| Special #58 - August 6, 2020 |
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Don't Forget our Live Webinars for August Presenter Pete Tosh Webinars: $49.00 USD Utilizing HR Metrics to Illustrate & Enhance HR's Contribution Date - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 Time - 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM EDT
Transitioning from a Traditional Manager to a Strategic Leader Date - Friday, August 14, 2020 Time - 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EDT
Effectively Leading a Customer Service Team Date - Thursday, August 20, 2020 Time - 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EDT
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| HR and Employment Law News |
| - Constangy.com News & Analysis: Federal court vacates part of DOL’s regs interpreting FFCRA August 4, 2020
By Robin Shea / Winston-Salem Office
- GDOL: Georgia Pays Out Over $11 Billion in Unemployment Benefits JULY 30, 2020
- HRDive Article: With virtual meeting burnout, can companies be remote forever? Employers are choosing tools that make individuals productive and uphold company culture in a dispersed workforce. AUTHOR Samantha Ann Schwartz @SamanthaSchann
PUBLISHED Aug. 6, 2020
- ¶47,173 SHRM report reveals Black and White workers diverge on racial inequity in American workplaces — SURVEY RESULTS, (Aug. 5, 2020)
from GEA HR Answers Now
- Kemp Extends Public Health State of Emergency, Renews COVID-19 Restrictions AUGUST 03, 2020 |
| | | Constangy.com News & Analysis: Federal court vacates part of DOL’s regs interpreting FFCRA
August 4, 2020
By Robin Shea / Winston-Salem Office
Portions of the regulations issued by the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division interpreting the Families First Coronavirus Response Act were struck down yesterday by Judge J. Paul Oetken of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The DOL can appeal the decision, but for employers in the Southern District of New York, which includes New York City, the following provisions have been vacated:- The provision that says employees are not eligible for FFCRA leave if the employer does not have work available for them.
- The provision that very broadly defines “health care provider” for purposes of the exclusion from FFCRA eligibility.
- The provision requiring the employer to agree before an employee can take FFCRA leave on an intermittent basis.
- The provision giving employers the right to require some (minimal) documentation in support of a request for FFCRA leave.
“Work not available.” Section 825.20(b)(2), (6), and (9) of the FFCRA regulations provide that employees are not eligible for paid leave if the employer has no work available in any event. For example, if a restaurant is closed because of a shutdown order (or for some other reason, even if it has nothing to do with COVID-19), the restaurant’s employees would not qualify for FFCRA leave because the employer would not have had work for them anyway. Judge Oetken noted that the regulations apply the “work-availability requirement” only to employees who are under a quarantine order, who are caring for an individual who is under such an order, or whose children’s schools or “places of care” are closed or whose child care providers are unavailable. Judge Oetken ruled that the DOL’s interpretation of the statute was “entirely unreasoned” because it applied the work-availability requirement to only three of the six qualifying reasons. He also rejected as “patently deficient” the DOL’s argument that, to be eligible for leave, the qualifying reason had to be the only reason for the leave.
“Health care provider.” Section 825.30 of the FFCRA regulations creates a very broad exclusion from eligibility for employees who are “health care providers.” Under the regulations, virtually any employee of a health care provider is arguably excluded from coverage – even cafeteria workers, administrators, and custodians. Judge Oetken called the DOL’s definition “vastly overbroad”: “The statute requires that the Secretary determine that the employee be capable of furnishing healthcare services” to be excluded from eligibility. (Emphasis in original.) Thus, the excluded employee must be “capable of providing healthcare services,” not “remotely related to someone else’s provision of healthcare services.” Although the DOL is not required to make these determinations on an “individual-by-individual” basis, the court said, “the statutory text requires at least a minimally role-specific determination.” The court noted that the DOL conceded “that an English professor, librarian, or cafeteria manager at a university with a medical school would all be ‘health care providers’ under the Rule.”
Intermittent leave. Judge Oetken noted that the FFCRA says nothing about intermittent leave, and that the DOL could arguably impose restrictions on intermittent leave to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the workplace. However, he found that there was no justification for requiring employer consent for intermittent leave that did not relate to a condition that would increase the risk in the workplace – for example, when a parent needed to stay home because a child’s school was closed. According to the judge, “Insofar as it requires employer consent for intermittent leave . . . the Rule is entirely unreasoned . . .. It survives . . . insofar as it bans intermittent leave based on qualifying conditions that implicate an employee’s risk of viral transmission.”
Documentation. The FFCRA says that an employee seeking leave under the Emergency Family Medical Leave Emergency Act must provide the employer “with such notice of leave as is practicable.” An employee seeking leave under the Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act may be required “to follow reasonable notice procedures” after the first day of leave “to continue receiving such paid sick time.” According to Judge Oetken, Congress has already addressed this issue, and so the DOL’s very minimal documentation requirements are invalid because they are “more onerous than the unambiguous statutory scheme Congress enacted.”
Implications
Perhaps the most concerning aspects of Judge Oetken’s decision relate to the work-availability requirement and the health care provider exclusion. Regarding the former, it appears that an employer might have to provide FFCRA leave to employees who would otherwise have qualified for leave, even if the employer has shut down its operations. Regarding the health care provider exclusion, the impact on private hospitals may not be significant because most are presumably too large to be covered by the FFCRA. However, the FFCRA’s “under 500 employee” threshold does not apply to most public sector employers, so a hospital or other large health care employer that is considered “public” may lose this exclusion as it applies to ancillary employees.
As noted above, Judge Oetken’s decision does not apply outside the Southern District of New York. The Department of Labor could appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and the appellate decision – whatever the outcome – would apply only in the Second Circuit states of Connecticut, New York, and Vermont. Federal courts in other parts of the country are free to follow or decline to follow Judge Oetken's decision.
One option for the DOL would be to issue revised regulations, but that might not be practical because the FFCRA will expire on December 31, only four months from now. Or the DOL could simply leave the regulations in place but not try to enforce them in the Southern District of New York.
For a printer-friendly copy, click here.
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| | | | | Georgia Pays Out Over $11 Billion in Unemployment Benefits
JULY 30, 2020
Atlanta, GA - The Georgia Department of Labor (GDOL) announced today it has paid out more than $11 billion in state and federal unemployment benefits since the middle of March. These payments include regular state unemployment insurance (UI), Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC), Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), and State Extended Benefits (SEB).
Payments last week totaled $778,136,584 in regular UI, FPUC, PUA, PEUC, and SEB. Since March 21, $11,259,316,877 has been paid to eligible Georgians in unemployment benefits.
Last week, claims were down 37,329 from the week prior for a total of 84,984 for week ending 7/25.
"As additional claims are being filed, we have been able to maintain an impressive ratio of eligible claims filed to payouts," said Labor Commissioner Mark Butler. "Record breaking payout rates represent a new standard for this department as we strive to better serve Georgians."
The number of initial unemployment claims filed throughout the United States for the week ending 7/25 was 1,434,000, an increase of 12,000 from the previous week's revised level of 1,422,000.
Last week, the GDOL issued over $75 million in PUA payments to individuals who are self-employed, gig workers, 1099 independent contractors, employees of churches, employees of non-profits, or those with limited work history who do not qualify for state unemployment benefits. From week ending 3/21/2020 through 7/25/2020, 320,839 PUA claims have been validated. Of the valid PUA claims eligible for payment where a request for payment has been made, 87 percent have been issued payment.
In addition, the total federal funds issued to Georgians for FPUC totaled over $553 million last week. Over the past 18 weeks, the GDOL has issued more than $7.7 billion in FPUC funds. FPUC provides an additional $600 weekly payment to any individual eligible for any of the unemployment compensation programs – state and federal. The FPUC program is ending this week. The GDOL is waiting on a decision from the U.S. Congress on whether the program will be extended, amended, or permanently stopped. Information on the future of the FPUC program will be communicated as soon as possible on the agency’s website and social media platforms.
Last week, the GDOL issued over $8 million in PEUC payments to individuals who qualified for a 13-week extension in UI benefits. The GDOL also implemented SEB after meeting a federal unemployment rate threshold, adding an additional 20 weeks of unemployment eligibility for potential claimants. The GDOL has issued a total $78,395 in SEB payments.
From week ending 3/21/2020 through 7/25/2020, the sectors with the most regular UI initial claims processed included Accommodation and Food Services, 787,469, Health Care and Social Assistance, 390,018, Retail Trade, 359,438, Administrative and Support Services, 275,554, and Manufacturing, 254,685.
As of 7/28/2020, the trust fund balance was $585,483,621, down $1.962 billion, or 77 percent, from the 3/24/2020 balance of $2,547,476,454.
Today, over 122,000 jobs are listed online at EmployGeorgia.com for Georgians to access. The GDOL offers online resources for finding a job, building a resume, and assisting with other reemployment needs.
At this time, GDOL career centers are remaining closed to the public. All online services are still available as the staff continues to answer calls, process claims, respond to customer inquiries, and provide assistance to applicants. The GDOL will reopen offices to the public as soon as social distancing can be effectively implemented to protect both staff and customers.
Information on filing an unemployment claim, details on how employers can file partial claims, and resources for other reemployment assistance can be found on the agency’s webpage at dol.georgia.gov.
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USDOL Unemployment Numbers
News Release USDOL
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| | | | With virtual meeting burnout, can companies be remote forever? Employers are choosing tools that make individuals productive and uphold company culture in a dispersed workforce.
AUTHOR Samantha Ann Schwartz @SamanthaSchann
PUBLISHED Aug. 6, 2020
Serendipitous meetings at the coffee machine were left in 2019. Quick "yes" or "no" responses from someone peeping over a computer monitor are also gone.
COVID-19 transformed how communication is enabled because everyone is sitting at home. The result? Complaints of too many virtual meetings.
"We've started to hold things like office hours, which are just kind of casual meetings, people can drop in and drop out wherever they want, and that actually takes care of a whole bunch of randomness," said Matt Quinn, COO at software firm TIBCO.
If random conversations or meetings in an office made up the fabric of a company's culture, maintaining it is vital in a remote scenario. CIOs are not only choosing tools that make employees productive, they are choosing tools that uphold company culture in a dispersed workforce.
Just as employees can give themselves "heads down" time in an office, companies have to normalize the same behavior. If companies are remote indefinitely — or forever — they have to set boundaries. No place is this more pertinent than in virtual meetings.
Finding the balance between meetings that contribute to efficiency alongside the ones that maintain corporate ethos is a challenge in 2020. Collaboration and communication platform vendors can either aid or damage the harmony between the two.
Organized meetings are leading to fatigue, not just at TIBCO, but across industries. A Blind anonymous survey found only 20% of employees are actively listening to and providing feedback in real time to meetings, while 27% try to pay attention but often zone out. The survey included responses from more than 4,600 Blind users and dialogue among more than 6,100 professionals.
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Major tech companies are also fighting employee meeting fatigue.
To make loosen up meeting formalities and exhaustion, TIBCO began hosting "ask me anything" (AMA) town halls over Slack with larger organizations at the company. "I was a bit concerned when we started this," said Quinn, not because of the platform, but because etiquette for the forum was needed.
"You can't ask what somebody else's salary is," he said. The company was looking for ways to recreate casual conversations that "have kind of eradicated over COVID[-19]." |
| | What is a vendor's role
While adoption for communication tools increased due to stay-at-home orders, the functions of the solutions have largely remained unchanged.
"Our product works pretty much the same for most people regardless of what they're doing. But what we are seeing is that people are using the product more," said Ali Rayl, VP of customer experience at Slack.
Employees have more incentive to use platforms to full capacity, which was unnecessary when working in an office.
"The way that I kind of think about this now is that the office is just a tool. And the office was a tool that we all relied on to do a few things. It provided this really easy frictionless surface for us to communicate with one another," said Rayl.
The office was a physical container of meeting rooms or lunchrooms that helped cultivate a sense of community. "We're missing that tool," Rayl said. "And then the trick is to think about, what jobs was the office performing for us?"
Last month Microsoft Teams announced "Together Mode," an AI-enabled feature that virtually placed meeting participants in a common area; a classroom, conference room or coffee shop. The single-background simulation was designed to offset brain fatigue caused by video calls.
The feature amplifies existing video background tools users can enable. While there isn't data to show how often Teams users are engaging with Together Mode yet, the inundation of feature updates sheds a light on an unforeseen issue; whether or not the features could inadvertently contribute to meeting fatigue.
But user behavior is more likely the biggest contributor to fatigue, according to Rayl. It is up to companies to promote a sense of self-care and regulation for employees on their respective communication platform.
If an employee needs to silence their chat notifications for a while, that practice should be normalized, if not promoted. A constant inundation of notifications will hinder employee performance, not aid it.
"It's akin to someone walking into an office and yelling at the top of their voice," said Quinn. "You've always got people who are going to push those limits."
The purpose of these holistic communication platforms, such as Slack and Teams, is to provide a central hub of productivity. The platforms provide a place for document-sharing, real-time chat and banter in channels, as opposed to email, which fragments everything.
"If a user can't choose between, which is going to be my foundational work platform, then you're going to be distracted by everything else," Carrie Basham Marshall, principal and CEO of Talk Social to Me.
If a company's central communication platform is email, it's going to require a behavioral overhaul in terms of how users trust and communicate with a service, otherwise "everything else becomes noise," said Basham Marshall.
In addition to relaying proper etiquette on these platforms, CIOs have to be clear about their proper use. Slack and platforms like it require more in-depth training.
"I don't think there's anything wrong with using chat for the appropriate purpose," Basham Marshall said. Companies will run into issues when the user behavior is normalizing a small group chat where ideas, files and links are shared.
"It's creating a silo, the equivalent of email," she said. "A chat can be where great information goes to die."
Finding productivity at home or in-office
Working from home presents distractions the office lacks — homeschooling children, walking the dog, spouses on their own video calls.
While the workday has extended by 30 to 60 minutes on average for U.S. and Canadian workers, productivity decreased by 14% between March 26 and July 9, according to Aternity's latest Global Remote Work Productivity Tracker. The initial trend of pandemic-induced productivity boosted it 23% between mid- to late-March.
The tracker is based on data from millions of employee devices across more than 500 Aternity clients globally by measuring the "objective user experience," Mike Marks, head of product marketing at Aternity, told CIO Dive in an email. "If employees aren't using their applications or devices, we're not monitoring it."
There is a reality of "remote work productivity tax," said Marks, while on a virtual webinar. "As remote work continues at high levels, what we're seeing is a decrease in overall productivity." Productivity is measured by minutes of use in business applications, either in-office or at home. The research, based on findings from European countries, suggests there's a direct correlation between increased productivity in offices and decreased productivity at home.
TIBCO's office in Vietnam was one of the first to reopen. The company is relying on data scientists to make the call on where it's appropriate to reopen offices. As TIBCO explores ways to reopen or re-introduce employees to an office, it's changed the way the people thought about hybrid workforce models.
It does not mean 50% in-office and 50% at-home, according to Quinn. It "feels like it's 80% want to stay at home and occasionally come into the office, and 20% actually see the offices as a prerequisite for employment."
But for a global enterprise, such as TIBCO, this can be a positive change in terms of actually promoting company culture. Those "watercooler moments" were rare for a company with global presence. The AMA channels has "been a great level set" for international employees because "everything happened in Palo Alto, you had to go to Palo Alto," said Quinn. "That's where stuff happens."
Originally from Melbourne, Australia, for Quinn to have a watercooler moment, "I would have to go all the way to Palo Alto for that moment."
"Finding those new vehicles and new ways, you have to work on it. But you have to work on everything," he said.
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| | | | ¶47,173 SHRM report reveals Black and White workers diverge on racial inequity in American workplaces — SURVEY RESULTS,
(Aug. 5, 2020) from GEA HR Answers Now
Black and white American workers differ in their perceptions of racial inequity in the workplace, of incivility, and whether their employers can do more to promote equity and inclusion at work, according to a new report by SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management). The study, surveying HR professionals and American workers during June 2020, examines race and inequality in the workplace. Key findings include:
More than a third (35 percent) of Black American workers agree that discrimination based on race or ethnicity exists in their workplace, while only 7 percent of white workers agree.
Similarly, while 29 percent of white American workers say their workplace is not doing enough to promote racial justice in the world; among their Black colleagues, the number jumps to over 50 percent.
However, an equal amount (38 percent) of both Black and white American workers claim they don't feel comfortable engaging in candid conversations about race at work.
"For years, the business community has invested in diversity. But diversity alone isn't enough," said SHRM President and CEO, Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP. "While we have progressed in making that famous American promise of equality a reality, the journey is far from over—we need true equity and inclusion. And what gives me hope is that HR knows we must strike at the root of the problem—not with trainings and policies—but in and through workplace culture."
HR professionals also agree that racial discrimination exists in the workplace and this group is also divided with 49 percent of Black HR professionals agreeing compared to just 13 percent of their white counterparts. Like all employees, HR professionals are not comfortable engaging in candid conversations about race at work. However, despite their discomfort, 70 percent of all HR professionals say such discussions are appropriate at work, compared to only 43 percent of American workers who agree.
Source: Society for Human Resource Management.
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| | Kemp Extends Public Health State of Emergency, Renews COVID-19 Restrictions
AUGUST 03, 2020
Atlanta, GA – On July 31, 2020, Governor Brian P. Kemp signed two executive orders extending the Public Health State of Emergency and existing COVID-19 safety measures.
"The fight against COVID-19 continues, and these executive orders reaffirm our commitment to protect the lives and livelihoods of all Georgians. As our state ramps up testing, expands hospital surge capacity, and provides staffing, supplies, and resources to cities and counties throughout Georgia, we urge local officials to enforce the rules and restrictions detailed in these orders," said Governor Kemp. "When businesses, restaurants, venues, and citizens follow the guidelines carefully crafted by data, science, and the Georgia Department of Public Health, we will take our next measured step forward.
"While government plays an important role in fighting this pandemic, the people of our great state will ultimately be the ones who defeat this virus. We continue to encourage fellow Georgians to wear a mask, practice social distancing, wash their hands regularly, and follow public health guidance. Together, we will flatten the curve and stop the spread of COVID-19 in Georgia."
Executive Order 07.31.20.01 extends the Public Health State of Emergency through 11:59 PM on September 10, 2020. The Public Health State of Emergency allows for enhanced coordination across government and the private sector for supply procurement, comprehensive testing, and healthcare capacity.
By renewing the applicability of existing language, Executive Order 07.31.20.02 continues to require social distancing, bans gatherings of more than fifty people unless there is six feet between each person, outlines mandatory criteria for businesses, and requires sheltering in place for those living in long-term care facilities and the medically fragile, among other provisions. The order runs through 11:59 PM on August 15, 2020.
Read the Governor's executive orders here.
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Georgia Department of Public Health COVID-19 Daily Status Report: Updated 3pm daily
Totals from 08/05/2020 3:00pm Confirmed Cases - 201,713 Hospitalizations - 19,788
ICU Admissions - 3,616 Deaths - 3,984
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Georgia Employers' Association |
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