| View this email online if it doesn't display correctly |
| | Special #93 July 15th, 2021 |
|
| | Pete's Corner - Article 3 |
| Recruiting and Selecting Employees – The Most Critical Purchasing Decisions Your Organization Makes
Research shows that in 2021, 61% of employees are planning to add employees following the pandemic. And few leaders would argue with the idea that an organization’s Recruiting, Interviewing and Selection process significantly impacts its productivity, customer satisfaction, growth, culture, and profits.
Often organizations feel they need assistance with this very important process because:
• The person responsible for recruiting has many other responsibilities and lacks the time required
• They have tried their usual recruiting approaches and the right candidates have not appeared
• They do not want to directly contact competitors or other organizations where there are potential candidates
• And/or they want to keep the recruiting process confidential
GEA has the solution – our Recruiting Service – with a discounted rate for GEA members. This service is appropriate for executive, managerial, supervisory as well as technical professional positions such as engineers, accountants, etc.
GEA's executive search service:
• Saves you money – 20% of the candidate's first year earnings for contingency searches & 15% for retained
• Speeds up your recruiting process
• Provides you personalized, experienced service
GEA has filled these and other positions in multiple industries:
• Plant Managers Quality Managers
• Manufacturing Supervisors HR Managers
• Maintenance Supervisors Internal Auditors
• Sales Managers Credit Managers
• Marketing Managers Purchasing Managers
• Customer Service Managers Risk Managers
• Production Control Managers Sr. Programmer Analysts
• Engineers: Project, Process, Mechanical, Electrical & Environmental
We would enjoy discussing how GEA's Executive Search Services might help your organization with its recruiting needs. GEA’s Recruiters have:
• Access to multiple job boards - each with thousands of candidates – in addition to our extensive candidate database
• Over 30 years of experience filling vacancies within multiple functions & industries across the U.S.
Connect us:
|
| HR and Employment Law News |
|
HRDive.com OPINION
The impact of COVID-19 on HR practices: A support-centered frontier
Like so much else, HR will have a new face post-pandemic — but the change will serve everyone's best interests.
Published July 12, 2021 By Praveen Kanyadi
The ravages of COVID-19 in the workplace extend far beyond the fiscal and physical losses we have all faced in the past year. Four in ten adults in the American workplace have reported indications of anxiety, depression and other negative impacts on their mental health and well-being since the pandemic began. Alongside these burgeoning psychological struggles have come additional medical and addiction-related woes, such as difficulty eating, insomnia, grief-induced weight gain/loss, loneliness, unhealthily increased consumption of alcohol and a noted worsening of existing chronic conditions exacerbated by high levels of stress and consistent worry.
With only an estimated 37% of jobs in the U.S. even capable of going remote, the conversation surrounding COVID-19's roundhouse effect on deskless workers doesn't end when Mental Health Awareness month does. For first responders, transportation professionals, hospitality workers, and those in manufacturing retail jobs, the day-to-day dangers of deskless work trudge endlessly on, much like the workers themselves, in a fog of repressed fear and largely unspoken need. Without close interactions with colleagues and upper management each day to fall back on, many deskless and frontline workers are getting hit twice as hard by pandemic-related traumas, both practical and emotional.....Read More>>>
|
| | We have Fall In-Person Training Sessions!
2021 Leadership Training Series
A Six Part Series for Lead Personnel, Team Leaders, Supervisors and Future Front-Runners
Time and Dates All workshops will be held from 9:30 am – 4:30 pm. Printed materials will be provided the day of class.
08/25/2021 Leadership I 09/15/2021 Leadership II 10/06/2021 Leadership III 10/27/2021 Leadership IV 11/17/2021 Leadership V 12/01/2021 Leadership VI
Location Fickling Building 577 Mulberry Street, Macon, GA 31201 16th Floor Cherry Blossom Suite
|
| | Constangy.com Events:
Webinar Series - Your Workplace Survived 2020. What About 2021?
|
| | Constangy.com Blog The bathroom wars resume
BY ROBIN SHEA ON 7.9.21 POSTED IN GENDER IDENTITY DISCRIMINATION
EEOC takes a stand on bathrooms and gender identity.
Well, not the whole Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Just the chair, Charlotte Burrows (D), who has issued non-binding guidance on sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination. (Reportedly, all three Republican members of the Commission -- a majority* -- have criticized the guidance.)
- The EEOC will have a 3-2 Republican majority until July 2022, when the term of former Chair Janet Dhillon expires. At that point, President Biden will have the opportunity to nominate a Democrat to fill Ms. Dhillon's position, and if the nominee is confirmed, that will create a 3-2 Democratic majority. It's safe to say that a Democratic EEOC will be perfectly fine with Chair Burrows' guidance, and may even expand it.
How did this all come about? Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Bostock v. Clayton County that "sex" for Title VII purposes included sexual orientation and gender identity. However, the majority opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch made it clear that the Court was not taking a position on use of "private spaces":
"The employers worry that our decision will sweep beyond Title VII to other federal or state laws that prohibit sex discrimination. And, under Title VII itself, they say sex-segregated bathrooms, locker rooms, and dress codes will prove unsustainable after our decision today. But none of these other laws are before us; we have not had the benefit of adversarial testing about the meaning of their terms, and we do not prejudge any such question today. Under Title VII, too, we do not purport to address bathrooms, locker rooms, or anything else of the kind. The only question before us is whether an employer who fires someone simply for being homosexual or transgender has discharged or otherwise discriminated against that individual “because of such individual’s sex.” . . .
Justice Gorsuch went on to say that the Court recognized the importance of religious freedom and that Bostock was not addressing any such issues:
"Separately, the employers fear that complying with Title VII’s requirement in cases like ours may require some employers to violate their religious convictions. We are also deeply concerned with preserving the promise of the free exercise of religion enshrined in our Constitution; that guarantee lies at the heart of our pluralistic society. . . But how these doctrines protecting religious liberty interact with Title VII are questions for future cases too. . . .(Emphasis is mine.)
Despite these "disclaimers" in Bostock, Chair Burrows' guidance includes the following:
- Employers must allow transgender employees to use the bathroom, locker room, or shower that corresponds with their gender identity. (See Item 10.)
- It would not be considered unlawful workplace harassment for an employee to accidentally refer to a transgender co-worker by a "dead name" or by the pronouns that applied formerly. However, it could be considered unlawful workplace harassment if the mislabeling were deliberate and repeated. (See Item 11.)
These positions are consistent with the positions that the EEOC took during the Obama Administration, as the guidance notes.
Then, on Wednesday of this week, the attorneys general -- all Republican -- of the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho,, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia sent a letter to President Biden, saying that Chair Burrows' guidance was "a radically inaccurate construction of Title VII" that "fundamentally misconstrues and improperly extends Bostock." (They also criticized a Notice of Interpretation recently issued by the U.S. Department of Education, which took similar positions with respect to students and Title IX.)
The attorneys general blasted Chair Burrows' guidance on a number of grounds, including the following:
- It was issued unilaterally by Chair Burrows rather than being presented to the full five-member Commission (which, with a Republican majority, no doubt would have voted it down).
- The public was given no notice or opportunity to comment, nor were the states or "other affected institutions and individuals."
- It exceeded the scope of Bostock.
- It could violate employers' and employees' rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the First Amendment (speech and religion), and even Title VII (religious protections).
The guidance itself acknowledges that it is not legally binding. But I doubt that many employers will want to become guinea pigs after knowing the position that the agency is taking (or, at least, will take after July 2022).
Meanwhile, it appears that there is some public resistance to having persons with male body parts in women's private spaces. A spa in Los Angeles was recently the subject of a viral video, scathing comments on Yelp! and Trip Advisor, and protests (as well as counter protests) after a transgender woman who reportedly had not surgically transitioned was allowed in the female-only area, as required by California law.
Will employers trying to comply with Chair Burrows' guidance encounter similar resistance from their employees?
My prediction: We may soon see a boom in converting workplace restrooms, locker rooms, and showers to all-sex use, which will sidestep these issues. Construction contractors, you could be in for a very good year.
Tags: Bathrooms, Bostock v. Clayton County, Charlotte Burrows, EEOC, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Gender Identity, LGBT, SCOTUS, Supreme Court, Title VII
============================================================
Robin E. Shea / Partner
Email | 336.721.6854
Robin has 30 years' experience in employment litigation, including Title VII and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, the Equal Pay Act ...
Full Bio | Contact Author
|
| | | | |
Georgia Employers' Association |
|
|
| |
