisors here at Thread engage. We'll be glad to help with that.If you're in the state of Georgia, this is specific to Georgia organizations and employers: Georgia has recently passed S.B. 359, which protects Georgia employers from liability related to COVID-19. If people were to walk into your office, these messages would help protect you from that kind of liability if you post them at the entrance to your business and your point of sale locations. It protects you from people saying, wait, I got COVID at your business or something like that. Authorities realized a lot of litigation is already starting to happen with plaintiff attorneys because they see this as an opportunity and are taking advantage of it. In my opinion, Georgia did the right thing to help protect employers from this kind of litigation. If you are not taking safety procedures, you're not social distancing, and you're not cleaning the office, you know, things like that, wearing masks or whatever's required for your specific situation, then you could have liability. S.B. 359 won't protect you from being reckless, but it will protect you if you are doing the right things that you're supposed to do, and people just trying to make claims against your business. So many other states have similar bills proposed right now, so follow those at the state level to see if you're in another state, if this will happen for you as well.Other things that are happening in the world right now, as we've had much talk about racial equality and protests happening, a lot of political conversations, and so many employers ask me, what can I do in this situation? What can we talk about? What kind of message can we deliver to our employees? So these are just ten things you can think about doing as an employer along this topic. I think diversity has always been important to successful businesses, and here are things you can do:Have open conversations with your friends and family, just to say, Hey, you know, let's, let's not be afraid to talk about what we think and what we, and let's be respectful as always.You can share these things with your employees to speak up if you see any kind of insensitive behavior, especially any type of discriminatory or harassing behavior. But anything that's insensitive or treats anyone in a protected class differently than anyone else. You need to remember that free speech is not as protected in private workplaces. If you're not a government employer, rather a private employer, you have the right to limit some free speech. You can require your employees to be respectful no matter what their personal views are.You can encourage employees to vote. Vote with your conscience, do what you think is right.Sign petitions.Protest peacefully. You could even change your attendance policies or have community days if you wanted, to support that.You could donate to the cause as a business or help your employees do that.Realize as individuals, that "my way" might not be the only way. Sometimes the way we've been raised or what we've seen or heard can affect how we think, and it might not always be what's most fitting with where we are right now in the world. So everyone needs to evaluate themselves individually, and companies should assess that as well.Look at your culture, look at your processes, how you recruit, how you promote, how you train, how you reward, how you measure all of those things to make sure you're doing that equitably. Then you can educate. Educate yourself as much as possible.Set a positive example is always a great way to go. Don't tolerate insensitive behavior, discriminatory behavior, comments, or anything like that.And one of the things that we've latched onto here at Thread is this motto: We're Stronger Together. So remind your employees that you do stay stronger together.Now, what do you need to do liability wise as a business to respond to this? One is to evaluate your culture and your diversity program. If you have a high-culture and have a lot of diversity, and all of your employees respect each other, feel free to share their opinions without getting upset or feeling like they're in a hostile work environment. If you have all of those things, then you might not need a diversity program. If you have issues in any of those areas, then it might be a good time to say either our diversity program isn't working, or we need to create one or improve the one we have. The goal is to achieve true diversity, which is, you know, diversity in demographics, diversity in thought, diversity in many other areas, it's bigger than just skin color. Still, it is worth investigating if you don't see that you have that in your business because your business will benefit from having a diverse workforce for sure.Then review and update the policies you have, like your equal employment opportunity policy. The list that's contained in that policy that says "we don't discriminate based on," and it says, you know, race, age, gender, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, military status, things like that and it keeps going and going and going. You need to make sure that that list is updated and that your EEO policy is updated as a whole. You may want to even include language in there about transgender employees. That's up to you. You also need to look at your anti-harassment discrimination policies to make sure that they're updated, they're current, your employees' managers are aware of them, and that your training is ongoing. Everyone understands what's okay, what's not okay, how to prevent this kind of action, what to do if they witness it, how to report it, et cetera. Look at your social media policy and talk to your management team about how you respond if someone makes an inflammatory statement on an employee's personal social media page, what's appropriate and what's not. As people state their individual opinions, it's usually safer to stay away from that and not engage in that. If they are tying it to your company identity, somehow, then it is okay to tell employees, you've got to say that this is your personal opinion, not the opinion of the company, and they need to separate themselves in that way. So check your social media policy and be aware of how you're going to respond.People are still not allowed to post discriminatory things, harassing, bullying towards your employees, etc. If you ever have one of these situations where you say, "I need to respond, I need to address this," I recommend that you talk to your human resources advisor or your legal counsel before you take action. It will ensure you don't get yourself in trouble because these things can be tricky.Many companies also have an off-duty conduct policy where they talk about what you can and cannot do outside of work. I would caution you to be very careful with this. This can get you in trouble with the national labor relations board, which manages union and non-union compliance. And so you could end up with a problem with that. And you just want to think about what kind of message that sends to the community from your company, so be careful in the way you draft that policy.Also, know your attendance stance. Are you going to be okay with letting employees take a couple of days off to participate in peaceful protests? Are you going to be okay if employees say, I don't feel safe returning to work because of COVID-19? Look at your attendance policy and determine if you need to be a little more flexible now or not based on your culture and what you think is right. And remember I said, free speech can be limited at work. So you may have some folks who want to wear clothing or bring a certain kind of flag or may want to say things that kind of challenge other people at work and spark pretty hot debates. It's okay to manage that at work and say, we've got to be respectful of each other's opinions. We also have to be respectful across the board at work. If people are doing things that offend or scare other folks at work, that's an issue that can be addressed, especially if it's disrupting at work. You can address it because it's disruptive. I'm not talking about one side or the other. When I talk about free speech, I'm talking about whoever's on either side of any issue. They still need to be respectful and professional at work.Make sure you provide awareness training, your supervisors, and employees as well and include reporting. So any kind of policy that says, we expect employees to act in a certain way, you want to have a reporting procedure that usually gives two or three options. So it's typically a direct supervisor, sometimes that supervisor's manager, then HR. If you're in a smaller business and you don't have a full-time HR person, maybe it's your direct supervisor, then the director of operations, and perhaps the CEO of the company, something like that. So you can do that. However you want, feel free to reach out to us if you have questions about how to do that.Onto the LBGTQ: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning. The Supreme court of the United States, SCOTUS, includes LGBTQ in title seven definition of sex. What does that mean? That means that employers with 15 or more employees are covered by title seven, which prohibits discrimination based on protected categories. And in those protected categories, one of the words used was sex. The Supreme court has decided that the definition of sex includes gender identity and sexual orientation, which are two different things. So gender identity has to do with how you identify. So if someone was born and assigned the gender identity as a girl, and then grew up and said, I identify as a man that's gender identity, right? Sexual orientation is the sex that you're attracted to basically. Because someone identifies as a man or a woman does not automatically mean that they're attracted to men or women or anything like that, they are two separate issues, and both are protected.Whether someone was straight, gay, bisexual, transgender, or any of those things on the list, they're protected by that based on their sexual orientation and gender identity. So you need to look at your policies again, equal employment opportunity policy, make sure your full list is up to date. And that list matches throughout your employee handbook. Look at your anti-harassment discrimination policy. Again, look at your dress code, or appearance and hygiene policy, a lot of older policies in handbooks and otherwise that talk about dress codes or appearance and hygiene will sometimes say, men should wear this and women should wear that. You would need to change those because now you may have someone who you may look at and say, that looks like a man, but the man is wearing women's clothes, right?So if you have a transgender individual in your company who some folks may see and say, I think of this person as a man, but this person identifies as a woman, you've got to change the way that person is addressed and allow them to choose where they go to the restroom. Make sure that they're not discriminated against or harassed by other employees, and they're treated with the same respect that everyone else is in your workplace. So you need to think about your dress codes and just say, you know, a simple dress code you can have is to dress appropriately for the client or conditions, right? And some people just have a business casual, dress business casual, and that's the end of it. Other companies go in a little more detail, which is okay, as long as you're not saying this is for men, and this is for women.Restroom use. Let's talk about that because that is a question that comes up to us as HR advisors when companies have employees who are transitioning, and I want to read this to you in its entirety: the equal employment opportunity commission ruled that a transgender employee cannot be denied access to the common restrooms used by other employees of the same gender identity, regardless of whether that employee has had any medical procedure or whether other employees may have negative reactions to allowing the employee to do so. Such a denial of access would constitute direct evidence of sex discrimination under title seven. That is actually from 2015 because there were some States who already provided these protections, and the SCOTUS recently, in 2020, caught up to that and confirmed that as well. So let's talk about the details of this.If you have an employee who is transitioning, the employee may or may not have a medical procedure. It's not our business to ask them if they are choosing to have a medical procedure or not. However, it is okay to talk with the employee and is okay even to have a policy about transitioning genders in the workplace. And you can speak with the employee who's choosing to transition about the employee's name, would you like to be called by a different name? Should we update the name on the forms that we can? You don't change the I-9 form or legal forms unless the name is legally changed. But for other things like email signature, a profile on the website, pronouns that people use at work, all of those could be changed based on the employee's preference.You don't want to ask the employee for medical or legal proof of sex. It's how they identify, and they will let you know how that is, and you accept that. If the person identifies as a man, then they will use the men's restroom. If the person identifies as a woman, they will use the woman's bathroom. We understand that sometimes other employees might feel uncomfortable, because they might say, well, I see a full-grown man in the restroom with me and all the other women. They're looking at the person's body, but they're not considering how the person identifies. This means you have to consider how the person identifies, and that's what you're going off of right there. So you can provide a single-seat, general, gender-neutral restrooms for others. In other words, you don't say to the person who's transitioning, "you have to use a separate restroom" because now you're discriminating against that person, that employee.If another employee comes to you and HR as a manager and says, I'm uncomfortable sharing a restroom, then you can say, look, you are welcome to use this gender-neutral, single-seater we've got right. So that's available for other employees. If they choose that you can also have multi-occupant, unisex facilities, like gender-neutral facilities with lockable stalls, it's up to you how you assign your restrooms, right? But you just remember that if someone identifies as a man, they use the men's bathroom. If someone identifies as a woman, they use the women's restroom. And if employees have questions or concerns, then they should talk to HR directly. And HR should always maintain employee confidentiality. If you don't have an HR person full time in your office, you can always work with Thread Engage and get all of the excellent HR expertise you need that's practical and will help limit your liability and increase your performance. And we'll also train your management team and leadership team on how to approach a transitioning employee and how to manage that process appropriately and respectfully at work.So we've talked a lot about what's changed, what's new and the future of work. A lot of it has to do with taking a step back, considering the ideal state for your business; who do we want to be? I know most companies want to be in compliance. We can help with that. We help with forms, policies, process audits, and manager training. We can guide you through employee situations. We can help you come up with guides and forms and letters and processes to make sure you're doing the right thing, to adjust to our changing world. And to be the best company. You can be to be a diverse company that treats everyone with respect regardless of their sex, race, age, disability, or any other protected class. We hope you will let Thread Engage. And remember now is the time sometimes I have companies call me for help, and they say, well, I'm going to wait until all this hard stuff is over, and then I'm going to call you. I will let you know that the companies who have chosen to get started right now say thank goodness that we didn't wait because you've helped us through all of this hard stuff, and we might not have been able to do it as successfully without you. So please look us up. Give us an email hr@. Call me anytime. Scott Mastley, Chief Human Resource Officer for Thread and our HR services called Thread Engage. We look forward to working with you soon. ................
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