May 2021 HR Professionals Magazine Digital Issue

Volume 11 : Issue 5

TM

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What Employers Need to Understand About the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021

Obesity –

Rethinking Assumptions on Weight Management and Benefit Programs

2021 Alabama SHRM Conference May 4-5

Mike Polis,

Director of Alabama SHRM

2020 EEOC

Roundup

11th Annual

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Features

5 note from the editor

Editor Cynthia Y. Thompson, MBA, SHRM-SCP, SPHR Publisher

The Thompson HR Firm, LLC Art Direction

Park Avenue Design Contributing Writers Janell M. Ahnert J. Austin Baker Katie Bayt Dan Berry Fredrick J. Bissinger Harvey Deutschendorf Tracy Duberman Kimberly Estep Brad Federman Rosalia Fiorello LeeAnn Bailes Foster Joel Lee Geoffrey A. Lindley Lisa May Rebecca Murtagh Jim Plunkett Tiffanie Ross Jim Trujillo R. Randy Vogenberg

Contact HR Professionals Magazine: To submit a letter to the editor, suggest an idea for an article, notify us of a special event, promotion, announcement, new product or service, or obtain information on becoming a contributor, visit our website at www.hrprofessionalsmagazine.com. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts or articles. All manuscripts and photos must be submitted by email to Cynthia@hrprosmagazine.com. Editorial content does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher, nor can the publisher be held responsible for errors.

HR Professionals Magazine is published every month, 12 times a year by the Thompson HR Firm, LLC. Reproduction of any photographs, articles, artwork or copy prepared by the magazine or the contributors is strictly prohibited without prior written permission of the Publisher.

All information is deemed to be reliable, but not guaranteed to be accurate, and subject to change without notice. HR Professionals Magazine, its contributors or advertisers within are not responsible for misinformation, misprints, omissions or typographical errors. ©2021 The Thompson HR Firm, LLC | This publication is pledged to the spirit and letter of Equal Opportunity Law. The following is general educational information only. It is not legal advice. You need to consult with legal counsel regarding all employment law matters. This information is subject to change without notice.

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6 Profile: Mike Polis, Alabama SHRM State Director 8 Alabama SHRM 2021 State Conference Agenda 9 Alabama SHRM 2021 State Conference Keynote Speakers

Talent Management and Recruiting 12 Remote but Not Alone – Maintaining a Positive Work-from-Home Culture

14 Business Partnerships – A Crucial Component to Business Survival 18 Mitigating the Risks When Hiring High-Level Executives

Employment Law 16 “Virtual” Harassment is a Real Thing 28 2020 EEOC Roundup 36 Issues Arising from a “Work From Home” Workplace 38 What Employers Need to Understand About the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021

Top Educational Programs for HR Professionals 7 P MQ - New SHRM People Manager Qualification Virtual Training 11 At-Home Prep for the SHRM-CP & SHRM SCP Exam

20 HR Outsourcing 101

17 Human Resource Management from Athens State University

24 American Rescue Plan Act: Implications for Defined Benefit Plans

19 University of Illinois School of Labor & Employment Relations

32 Psychological Safety at Work – Celebrating Mistakes

26 Citizens Want Tennessee to Invest More in College Education and Financial Aid

34 Promises Mean Nothing, Experiences Mean Everything

27 SHRM Team Training & Development

40 How to Enhance Your Authentic Leadership

43 The Gold Standard for Professional Development

44 Winning the Talent War: A New Workplace Experience Exists in Mobile 46 5 Ways Emotional Intelligence Can Help Us Through Pandemic Fatigue 47 Introducing the Next Innovation in App-Based Drug Screening & Reporting

Employee Benefits

22 How FedLogic Can Enhance Your Employee Benefits and Reduce Your Costs 30 Obesity – Rethinking Assumptions on Weight Management and Benefit Programs 31 Employer Checklist for a Comprehensive Obesity Prevention Initiative 39 Living Your Best Life Means Having Life Insurance

42 Save the Date for our May Webinars!

48 WGU Tennessee HR Degree Fully Aligned with SHRM Curriculum

Industry News 3 SHRM21 Annual Conference & Expo in Las Vegas September 9-12 10 WT SHRM 11th Annual HR & Employment Law Spring Conference in Jackson – May 20 June Issue features Profiles of U.S. News Best Lawyers in Labor and Employment Law plus Updates on New Employment Legislation and Employee Benefits - And the Latest on HR Management and the Pandemic Deadline to reserve space May 15

a note from the editor

What a difference a year makes! Flipping through our May 2020 issue, I was reminded of life in the HR community then. Our 2020 issue was dedicated to HR strategies for handling the coronavirus pandemic.

We began virtual conferencing and endless Zoom meetings. We were discussing how to navigate COVID and the Cares Act. A year later we are talking about the American Rescue Act and how to get workers to return to work. How long should be allow working from home? Should we mandate vaccines? Will business return to brick and mortar?

We are now learning the true meaning of “agile HR.” It is exciting to see the HR community bouncing back and gearing up for live and hybrid conferences. As I write, we are planning to cover the 2021 Hybrid SHRM-Memphis Legal Conference and the 2021 Tennessee SHRM Strategic Leadership Hybrid Conference in Nashville and in person!

We are elated to have our vaccines behind us and to be able to attend and cover these excellent conference favorites for you. We will have highlights of these conferences in addition to the 2021 Alabama SHRM Conference in Birmingham in our June issue. As an added treat, we will be able to visit our grands for the first time in over a year!

It is an honor to feature Mike Polis, Director of Alabama SHRM, on our cover. Mike is vice president of human resources for Morris Group International (MGI)—the parent company of Jay R. Smith Mfg. Co. in Montgomery, Al. Mike is happy to give back to the organization that played such a vital role in his career. He served three years as board president for the Montgomery, Alabama, chapter and is currently serving as state director for the 14 SHRM chapters throughout Alabama.

Both opportunities are experiences that have been invaluable to Polis.

We know you will enjoy reading about him in this issue – and meeting him in person at the Alabama SHRM Conference in May!

Special thanks to our sponsors and contributors who came together to bring you our May issue. We are proud to feature the Alabama SHRM Conference Agenda on Page 6 and 7. Be sure to catch Dr. Randy Vogenberg’s excellent article on rethinking our assumptions on obesity and weight management on our benefit programs. LeeAnn Foster has an important article on psychological safety at work also. We have two important articles on the American Rescue Plan that are “must reads” by Dan Berry with McGriff and Geoffrey Lindley with Rainey Kizer. There is also an important article on virtual harassment, which was inevitable in our current “work from home” culture.

We are delighted to bring you lots of SHRM and HRCI recertification credits in May. See our “Save the Date for our May Webinars” on Page 42. I hope you will mark your calendar and plan to join us for our complimentary monthly webinar sponsored by Data Facts on May 27 as we discuss HR’s role in corporate responsibility. Watch for your email invitation. If you are not receiving an invitation, click on “Contact Us” on our website.

cynthia@hrprosmagazine.com @cythomps

www.HRProfessionalsMagazine.com

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on the cover

Mike

POLIS

Mike Polis, ALSHRM – State Director “I was fortunate to choose HR as a professional career believing it is an extension of a person's self- image, as well as a molder of it. Having many different positions, transitions, and organizations gave me the competence and a way to make my mark in the world.”

Mike Polis first became a SHRM member twenty-five years ago when he started as the human resource manager for Jay R. Smith Mfg. Co. He knew he would need assistance in this new role, and SHRM had the professional tools and the network to help him succeed. The organization also provided a place to meet and exchange ideas.

There, he found his manufacturing HR peers thanks to the industry’s predominance in Alabama.

Polis is happy to give back to the organization that played such a vital role in his career. He served three years as board president for the Montgomery, Alabama, chapter and is currently serving as state director for the 14 SHRM chapters throughout Alabama. Both opportunities are experiences that have been invaluable to Polis.

Polis is now the vice president of human resources for Morris Group International (MGI)—the parent company of Jay R. Smith Mfg. Co. Throughout his career, even early on when he was a labor relations representative at United Technologies, his work philosophy has remained consistent; always treat employees as people, not problems.

Polis credits his father with making him who he is today. His father taught him to stay strong when life got hard.

While you need to be tough in certain situations, you should always back that up with fairness and compassion.

It is advice that still motivates Polis and helps him through challenging times such as this past year.

“It’s easy to be a yes man, but it’s much harder to do the meaningful work—to help put food on employees’ tables and helping the CEO make sound business decisions when it comes to their people,” said Polis.

The last year has been a troubling time indeed, but Polis says handling the crisis properly is an opportunity to shine a positive light on the HR profession.

“MGI leadership’s number one priority from the beginning has been providing a safe workplace,” said Polis.

“After that we tackled the hard work of updating policy to keep up with local, state, and federal guidelines.”

Polis also had to help the CEO figure out how to pivot a manufacturing business to adhere to social distancing guidelines and support employees who had to work from home.

An ongoing challenge for Polis is the scarcity of manufacturing talent in the US. It is a problem that affects a company’s ability to compete globally. While it is not a problem that can be solved entirely by HR, Polis has some ideas. He would like to see more trade and vocational programs and expand manufacturing's reach into STEM programs.

To that end, Polis is active in his local Chamber of Commerce and the Montgomery Public Schools Career Technologies Center (MPACT). Mike serves on the steering committee for “school to work,” which he admits helps fill his pipeline. However, more importantly, it helps to empower the next generation by showing students that manufacturing can provide them a meaningful career. 

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Conference Schedule

May

4

Tuesday

#ALSHRM21

May

5

Wednesday

7:00-5:00pm

Registration Open

7:00-5:00pm Registration Open

7:00-8:50am

reakfast & B Opening Session

7:00-8:50am Breakfast & Morning Session

9:00-10:00am Concurrent Sessions

9:00-10:00am

Concurrent Sessions

10:15-11:15am Concurrent Sessions

10:15-11:15am Concurrent Sessions

11:30-12:45pm Lunch & Fireside Chats

11:30-12:45pm Lunch & Keynote Speaker

1:00-2:00pm

Concurrent Sessions

1:00-2:00pm

Concurrent Sessions

2:15-3:15pm

Concurrent Sessions

2:15-3:15pm

Concurrent Sessions

3:30-5:30pm

fternoon Session & A Networking Reception

3:30-5:00pm

Closing Session

6:00-9:00pm

Vendor Events

windcreek.com

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Alabama SHRM 2021 State Conference Keynote Speakers

May 4-5 Sheraton Birmingham Hotel

windcreek.com www.HRProfessionalsMagazine.com

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Join us for an informative day where we will delve into critical issues facing human resources, including:  Competitive Advantage: Recruitment and Selection – Review all the legal aspects of the hiring process, from posting the position to making the job offer and everything in between.  Winning the FMLA Race – Learn essential best practices related to administering the Family Medical Leave Act in your workplace.  New Challenges for Employee Engagement and Retention – Join a panel discussion about effective strategies for engaging and retaining employees in a post-pandemic environment.  Collecting Medals: Case Studies – An interactive discussion of recent employment law cases and the application of relevant concepts and HR strategies.  Lighting the Torch: A Legal Update – Explore recent changes in employment law and regulations at both the Federal and State levels. Will include an interactive game to test your understanding.

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Remote But Not Alone:

Maintaining a Positive Work-From Home Culture More than ever, it’s essential to keep employees engaged and make sure they know they are not on an island.

By TIFFANIE ROSS

When organizations shifted to working remotely because of COVID-19, everyone's immediate focus was on establishing work-from-home infrastructure: ensuring your employees had the technology and processes they needed to be effective.

As organizations continue to evolve to meet the needs of new and existing employees balancing multi-generational households, remote work and the desire for location independence, it's important to ensure your leaders are prepared. Providing managers guidance on effective hiring, onboarding, interviewing and other talent essentials is crucial to ensuring engagement, growth, satisfaction and retention of employees.

From a recent Gallup poll, "three in five U.S. workers who have been doing their jobs remotely from home during the coronavirus pandemic would prefer to work remotely as much as possible…" Indicating that the employers should consider embracing a remote workforce as a long-term model.

Driving engagement from day one For years, new and existing employees have asked to work remotely. Among other factors, they value the flexibility, autonomy, work-life balance, location independence and relief from commute stress and they gain by not working in a centralized office. But there is a potential downside to remote working: Employees can feel isolated and lonely. Employees who don't feel connected with their team, manager or organization are less likely to be engaged and are more likely to leave.

What's more, between 27% and 31% of employees reported a decline in their ability to perform their job in a given week following the pandemic-related shift in work, according the ADP Research Institute® study A Post-Pandemic Workforce: Tracking Perspectives Amid COVID-19.

Engagement and productivity go hand-in-hand and can be impacted by workplace culture.

Leaders must create an environment where remote employees can thrive, feel valued and know that they matter.

How to intentionally develop a positive remote work culture Just like in the office, a culture can develop on its own, but creating a positive culture requires intention. Three strategies to keep in mind to ensure a positive remote work culture are setting expectations, promoting flexibility and committing to communication.

• Set expectations. It's important to outline expectations for employees who work remotely. For example, how will teams communicate about a project? Will they primarily use a, text, email or video chat? How quickly are they expected to respond to a text? To an email? Are there core hours during the workday when everyone is expected to be available?

Your policy may have required that remote employees keep the same hours as they would if they were in the office, powering up the laptop at 8 a.m. But these days, as many employees also balance other family responsibilities, that 8 a.m. start may conflict with a child's online school call for math class.

By focusing on the employee completing the work versus which hours the employee works on it, you give them much-needed and appreciated autonomy.

• Increase communication. When employees start a conference call or video meeting, it makes sense to be efficient and jump into the discussion. When you're working remotely, however, it's also necessary to connect on a personal level. Some managers have coffee breaks during their longer meetings.

For example, my team meets weekly, and during that time, we check in on how everything is going. We might talk about some business items, but we also talk about fun things, such as what we're cooking, reading or watching lately. It might sound simple, but making that personal connection can be enough to drive engagement and let employees know you understand and you care.

More than ever, it's essential to keep employees engaged and make sure they know they are not on an island. Creating a positive remote work culture benefits the organization because it makes it easier to engage and retain employees as well as attract new ones. However, developing this type of environment when a significant part of your workforce is working from home needs to be done purposefully. Investing this time now can yield long-term rewards.

There aren't right or wrong answers. What matters is establishing the parameters of behavior, which will make communication easier and decrease confusion and anxiety.

• P rovide flexibility. While it is important to have a remote working policy, flexibility is key to success, especially in current pandemic conditions. Be open (that is, be flexible) to the idea that you still may need to adjust your remote policy. Focus on performance and productivity goals for each employee with clear expectations and check-ins to ensure alignment.

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Tiffanie Ross

Senior Director Airs, an ADP Company

www.HRProfessionalsMagazine.com

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BUSINESS PARTNERSHIPS

– A CRUCIAL COMPONENT TO BUSINESS SURVIVAL

By JIM TRUJILLO

A

year after the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, the spectrum for how American companies are doing is as wide as ever. On one hand, there’s the thousands of businesses pummeled by the impact of the pandemic, and on the other hand there’s companies who have sustained through the challenges, and the lucky ones have even thrived.

One thing is certain, businesses had to reevaluate their individual practices, processes, and procedures to meet the needs of this challenging time. In addition to the ever-evolving pandemic landscape, new legislation and regulations surrounding COVID left many businesses with questions unanswered and feelings of isolation in how to deal with new requirements and expectations.

But throughout last year’s chaos, the determination and grit of many businesses provided in a spirit of collaboration and opportunities for unique partnerships that may not have happened otherwise.

There were some business decisions and partnerships that just made sense. In my state of Kentucky, home of the Bourbon Capital, distilleries used their resources to switch from bourbon production to making hand sanitizer. Some distilleries were even supplying hospitals, military, and other essential businesses during the peak of the pandemic, when PPE was scarce for essential workers.

Another great example of pandemic-induced business partnership happened in May of last year when DoorDash, the online food delivery company, partnered with United Way. Over the last year, DoorDash helped United Way deliver food and supplies to individuals and families at high risk of contracting COVID, experiencing food insecurity, or those in quarantine and can't leave their homes.

Now these are just a couple of the thousands of examples of how businesses teamed up and pivoted in the wake of hard times. But I want you to think back on your own experience. What ways did you adapt your processes? What steps did you take to find solutions during the last 365+ days?

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Over the last year, Kentucky adopted a phrase that stuck with me, “We will get through this, we will get through this together.” As a retirement plan advisor, I’m a partner to a variety of businesses and over the last year, we had to get through it together.

In previous years, my practice was extremely reliant on in-person communication. From providing one-on-one meetings to educational seminars and workshops, the lockdowns of last year required us to slightly modify our processes and procedures. Like many professional services companies, ours went completely online – a necessary adjustment that required trust and flexibility for both parties.

On top of the tactical changes of our service, there were an array of legislative changes, obligations, and topics that our business partners needed to be educated on. From the information regarding the CARES Act to the implications of extreme market volatility, companies were searching for answers, and we knew we had a job to do.

Businesses were making tough decisions and there was an abundance of information that seemed to change almost daily. In addition to the resources of our retirement plans team, we leveraged a variety of relationships to help our business owners make more informed decisions on the PPP, loans, outplacements, and a many other operational impacts. I’m telling you this, not to toot my own horn, but to share my experience.

We chose, as a company, to go out of our way to help our clients and partners because we believed it was right.

Now that I’ve had time to reflect on the last year, it’s really made me consider why we choose the business partners and relationships we do.

Could there be a better way to ensure a business relationship will be beneficial for both parties involved?

First, let’s start with defining a business partner. In the traditional sense, it could be someone you literally go into business with. But for many of us, the word partner and relationship are completely interchangeable.

From vendors, to outsourced services, from customers to employees, there are many different types of relationships and partnerships that an organization can hold.

While the majority of us date before we ever think about getting married, business relationships don’t always go into it with the same mindset. Typically, when a business relationship is established, you assume it is just going to always work out – you put a ring on it, so to speak. You want the best for your business relationships, but how can you determine that this partnership will stand the test of time? From my experience, there are three essential elements to any successful business relationship.

1. RELIABILITY Any partnership or relationship you go into should be reliable. There’s a sense of peace when you know that someone has your back. A reliable partner will be consistent and trustworthy, delivering positive results during the good times and the bad. Most of us are already busy doing our own jobs, so the last thing you need is the burden of inconsistency or failing to meet expectations of the jobs delegated to them.

That is one extra layer of unnecessary stress in an already stressful post pandemic era.

accommodate an ever-changing landscape. If your partner is unwilling, or worse can’t, recreate themselves to thrive in a new normal, then how are they going to serve you when you adapt?

3. PASSION The last year presented many of us times where we could just give up and stop what we’re doing. But what I believe helped the majority of businesses stay the course was passion. Passion for your job, passion for your people, and passion to do the right thing. Passionate partners will go above and beyond for their relationships because it’s embedded not only in their psyche, but in their soul. A partner without passion will buckle under pressure or just not care enough to put in the extra work.

While companies are still searching for ways to stay afloat, reevaluating your current or future business relationships is a great way to ensure you’re setting your company up for success. As you reflect on 2020 and all of the challenges you endured, think about who was by your side, and possibly who wasn’t.

2. CREATIVITY As we saw over the last year, the status quo can change at any time.

Adaptability and creativity have been key components for businesses trying to stay afloat throughout the pandemic, but these are also essential for business longevity. Innovative companies who embrace a new look at their operations or processes can have new opportunities to

Jim Trujillo, CFP®, PPC®

Financial Advisor JimTrujillo@argi.net www.ARGI.net

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“Virtual” Harassment Is A Real Thing

By FREDRICK J. BISSINGER and ROSALIA FIORELLO

Since the COVID pandemic hit the U.S. in March 2020, employers have been navigating the difficult straights between maintaining safe workplaces (as required by OSHA and related state enforcement entities) and staying afloat both operationally and financially. For many employers (especially white-collar employers), remote working has proven to be a viable method by which to maintain operational readiness and productivity, and at the same time, maintain a safe workplace. But, as with most “solutions” there are inevitably both unintended consequences and new issues to address.

THE GOOD. Our general observation (both internally within our law firm and with our clients) is that remote working has been an effective tool in helping businesses remain operationally ready and productive. In fact, many businesses are shedding some or all of their commercial real estate obligations and related overhead expenses, and consequently, have no intentions of ever returning to a pre-COVID operational platform. Others are going to use an approach that requires employees to work in-person for a portion of the work-week and work remotely for the balance.

On the whole, employees generally like the remote work platform, assuming they have the necessary Wifi access, a functional computer, and the requisite safety software to protect company information.

In a case brought by the EEOC, Frye Electronics paid $2.3 million to settle a harassment and retaliation case. A manager allegedly sent multiple sexually charged texts to a young female salesperson and asked her to his home for drinks. She raised a concern to her direct supervisor, who took the matter to the legal department and was promptly discharged. The EEOC charged that the company did not address the harassment and of course retaliated against the supervisor.

In Espinoza v. County of Orange, the California Court of Appeals upheld a $1.6 million verdict against an employer and in favor of an employee who was being harassed by co-workers on a blog.

The employee reported the harassment to his supervisor, who indicated that the complaint would be forwarded through the proper channels, but the employer failed to conduct any official investigation. Ultimately, the Court of Appeals determined it was proper to allow the jury to conclude that the employer was liable for harassment arising from a blog maintained by co-workers outside of the workplace, because it was aware of the harassment and did not take action.

THE BAD. Aside from the issue of protecting private and confidential information from hackers and malware, one of the most noticeable side-effects of remote working is a loss of interpersonal connection with co-workers and clients, which is potentially problematic on multiple levels, but especially problematic in terms of maintaining healthy and productive interpersonal relationships.

Maintaining such relationships (both internally and externally) is critical for both personal and company success. By default, employees have increased their reliance on email, text messages, and social media platforms, as opposed to in-person communications. Obviously, phone usage is still common, but not as effective as being in-person. And Zoom-type platforms are very efficient and helpful, but still not the same as being in-person.

Unfortunately, with many more employees working from home and communicating with co-workers and clients via electronic communication and social media platforms, the lines between business and personal, as well as appropriate and inappropriate, are frequently blurred and crossed. The big-ticket issue is how can employers successfully manage remote working and the corresponding increase in reliance on technology to communicate, a blurring of the lines between business and personal, as well as the rapidly changing societal norms on what is and is not appropriate communication. Add to this equation a transition from the Trump-era regulatory agenda to President Biden’s regulatory agenda, and the result is going to be a significant increase in regulatory scrutiny applied to employers as they try to enforce their behavioral expectations and related policies, including those contemplated on social media.

THE UGLY. Based on the current trends in our society there is a growing intolerance for those who think differently than others on various sides of the political spectrum. That intolerance and lack of willingness to consider opposing points of view has quickly invaded the workplace causing significant tension, especially as to issues of race, sex, LGBTQ, gender identify, religion, disabilities, and relations between generations.

Accordingly, employers are in the unenviable position of having to navigate these very difficult and rapidly changing (and at times countervailing) forces. At the same time, employers are grappling with the challenge of recruiting and retaining talent, as well as contending with significant world-wide competition, especially with countries that do not have the same regulatory constraints.

When you factor into this equation the social discord in the U.S. that has existed for some time and which has been inflamed by the last several election cycles, the George Floyd scenario, multiple international issues (GWOT, mass migration, weather-related disasters, etc.), the increasing role and reliance on technology in all phases of life, and the COVID pandemic issue, our society and workplaces have changed and are changing rapidly and on many levels – some for the better and some for the worse. One of the most obvious negative changes is the growing misuse of social media platforms. Although well intended, social media platforms have too often become platforms that encourage and perpetuate bad and irresponsible behavior.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? Given these dynamics, our collective experience informs us that sticking to and focusing on the basics is the foundation to successfully navigating the issues outlined above, especially as it pertains to electronic communications and social media. The following baseline issues are a good starting point for your analysis:

Particularly with more employees working virtually and participating in all manner of virtual platforms and activity, there is opportunity for inappropriate and harassing conduct via the virtual worlds. The categories of such misconduct have been referred to variously as virtual harassment, cyber-stalking, sexting, and texting harassment. A few examples follow.

b. Do you effectively communicate those values?

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1.

Does your company have a relevant set of Core Values? a. Do those Core Values resonate in today’s dynamic and quickly changing work environment?

c. Do you live those values? d. Do you hold yourself and others accountable to those values on a consistent basis?

2. Do your company behavioral policies (including harassment, discrimination, and retaliation, as well as work from home rules and expectations, including use of electronic communications) accurately reflect the realities of how you conduct business today? a. Have you effectively communicated those policies, and more importantly, the key expectations of same to the workforce? b. Do you consistently hold yourself and others accountable to those policies?

3. More specifically, have you effectively communicated to all employees who work remotely the following: a. The expectations for work-related conduct and communications (as opposed to what is not work-related)? b. The fact that social media behavior outside of work can have workrelated consequences such as when conduct is illegal, harassing, or discriminatory? (Remember to consider Section 7 protections under the NLRA when reviewing specific instances of conduct for which discipline is being considered.)

a. Have you appropriately analyzed the potential implications of the NLRA’s Section 7 protections and applicability to the behavior in question?

6. Depending upon the results of any such investigations, have you consistently taken appropriate remedial action (designed to effectively end the inappropriate behavior)?

7. Have you effectively used such issues as an opportunity to further educate the workforce and re-set the behavioral expectations in a manner that is easily understood?

The next few years will be both interesting and very challenging for employers, especially as it relates to integrating multiple generations in the workplace setting and enforcing workplace behavioral expectations, and successfully competing in a dynamic and quickly changing economy. Electronic and social media communications will inevitably be an ongoing source of conflict and potential harassment, discrimination, and retaliation liability exposure.

Is your organization ready to successfully grapple with these issues?

Fredrick J. Bissinger, Regional Managing Member

c. Have you provided examples of what is and is not acceptable behavior, especially as it pertains to electronic communications and social media platforms?

Wimberly Lawson Wright Daves & Jones, PLLC Nashville, Tennessee office fbissinger@wimberlylawson.com

4. When issues arise, have you consistently and appropriately investigated them?

Rosalia Fiorello, Attorney

5. Have you applied an objective quality control process when analyzing such issues and how to respond to them (so as to ensure an appropriate level of consistency), while also dealing with each scenario on its own merits?

Wimberly Lawson Wright Daves & Jones, PLLC Nashville, Tennessee office rfiorello@wimberlylawson.com

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17

Mitigating the Risks

When Hiring High-Level Executives

H

By LISA MAY

iring the best applicant is important, but there should be more weight focused on executive-level hires. For one thing, they will be at the company’s helm, driving vision and planning goals. For another, executive employees are watched more closely by the media than their lower-level counterparts. The news is full of Presidents and CFO’s who have faked degrees, lied about their experience, or been involved in unsavory behavior. A single act of bad judgment on their parts could negatively affect your company for months, or years, down the road.

HR Pros should implement special processes for screening top-level new hires. Make sure your screening process includes these five components, along with your regular background checks that you run on everyone.

Verify Education Claims One of the most embarrassing media frenzies a company can fall victim to is finding out a member of their leadership team faked their education. Degree fraud is rampant and shockingly easy to do online. Don’t assume your top pick is immune to the temptation. Use a trusted third-party screener to check into any claims of degrees. They should be able to verify dates, classes, field of study, and any graduation honors. It’s also a good best practice to write and follow a policy of how your company will deal with degree fraud if you happen to uncover it.

Thoroughly Investigate Employment History Make certain the applicant supplies several work references. These references should be verified by calling a phone number that is found online for the company where the candidate says they are/were employed. Do not utilize personal phone numbers when verifying a reference, as this could link you to the applicant’s friend or family member. Your background screening vendor should be able to return the dates worked, title, salary, and whether they are eligible for re-hire.

Ask the Right Questions During the interview process, make certain the applicants answer real-world questions that showcase their expertise and knowledge. Ask them to explain projects they are proud of along with the goals they accomplished and how they affected the company. These answers provide evidence of their ability to perform your job well. They also offer insight into the validity of the claims they make on their CVs.

Employ Social Media Screening Investigating a candidate’s social media sites is becoming an increasingly popular practice.

Tweets, posts, likes, and shares give a company a sense of a potential new hire they can’t find in a resume or job interview. Social media screening shows negative information on a candidate (lapses in judgment, drug use, inflammatory racial comments, bad-mouthing a current or former employer) that may be evidence the individual isn’t the right fit for your company.

A third-party screener keeps you FCRA compliant by redacting certain private information and only showing actionable pieces of information that can be used in the hiring process. Proceed with caution about using social media, because you can’t unsee protected class information once you see it. Using a thirdparty screener to review a top-level candidate’s social media presence is a smart move to gain information on their attitudes and opinions, while still maintaining compliance. * Keep in mind to NEVER ask for a candidate’s online passwords, ALWAYS get a written authorization, and DO NOT friend a candidate to dig for information.

Screening top-tier job candidates must be done strategically and thoroughly to make sure you fill the position with a person who exhibits the attitude and morals of your company and possesses the experience and education needed to do the job well. By expanding your screening process to account for executive-level hiring, you can be confident you’ll onboard someone who will uphold the organization’s core values AND perform their job with the savvy that comes from their experience.

Use Assessment Surveys Sometimes it’s what a candidate doesn’t say that can be detrimental to your company’s growth and viability. This stands true even more so with top-tier hires. Assessment surveys measure a candidate beyond their experience and education. Information on their morality, attitude, and behaviors paints a full-circle picture when it’s added to other screening tools. Assessments help discern an executive candidate’s inner core values and perceptions, which are important components of functioning well in a leadership role. This information is a valuable tool in deciding if a person will fit well into the company culture.

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Lisa May

Senior VP of Strategic Solutions lisa@datafacts.com www.datafacts.com

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In each course, students are encouraged to apply their coursework to their careers.

Students benefit from peer networking in selective cohorts – our students have an average of eight years of experience

in HR and related business functions. “When I heard that the program was being offered online, I was excited for the opportunity to experience the program virtually, expand my network of HR professionals … and enhance my knowledge of Labor and Employment Relations,” said Annette Gorzelany, online alumna who was promoted to Labor Relations Specialist at The Boeing Company. Each cohort includes a diverse and experienced group of working professionals from long-standing corporate partners like BP, PepsiCo, and Cargill, in addition to professionals in non-profit, consulting, and higher education institutions.

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Whether you have an in-house HR team that’s wrestling with an increased workload, or you own a small business that doesn’t yet have a formal HR function, outsourcing introduces a high degree of flexibility for your organization. Some of the key benefits of outsourcing include: • Improved Scalability – As your business demands evolve, you may need access to HR resources on an episodic basis.

Common scenarios include benefits administration support during open enrollment, recruiting and onboarding services during periods of high growth, periodic salary surveys to ensure you’re paying market competitive rates, and other similar scenarios. Such activities might overload your existing team or require expertise you don’t have in-house but bringing on full-time employees to meet these needs would be impractical.

Outsourcing provides the support you need “on demand.”

• Decreased costs – As with many outsourced functions, leveraging an HRO to support your personnel needs can yield significant cost savings . . . both today and tomorrow. There’s the immediate return of providing valuable services to your business without incurring the time and expense typically associated with recruiting, hiring, training, and managing a new employee.

However, there are also longer-term cost improvements that an HRO relationship will bring to the table. Avoiding fines and penalties due to non-compliance, eliminating reputational risk to your brand associated with violating policies, improved employee retention by helping workers to better understand benefits options and the total rewards they’re receiving, and dozens of other examples . . . they all represent long-term impacts of finding and retaining an HRO partner that acts as a true extension of your team.

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• Standardized processes – One of the most common HR challenges growing organizations face is driving “people processes” standardization across the business . . . particularly if your workforce is spread across multiple locations.

Ensuring different managers are treating employees in a consistent fashion, providing a central resource for all employees – manager and worker alike – can access content that addresses the lion’s share of operational considerations and policies, even delivering access to a standard set of forms and work flows, all help to improve the overall employee experience. Starting this from scratch is timeconsuming and typically involves some level of trial and error but working with an HRO organization can accelerate the entire process.

• Reduced risk – For most employers, compliance has become an incredibly challenging issue. This is due largely to the fact that, from an HR perspective, there are multiple layers of regulations and policies to navigate. Take employee absence and leave, for example. There are federal laws impacting all employers operating within the United States, most notably the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). However, there’s also a constellation of state-specific absence and leave policies – 300+ and counting – that offer provisions not covered by FMLA or are more generous than what FMLA provides. Further, there are now some cities that are creating policies for businesses within their borders. This is just one example of the complexities that come into play. HRO organizations, however, are intimately aware of the policies and practices impacting the communities they serve and can help to ensure you’re addressing regulatory issues in a consistent, focused, and respectable fashion.

• D iversified skills – Given the turbulent nature of 2020, I think we’re all actively aware of the rapid changes that could impact our business. During the height of the pandemic, for example, HRO Partners began fielding questions about employee engagement, change management, and other similar services. When such circumstances arise, you need access to individuals who are skilled in addressing these issues, have access to additional resources, and can ultimately drive the fastest path to resolution.

About us: At HRO Partners, we’ve been serving the small – and mid-sized business community since our inception and we continue to deliver new products and services, each aimed at enhancing your value to the clients and employees they support. With more than 150 businesses, serving over 50,000 employees, and nearly $300 million in enrollment savings to-date, our experience and our track record is second to none. And now, we deliver access to an always available, constantly updated, online platform designed to provide expert advice “on demand.”

We call it “HRO Now,” but you’ll call it the best investment you’ll make in 2021.

Call us today at 866.822.0123 or visit us online at www.hro-partners.com. www.HRProfessionalsMagazine.com

21

How FedLogic Can

Enhance Your Employee Benefits and Reduce Your Costs

By JOEL LEE

E

mployer-based health benefit plans have been the foundation for helping America’s families get the healthcare they need, when they need it - from the simplest flu shot to the most complex heart transplant.

Employer-based health plans have been a powerful

contributor to so many personal miracles. But what happens when even the best employer plans can’t meet the need? FEDLogic is a company built to supplement the employer’s basic health plan and serve as a resource when the employer’s benefit plan can’t meet a pressing need. Frank Cardenas and Anita Blackmer from FEDLogic often talk about the people, the kind of circumstances they face and the dedicated and remarkable HR professionals they have found through their work.

policy to cover all of her cancer treatment in the future", said Blackmer. “The benefits manager realized much later that the solution not only got the young woman the care she needed but it also saved the benefit plan more than $100,000 in expense.”

Frank Cardenas, CEO at FEDLogic, remembered a case that was heart-rending for the whole HR team. “I got a call late one evening. It was Justin who is the health benefits coordinator for one of our earliest clients. He told me a story about two young people who had met working at his company, fell in love, got married and were expecting their first child”, remembered Cardenas.

“Justin explained the child had been born prematurely and was profoundly disabled. The family had enrolled in the benefit plan with the highest deductible and simply did not have the resources to cover the steep deductible they’d shortly face.”

"Not long ago we got a call from the benefits manager at one of our biggest clients. She was calling to see if there was any way we could help, "said Anita Blackmer, the chief operating officer for FEDLogic. “The HR officer was heart-broken. She just finished talking with one of their best operations team members. The young woman had confided that she had just learned that she had an aggressive cancer. The course of treatments would make it impossible for her to continue working. Of course, COBRA was available for her, but the young woman could simply not afford to pay those costs for more than a month or two.”

“The next morning the FEDLogic team started working to find options for a more affordable option for the baby… Medicaid, Social Security disability, the state’s Child Health Improvement Program. Justin and I spoke with the two young people and walked them through their options. By the time they were prepared to bring their child home, we had uncovered a plan for their child that removed the threat of financial ruin”, said Cardenas. “The client was relieved with the outcome for the parents and surprised to realize how much the child’s near-term care might have cost the benefit plan.”

“FEDLogic’s job was to find a better outcome for this young woman and for our client. Within days, we were able to complete the extensive paperwork for a Social Security Disability claim that would provide income for her since she had lost her job. We also found a better and more affordable healthcare

“We love to talk with brokers about the work we do,” said Blackmer. “They know how difficult it is for their clients to get this information and how hard their client’s benefits team needs to work to help employees with these transitional events. What they

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don’t often realize is how these government benefit programs can help them save on benefit costs – savings that can be invested right back into broader benefits for the company’s employees.”

“It is these kinds of stories that keep us motivated”, said Cardenas. “My wife and I started this company five years ago with the idea we could help families in crisis. And it has given us remarkable opportunities to do that.

With the right information, a solid team of advisors and persistence we’ve found a formula that helps families meet the challenges of navigating the complicated and confusing landscape of federal and state benefits. The story of how our company came to be is a parable in how that depth of knowledge creates value.”

“I was the Congressional liaison for the Social Security Administration and met Ron Perry. He is an executive of LBMC, one of our region’s foremost PEO’s,” recalled Cardenas. “He was introduced to me by a mutual friend who knew I could help answer his questions about Medicare. In the process of talking with him, I realized that he and his wife might be eligible for a Social Security benefit that Congress was about to close. Perry was surprised and very pleased and I told him that my wife and I hoped one day to start a company designed specifically to help people find the right federal benefits – especially when their family was in crisis.”

never leap,” Cardenas continued. “When we met him, he told us how impressed he was with our expertise, our commitment to help and the need he saw among his own clients for the kind of service we hoped to build. He said he also knew how hard it must be for us to take the risk. So he handed us a check to get us over that fear and uncertainty. And with that financial fuel we launched FEDlogic.”

“Our company was started by helping someone work out a federal government puzzle and we continue today using those same tools to help on a much broader scale. We’ve learned over the past five years how people facing retirement, or dealing with a life-altering disease, or making healthcare coverage decisions that are right for them can make them fearful. What we’ve also discovered is that information from a trusted and knowledgeable source can give them the confidence to make a decision and overcome their fear and hesitance,” concluded Cardenas.

If you want to learn more about FEDlogic and how it might work for your company and within your benefit structure, visit their website fedlogicgroup.com or call Anita Blackmer at (615) 948.3648.

“A few days later I got a call at home from Ron asking if my wife and I would meet with him. I’m pretty sure he knew we were reluctant to take the leap of starting a business. With three kids and a mortgage it seemed like we might

Joel Lee

CEO and Senior Partner Lee Strategies

NAVIGATING FEDERAL & STATE BENEFITS

What’s good for your employees is good for you.

Best in class employers care about the wellbeing of their workforce and know that doing the right thing can be good for all.

FEDlogic reduces healthcare costs for you and your employees by carefully navigating complex federal and state programs.

Expert and compassionate support for families includes: • Medicare Enrollment • Social Security Retirement • Social Security Disability • Medicaid, Marketplace & COBRA Navigation • Unemployment Benefits

Talk with us to find out how we can help your employees and your business.

Learn more at FEDLogicGroup.com Contact Anita Blackmer anita@fedlogicgroup.com www.HRProfessionalsMagazine.com

23

AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN ACT: Implications for Defined Benefit Plans

By DAN BERRY

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, a $1.9 trillion stimulus package passed as part of the federal government’s response to address the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, was signed into law March 11, 2021. The Act includes several provisions that will impact single-employer defined benefit plans. Collectively, they will reduce the minimum required contributions for most pension plan sponsors, and include options for early or retroactive application of some of the rules to plan years going as far back as 2019. Plan sponsors will have decisions to make, since early or retroactive adoption of the various provisions will be advantageous for some, but probably not all, plan sponsors.

Changes to Interest Rates used in the Valuation The interest rate smoothing technique already in place under current funding relief laws dates back to 2012. The 2012 law extended the averaging period used to generate the segment interest rates for purposes of calculating a plan’s minimum required contributions and funding percentages, and applied a collar to the resulting averaged segment rates. This had the combined effect of increasing the effective rates, thereby decreasing the liabilities, normal costs, and the resulting required contributions to the plan, while increasing the plan’s funding percentages. The current funding relief was set to expire in 2024, but is now extended to 2030 under the Act, with the rate collar narrowed in each affected year. The combined effects of these and other changes provided by the Act will further reduce the liabilities, normal costs, and required contributions, and result in additional increases in funding percentages, beyond the effects of the current relief laws. The adjustments to the interest collars are illustrated in the following charts.

the seven-year amortization period for funding shortfalls was increased to 15 years. In addition, existing shortfall amortization bases will be eliminated, and a new, single shortfall amortization amount will be established at the time of implementation of the Act. Coupled with the change in interest rates, the changes to the shortfall amortization processes will generally serve to lower the plan’s minimum funding requirement even further, potentially by a significant amount.

Changes to the amortization process are effective for the 2022 plan year, and plan sponsors are being given an option to elect to apply the new amortization rules as early as the 2019 plan year.

What It all Means -- Considerations for Plan Sponsors For cash-strapped employers already following a policy of making only the minimum contribution, the Act provides meaningful additional relief, especially if it is applied retroactively. However, retroactive application of the relief will likely result in the need for revised funding valuations and government forms filings, which in turn will likely cause additional consulting fees. Also, as of this writing, there are some unanswered questions regarding the mechanics of applying these changes retroactively, with respect to how the contribution requirements and other valuation outcomes that were already determined in earlier years would be modified by the overlay of revised values. For example: ■

■

If a plan sponsor applies one or both of the interest rate relief and shortfall amortization relief back to an earlier plan year where they had already met their original (higher) minimum contribution requirement for the year, will they be able to characterize the prior contributions as now being excess contributions? If so, can they be used to create additional prefunding balance or to restore any balances that were previously applied to satisfy the original minimum?

How will lower retroactive obligations impact the funded percentages?

These percentages reflect the ratios of assets to liabilities, and below certain thresholds, have effects on operational issues like the required timing of plan contributions and restrictions on benefit payments. Will plan sponsors be able to retroactively avoid benefit restrictions and pay benefits that were previously limited?

While the funding relief might be attractive, it can also be said that relaxing statutory funding requirements neither improves the long-term health of poorly-funded plans, nor promotes funding levels required for those plans that are seeking to terminate operations and make full settlement of all benefits that are due. Employers are best advised to fund at a higher level appropriately tailored to the specific circumstances of their plan, and avoid the temptation to deposit at the newly-diminished minimum threshold.

The interest rate changes under the Act apply for plan years beginning in 2020. There is an option to defer use of the new rates to as late as 2022 for purposes of calculating both minimum required contributions and funding percentages, or only for the purpose of calculating funding percentages, which are used to determine whether statutory benefit restrictions apply.

As noted, the effect of the changes to interest rate smoothing will be to increase the segment rates used for calculating the plan’s primary liability measures: the funding target and target normal cost. This means those items will be lower (potentially 5-10% lower) under these new rules, provided the plan uses segment rates to calculate its funding target. If a plan uses the full yield-curve in the determination, this provision of the Act will have no effect on the plan.

Changes to Shortfall Amortization Mechanisms Generally, the minimum required contribution under a pension plan includes a seven-year amortization of the funding shortfall. Under the Act, 24

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For those plan sponsors already funding more than the minimum legal requirement, this legislation may have no significant usefulness. They might choose to continue funding in excess of the new lower minimum, to create even larger prefunding balances, lower premiums on government insurance that protects against plan insolvency (PBGC premiums), and/or achieve termination sufficiency sooner. Also, sponsors with overfunded plans or plans that had no minimum contribution due might not be impacted at all.

In summary, there are many facets to the relief offered under the Act that may or may not benefit a particular plan sponsor, given their plan’s and their company’s current situation. Plan sponsors should consult with the plan’s actuary for assistance both in deciding whether to take advantage of the lower funding requirements versus following a policy of making larger contributions, and in determining the optimal time frame in which to implement the relief provisions for their plan.

Dan Berry, Senior Vice-President McGriff Retirement Consulting dan.berry@mcgriff.com 336.291.1143

Most brokers say they have all the answers.

We start with a lot of questions.

Every organization has unique needs. We want to know yours before we talk about solutions.

McGriff specializes in delivering innovative employee benefit strategies to help manage costs, increase employee engagement and allow HR more time for strategic initiatives. Let us design a benefits program tailored to your organization.

To learn more, visit McGriff.com.

© 2021, McGriff Insurance Services, Inc. All rights reserved. McGriff Insurance Services, Inc. is a subsidiary of Truist Insurance Holdings, Inc.

Tennessee.

Citizens want prospective students fromTennessee earning a degree. to investStudent more ities Family responsibilities loans in college education and % % 61 financial 55aid

By KIMBERLY K. ESTEP

86% 27

%

86% said having some form of education after high school is important.

27% said they need more education for the job/career they want.

Tennesseans increasingly believe in the importance of college education for success in today’s economy.

That is clear from the results of an annual statewide survey commissioned by WGU Tennessee to gauge residents’ feelings and views about the state of higher education in Tennessee.

While all of this year’s results are worth examining, three stand out.

First, 89% agree that it is essential to have an educated workforce. This is not surprising; almost everyone recognizes that education is one of the primary keys to success and that an educated workforce is necessary for economic growth and stability. What’s also clear from the survey, though, is that Tennesseans want to see active investment toward this goal from several directions.

Second, an increasing majority of respondents (53%) think Tennessee state government should increase its funding for college education, the results show.

That’s up slightly from last year, when 48% of respondents said the state should spend more money. (Most of those who disagreed think it should remain at the same level.) In 2019, 46% agreed funding should be increased. This demonstrates a clear trend: When it comes to increasing state investment in higher education, support is rising and now has a majority for the first time since we began administering the survey in 2019.

Third, only 39% of those who participated in the survey think Tennessee colleges and universities provide adequate financial aid to students. We couldn’t agree more. In a column for The Tennessean in 2019, I wrote: “Institutions of higher learning have a moral and civic responsibility in the long term to address [the student debt] crisis, finding ways to lower the cost of getting a degree.”

Further, I believe that higher-education institutions have a responsibility not only to provide adequate financial aid, but also to help students make wise financial choices related to their education.

2021 HIGHER EDUCATION

This is one reason WGU implemented the Responsible Borrowing Initiative (RBI) in

A recent poll of 500 registered Tennessee voters revealed important through which all students who apply for financial aid receive a personalized perspectives on the 2013, current state of higher education in Tennessee.

Financial Aid Plan. We recommend that students only borrow money for unmet direct costs, only tuition and fees.

Most common obstacles keeping prospective students from earning a degree.

Cost of a degree

Job or work responsibilities

Family responsibilities

Student loans

62%

60%

61%

55%

What priorityThe levelGeneral shouldAssembly, using WGU’s Borrowing Initiative Act in June 2020, Governor Bill Lee’s administration thereafter. give to these issues?

OTHER

26

LOW

MIDDLE

TOP

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Affordability of college and technical training

RBI as a model, passed the Responsible and Gov. Bill Lee signed it into law shortly

86%

86% said having some form of education after high school is important.

The RBI Act requires each institution operated by the Tennessee Board of Regents, each state university, and each campus in the University of Tennessee system to provide students with a detailed college financing plan every year.

WGU’s RBI has been so successful that we’ve seen debt loads decrease among our student population by more than 40% since we launched the program. We hope and expect to see similarly striking outcomes for the state with the new legislation.

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There are many other important results from the survey as well; but these key%trends paint a clear, compelling picture: Tennesseans believe that higher education is important for economic success, a majority believe that the state should be investing more toward that goal, and colleges and universities need to make degree agreeprograms with more affordable and accessible, actively counseling students toGov. takeLee’s out focus fewer student loans. on increasing

higher education After all, according to the survey, nearly half (42%) of respondentsopportunities say they either in rural areas. plan to or may go back to school to earn a degree.

69% agree that HOPE scholarships should be available to students enrolled in other state-approved online college programs.

54% said online college degree programs were as good as or better than traditional college programs.

of t to ele the tha cre

Tennessee and its institutions of higher learning have a vested interest in making sure those potential students are able to achieve their education and career goals.

ABOUT THE SURVEY:

Kimberly K. Estep is the vice president of the Southeast region of national, nonprofit, accredited Western Governors University. Estep is also the chancellor of WGU Tennessee, a state-endorsed affiliate of WGU. Follow her on Twitter @chancellorestep.

NEED HELP DEVELOPING YOUR TEAM?

The Dallas-based market research firm Dynata surveyed selected registered voters who are currently employed to attitudes and opinions regarding higher-education issues financial aid for traditional and online degree programs margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percent at the 95 p confidence level.

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27

2020 EEOC Roundup –

What Employers Need to Know About the 2020 EEOC Charges Statistics and Insights Into What Employers Can Expect in 2021

By KATIE BAYT and JIM PLUNKETT

As 2021 unfolds, employers might benefit from a glimpse into the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)—where it has been and where it is going. Beginning with a snapshot of the EEOC’s own fiscal year (FY) 2020 Enforcement and Litigation Statistics, which the agency released on February 26, 2021, our analysis of the data provides employers with a granular view into the agency’s enforcement efforts during the past year and offers some insights into what employers can expect going forward.

The breakdown, in descending order, of the frequency of claims filed in FY2020 are as follows: • Retaliation: 37,632 claims (55.8 percent of charges filed) • Disability: 24,324 (36.1 percent of charges filed) • Race: 22,064 (32.7 percent of charges filed) • Sex: 21,398 (31.7 percent of charges filed) • Age: 14,183 (21.0 percent of charges filed) • National Origin: 6,377 (9.5 percent of charges filed) • Color: 3,562 (5.35 percent of charges filed) • Religion: 2,404 (3.6 percent of charges filed) • Equal Pay Act: 980 (1.5 percent of charges filed) • Genetic Information: 440 (0.7 percent of charges filed)

Seven Things to Know about Charges in 2020 1. Downward Trend in Number of Charges FY2020 saw the lowest number of charges received from workers in more than two decades. The agency received 67,448 charges—less than the 72,675 charges the agency received in FY2019 and continuing the steady downward trend since 2017 in the numbers of discrimination charges filed with the EEOC.

2. Monetary Resolution of Charges The agency touted securing $439.2 million for private sector claimants, including approximately $333.2 million through mediation, conciliation, and settlements of charges, and $106 million through litigation in FY2020, significantly overshadowing the $385 million it secured for claimants in FY2019 and $407 million in FY2018.

Despite increased recovery overall, monetary resolutions of charges decreased by $13.4 million, from $346.6 million in FY2019 down to $333.2 million.

3. Most Frequently Filed Claims In FY2020, retaliation continued to be the most frequently filed claim included in charges with the EEOC—an astounding 55.8 percent of all charges filed included a retaliation claim, and it does not appear that trend will change any time soon. Categories of claims that showed a slight increase in frequency from FY2019 were disability and color discrimination, while genetic information claims saw over a two-fold increase from the prior year. Otherwise, the remaining categories all saw slight decreases from FY2019.

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4. Hot Topics While COVID-19 significantly affected 2020 in many ways, the EEOC’s fiscal year 2020 statistics (which ran from October 1, 2019 through September 30, 2020) only encompassed data from approximately seven months of the pandemic. Recently, EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows, newly appointed by President Joe Biden, emphasized her view that the pandemic is not only a health and economic crisis, but also a civil rights crisis. As noted above, during FY2020 claims of disability discrimination saw a small uptick in frequency as compared to FY2019, while genetic information claims saw a considerable increase. Charges that included claims of discrimination based on color also increased slightly.

On the other hand, national origin and race discrimination claims showed a slight decrease in frequency from FY2019 despite concerns related to discrimination against Asian Americans and people of Asian descent in the workplace during the pandemic and the larger context of social justice issues that came to the forefront during 2020. The

full impact of the pandemic and the social justice movement remains to be seen and a combined review of FY2020 stats with next year’s enforcement data will likely help shed additional light on the impact of these issues on charges filed with the EEOC. Also of note, despite the continued focus on sexual harassment issues in the workplace—or perhaps because of steps many employers are taking to address these issues—the number of sexual harassment claims filed dropped to 6,587, down from 7,514 filed in FY2019.

Similarly, the amount of recovery through settlements relating to sexual harassment claims dropped from $68.2 million in FY2019 to $65.3 million in FY2020.

5. Pending Charges Reducing its backlog of pending private-sector charge inventory continued to be an area of focus for the EEOC in FY2020. Pending charges again decreased in FY2020, this year by 3.7 percent to 41,951 charges—the lowest in 14 years.

6. Mediations For FY2020, during part of which the EEOC utilized a mediation pilot program that expanded opportunities for mediation and incorporated video technology for virtual mediation, the EEOC reported that it achieved 6,272 successful private sector mediations resulting in over $156.6 million to claimants—slightly less than $159 million in FY2019.

7. Charges by State Once again, in 2020, more charges were filed in Texas than any other state, with 6,876, and Florida came in second with 5,868. Pennsylvania followed in third with 4,599. The visualization below shows by state where claimants filed most frequently in 2020.

Going Forward in 2021

The current EEOC is fully staffed with five commissioners, all of whom were appointed by former president Donald Trump. There are three Republicans: former chair Janet Dhillon, Keith Sonderling, and Andrea Lucas. Dhillon’s term does not end until July 1, 2022, while Sonderling’s and Lucas’s terms extend to 2024 and 2025, respectively.

This means that the three Republican commissioners will outnumber Democratic commissioners until at least July 2022. The two Democrats on the EEOC are Chair Burrows and Vice Chair Jocelyn Samuels.

As chair, Burrows sets the policy agenda, but it is still unclear what this will look like. For example, what are Burrows’s plans for the 2017 proposed harassment guidance that has never been finalized? What will happen with employer-sponsored wellness programs, in light of the fact that the EEOC’s recent regulatory proposals addressing such programs were withdrawn? And, what about compensation discrimination and wage data collection? Stakeholders are anxious to learn what issues Burrows will prioritize and where the EEOC will head under her leadership.

While Burrows sets the agenda, actually executing policy initiatives could prove difficult when considering the EEOC’s current political demographics. The EEOC’s authority is primarily derived from the commissioners, and Burrows simply does not have the votes. To be sure, the EEOC and its commissioners are obviously more than their party affiliation, and there are previous examples of commissioner bipartisanship on big-ticket items. So with a chair setting the policy agenda but lacking the votes, what will this mean? Does this present an opportunity for bipartisanship or more gridlock? Regardless, this “upside down” commission—where the chair and vice chair are in the political minority—will likely be the political situation at the EEOC until at least July 2022. Despite these uncertainties, there are, however, some areas where there could be bi-partisan support, such as veterans outreach, guidance on COVID-19 and workplace protections, continuation of transparency efforts, continuation of robust enforcement and of efforts to reduce pending charge loads.

Ogletree Deakins’ EEO Advantage Administrative Charges Program helps employers manage their administrative charges filed with federal, state, and local agencies nationwide. EEO Advantage leverages technology and a thorough understanding of agency processes to manage administrative charges proactively and with budget certainty.

Katie Bayt, of counsel and director of the Ogletree Deakins EEO Advantage Administrative Charges Program.

Contact Katie at katie.bayt@ogletree.com.

Jim Plunkett, shareholder and chair of Ogletree Governmental Affairs.

Contact Jim at james.plunkett@ogletree.com. www.HRProfessionalsMagazine.com

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OBESITY - Rethinking Assumptions On Weight Management And Benefit Programs

By F. RANDY VOGENBERG

INTRODUCTION In 2002, two RAND researchers, health economist Roland Sturm and psychiatrist Kenneth Wells, examined the comparative effects of obesity, smoking, and heavy drinking on health expenditures in chronic conditions. Their research review found that obesity is linked to a big increase in chronic health conditions and significantly higher health expenditures affecting more people than smoking or heavy drinking. Although obesity had been a recognized health risk for a long time, Obesity was also recognized as a disease since 2013 by the American Medical Association (AMA). The idea that obesity is caused by insufficient willpower, lack of discipline, and bad choices began to transform how employers addressed health policy along with subsequent benefits.

While many focus on the body mass index (BMI) when thinking about obesity, clinical aspects of obesity has many manifestations by individual and varies based on the cause of weight gain. There is not just one type or cause for obesity so there is no single solution. Obesity is related to genetic, psychological, physical, metabolic, neurological, and hormonal impairments. It is also directly linked to heart disease, sleep disorder, and certain cancers. Important to employers is that Obesity is among the few diseases that can negatively influence social and interpersonal relationships in the workplace.

WHY EMPLOYERS NEED TO ADDRESS OBESITY AS A DISEASE Health benefits have become disconnected from effective management of obesity. For some, obesity as a disease dismisses the importance of caloric intake (beverages and food), and exercise and enables individuals with obesity to escape responsibility for their condition.

For others, obesity as a disease is a bridge to coordination of effective treatment and increased resources for weight loss.

Since 2012 and ACA (Affordable Care Act) health reform coverage changes, many states now promote open coverage around efforts to diagnose obesity as well as management coverage for this medical condition. Uniform coverage remains prone to gaps or inconsistencies from plan to plan thereby allowing individuals with obesity to fall through benefit plan supports over time. This happens despite mandates for coverage in ACA although the same can’t be said for ERISA plans.

This issue is not a simple issue for HR managers and senior executives. Clinically, the Obesity Medicine Association has defined obesity as a “chronic, relapsing, multi-factorial, neurobehavioral disease, wherein an increase in body fat promotes adipose tissue dysfunction and abnormal fat mass physical forces, resulting in adverse metabolic, biomechanical, and psychosocial health consequences.” Why obesity is a disease is becoming more evident as we increase our knowledge about obesity and its effects on individuals and in benefit offerings. Key to successfully confronting the obesity epidemic requires attacking the disease and its manifestations, not just its symptoms. Covid-19 has only heightened awareness around the importance of obesity and related health problems. Research is showing that individuals with obesity are at a higher risk for contracting as well as complicated medical management for symptoms associated with Covid-19, and in extreme cases death for young or old.

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The value proposition for chronic weight management includes addressing the fact that obese individuals have higher healthcare costs, so employers have an opportunity to comprehensively address this issue through improved benefit design. Engagement in these solutions can not only improve health risk and clinical outcomes, but address lowering the increasing costs of care year over year as a sustainable strategy.

WHAT EMPLOYERS CAN DO Environmental support in the workplace is being addressed by many employers through efforts in providing healthy food options, allowing reimbursement for or providing opportunities to participate in various physical activity, and promoting regular water drinking habits while minimizing sugar intake.

Establishing a positive “Culture Of Health” has been addressed by employers but needs more to participate in the use of health promotion policies and programs offered to employees. Such policies support good lifestyle choices, access to services or support across simple lifestyle to medical supervised programs or surgery to address obesity in the workplace. This has been area of improvement in recent years, certainly since 2014.

Health benefit design and incentives remains an important and underutilized area where employers can do better easily. Fundamental program elements should include lifestyle management (improved diets, physical activity and weight management) along with the previously mentioned environmental support and culture of health.

A comprehensive benefit strategy should include medical weight management (care plus supplements and/or anti-obesity medications), coverage of visits with clinical support professionals, and aligned incentives for participation in obesity management options – all in addition to coverage of bariatric surgery. Such a comprehensive approach should give plan members access to needed resources coupled with appropriate incentives to drive levels of engagement.

Community and family connections, similar to employees, need support, encouragement, and engagement by all family members with community resources and local events. Employers should develop partnerships with local businesses that offer access to fitness facilities and programs, access to healthy foods and beverage, and recreational opportunities.

Employers can do more to support their employees and plan members along their weight management journey, which is beneficial to all concerned. The value of investment into a comprehensive program will drive gains in employee performance, lower health care costs, and improve satisfaction with employer sponsored benefits. Such gains can be obtained in the short term and over the long run as these are sustainable and easily obtained solutions to implement by an employer.

Use the checklist on the oppositive page to assess your current plan offering and determine opportunities for meaningful improvement that can be measured.

F. Randy Vogenberg, Ph.D., FASHP

Board Chair, Employer Provider Interface Council Principal, Institute for Integrated Healthcare Greenville, SC

Employer Checklist for a Comprehensive Obesity Prevention Initiative Workplace Support for Healthy Lifestyles

• Access and/or storage for healthy foods and water • Access to safe places for physical activity such as walking paths, stairwells, fitness rooms

Culture of Health in the Workplace • • • • • •

Visible leadership encouragement in activities Supervisor and Management support of participation Policies that support participation in health and wellbeing activities Communication about wellbeing and weight management offerings Encouragement of socially appropriate and distance activities Programs that promote improved diets, physical activity, and weight management

Employee Health Benefit Design and Incentives • • • •

Coverage of Medical Weight Management Programs Coverage of Bariatric Surgery Aligned incentives for participation in obesity management options Coverage of visits with a Registered Dietitian, Certified Diabetes Educators, and Health Coaches

Community and Family Connections • Partnership and discounts to local community fitness and recreational venues such as parks, sports fields, etc.

• Promotion and encouragement of local Farmers Markets and businesses that offer healthy foods and beverages • Support for local events such as walks, runs, biking and invite employees and their families to participate

INITIATIVE

Visit epicouncil.org to learn more.

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Psychological Safety @ Work CELEBRATING MISTAKES

• Strengthens creativity. Staying relevant in business is a must. Creativity keeps us on the cutting edge no matter the industry.

You are kidding me. Celebrate mistakes? No way. We ‘discipline’ mistakes.

• Creates opportunities. Noticing a mistake is a reason to form a team to rectify the problem.

Being on a problem-solving team allows employees to shine and be noticed.

Is this what you are thinking? Don’t get me wrong – if an employee carelessly makes the same mistake repeatedly, the ‘discipline’ strategy may be what is needed. However, for the purpose of this article, I am referring to the failures, fiascos, and mistakes experienced when trying hard, being innovative, and stepping out of the comfort zone.

• Decreases mistakes. When one person shares his/her mistake, it stops others from making the same mistakes. Now - - that’s an innovative and relevant operation.

Amy Edmundson coined the term “psychological safety’ years ago. Psychological Safety is a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking. For example, employees feel safe trying new ideas that have a risk of failure.

Following are some ideas for celebrating mistakes:

By LEEANN BAILES FOSTER

James Dyson, Dyson Vacuums, tells the story of 1,000s of mistakes. He made 5,126 mistakes before he got it right. On the 5,127 try, he came up with the solution and built the first Dyson vacuum. Mr. Dyson believes that schoolchildren should marked by the number of failures they’ve had. The child who tries strange things and experiences lots of failures to get there is probably more creative, more innovative.

Dr. Edmundson encourages us to live in the “Learning Zone’. The graph below shows where the Learning Zone is. Learning happens when an employee is high, high on the graph: high in psychological safety and high in performance accountability.

Why is it important to create a Culture of Psychological Safety at work? If employees do not feel safe to try new things or to speak out when needed small problems may escalate into tragedies. Below are three examples: • The O-Ring: On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, killing seven crew members and traumatizing a nation. The cause of the disaster was traced to an O-ring, a circular gasket that sealed the right rocket booster. NASA employees questioned whether the O-ring would hold up under extreme heat. However, the right person would not speak up due to the launch being planned and all the publicity around it.

• Boeing 737: Two fatal crashes involving the plane within five months of each other, which killed a combined 346 people, have led to questions about the plane's design and features. The crashes have also called attention to training standards, regulatory oversight, and pilot experience. Test pilots knew something was not right, but the right person did not speak up due to, yet again, the negative publicity that would surround the latest and greatest airplane built.

• Dr. Death: More than 30 patients died or were maimed after surgeries Dr. Christopher Duntsch, a neurosurgeon, performed on them. Dr. Duntsch was eventually sentenced to life in prison. Hospitals, doctors, and nurses knew Dr. Duntsch was doing something wrong but did not speak up early enough.

I apologize for sharing such gruesome stories. These three stories make a strong case for ensuring your workplace is psychologically safe. We need for employees to speak up early and often when they sense something is not right. Celebrating mistakes will help make this happen.

Amy Edmundson shares five reasons to celebrate mistakes. Doing so: • Creates a Learning Moment. Learning moments lend to gaining experience.

Experience lends to confidence. Confidence lends to innovation!

• Is efficient. No time or money needs to be used covering up mistakes.

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• Add a “Lessons Learned” section to your team meeting agenda. Give employees a safe place to share.

• Share the good news. Make a PA announcement or ring a bell when a mistake is shared. Include the solution!

• Give a quarterly “Innovation Award” to the employee who took a risk that led to a new product, service, etc.

• Publicly tally mistakes and lessons learned.

• Share examples of a mistakes made by someone famous. And -- that mistake made him/she famous.

• Publish the “Mistake of the Month” in your company newsletter.

I am sure you have heard this quote before, “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you handle it.” So, the handling mistakes is where success lies. I love Dr. Edmundson’s quote below:

The oppositive of this quote is illustrated in the graphic below:

When we cut employees off, speak over them, make them feel poorly for mistaking mistakes, we diminish the flow of ideas and creativity which leads to innovation.

I encourage you to read Dr. Amy Edmundson’s book The Fearless Organization and to watch her Ted Talk regarding psychological safety. There is much more for us to learn about this topic.

From today forward, let’s celebrate lessons learned and make better mistakes tomorrow.

Compliance with Compassion…

… using your head, your heart, and your hands to nurture your employees.

TEAM FOSTER HR STRATEGY provides comprehensive human resources consulting services for small to mid-size businesses. Offering turnkey solutions for clients, Team Foster is committed to compliance with compassion. With 30 years of industry experience, LeeAnn excels at relationship management, conflict resolution, and employee engagement. Team Foster works with you to motivate and manage HR issues from the inside out – supporting your existing human resources team and coaching your staff to solve problems with an integrated approach. Team Foster HR helps you build a collaborative corporate culture to further your business goals and strengthen your performance.

LeeAnn B. Foster | Head Coach Leadership & HR Consultant +1 865-719-1177 mobile W W W. T E A M F O S T E R H R S T R AT E G Y. C O M

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Promises Mean Nothing, Experiences Mean Everything

By BRAD FEDERMAN

We live in a world of uncertainty. Companies today are biting off more than ever including social change. They are producing promises related to all their stakeholders including shareholders, customers, employees and society at large. Brand promises are the language of business.

Those promises, in many cases, fall short. How do people know when a company can’t keep its promise? Experience. Experiences are where promises are actually made or broken.

A promise is a pledge specifically a pledge to deliver on something.

Companies make promises all of the time. However, certain organizations outline their promises more clearly and live up to those promises more consistently than others. Some of the more interesting and successful promises include: • Coca-Cola: “To inspire moments of optimism and uplift.”

• BMW: “The Ultimate Driving Machine” • H&M: “More fashion choices that are good for people, the planet and your wallet.”

• Starbucks: “To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.”

• Marriott: “Quiet luxury. Crafted experiences. Intuitive service.”

What makes a strong Brand Promise that has staying power?

• It must be measurable. What does “Ultimate” mean? What does “luxury” mean? If it can’t be defined it can’t be measured. If it can’t be measured it can’t be managed or verified. Without measurement a company cannot provide consistency in experience.

• It must be consequential. A promise does not mean much if there is no significance. It must be meaningful and unique to the marketplace for it to matter. The way to determine if your Brand Promise is significant is to ask the question, “Does it provide a reason for customers to choose and stay with us over our competitors?”

• It must be lived. A promise must lead to an experience that matches the promise. If the promise is incongruent with a person’s experience the promise is broken which leads to a loss of trust.

We all want to be a customer-centric business. It is a worthwhile endeavor. It provides a real competitive advantage. What we must realize is that we are making a promise to our customers, but that it also transcends our customers. That promise is also seen and heard by the broader community and our employees. A promise such as this requires investment. That investment starts with focusing on your customers and customer relationships, however, it does not end there. Here are just a few of the questions that must be answered: 34

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• QUESTION 1: Do you plan each stage of your customer’s journey? Do you have a customer journey map? It’s critical to improving the customer experience. The output of this question is relevant to re-engineering a business to be more customer centric and can impact the survey effort or customer experience program.

• QUESTION 2: Do you know how much effort a customer must put into working with you to be successful? Being a customer should not be hard. Reducing the effort customers must make to be in a successful relationship with you creates a real ease of doing business. Creating positive experiences depends on making the customer relationship have less friction.

• QUESTION 3: Do you measure how customer centric your culture is? We think measuring customer relationships is an external concept, but measuring and supporting how people think internally is the key to making it come to life. In the end being customer centric is not an outward journey but an inward one.

• QUESTION 4: What KPI’s have you developed regarding the customer experience? How were they developed? Are they reflective of what your organization sees as important and more importantly what the customer sees as important?

• QUESTION 5: What is your follow up to customers based on their feedback? How do you communicate what you have learned and are doing to better serve them? They deserve to know that their feedback is heard and will make a difference. They need to know that you are making your promise dynamic and a living, breathing promise. Otherwise they will begin to see it as stale and out of sync with today’s business environment.

The answers to the above questions not only shed light on the actual customer experience and changes that need to be made to create a more powerful and sustaining promise, but they equally shed light on internal organizational changes and investments that must be made.

The answers may also provide insights into necessary budgetary shifts and investments needed in the community or communities your organization belongs to and is a part of if your promise is to truly come to life.

What happens when an organization does not deliver on its brand promises?

• United Airlines invited its customers to “fly the FRIENDLY skies,” but suffered a social media nightmare when video was released of a passenger being forcefully dragged from a flight unjustly.

• AT&T promised to “deliver the extraordinary experience our customers deserve," but suffered major blowback for offering unlimited data but secretly capping the data speed after a certain amount was used.

• Ford consistently touts that “Quality is job one,” but have lost the confidence of many consumers with countless cases of defects with their vehicles.

Promises are not just empty statements, they are a reflection of your integrity. Companies that lack attentiveness to the adherence to the words that were used to represent themselves places them in a precarious situation. Not only can bad promises lead to possible financial disaster for a business, but it can result in a purgatory of struggle due to permanent damage of customer trust. In addition, employees that are not in an environment or culture of integrity have no incentive to promote brand recovery. In fact, let’s delve deeper into the actual role of the employee in customer experience.

A truly customer driven experience, however, is not solely achieved by addressing the outward culture of the brand. Organizations frequently tend to overlook the potency of the employee experience and how it, in turn, galvanizes the customer experience. Engaged employees can deliver a direct transference of trust to a consumer. Employees are a tangible representation of the values of an organization, allowing them to be a true embodiment of its brand promises. If a consumer deduces that employees are willing ambassadors of the brand; the consumer feels confident that the same promises will hold true for themselves.

A 2013 Gallup study of the American workplace revealed that when organizations successfully engage their customers AND their employees,

they experience a $240 million boost in performance-related business outcomes when compared to organizations that were unable to achieve the same dual-focused engagement. Studies such as the aforementioned example are evidence that employee engagement should not be approached as an ambiguously abstract entity that has no legitimate bearing on the overall prosperity of a company.

It is imperative that businesses develop and execute an inward brand strategy that targets the wellness of its staff while fostering your employee’s ability to make your brand’s promise a reality in your customer’s eyes. Promises that are presented to the consumer should be alive and well in the workplace simultaneously. The amount of time and energy utilized to measure and track the customer experience should be equally allotted to the employee experience. In essence, an effective way to practice methods of delivering promises to consumers is to deploy similar and related efforts with your team.

A recent Glassdoor study found that “a happier workforce is clearly associated with companies’ ability to deliver better customer satisfaction,” and warned that “becoming more customer-oriented while allowing workplace morale to suffer is a poor and short-sighted strategy.

Instead, customer and employee satisfaction should be seen as two sides of the same coin.” Don’t invest in a marketing strategy that leads to broken promises. Create real, authentic experiences that differentiate your business.

Brad Federman, CEO

PerformancePoint LLC bfederman@performancepointllc.com www.performancepointllc.com

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Issues Arising from a

“Work from Home” Workplace

By JANELL AHNERT

The “typical” work-from-home scenario changed drastically in 2020.

Instead of dealing with work-from-home requests from employees on a case-by-case basis, employers found themselves mandating that employees stay home to work during the pandemic. Many employers were faced with a first-time scenario –having the majority of their workforce working from home as opposed to a small percentage.

Moreover, in the past, work-from-home arrangements were typically voluntary, arising from requests by employees. As a result, employers could often dictate requirements for employees before granting any such arrangement. As a result, many employers have stale “telework policies” that may not address the current work-from-home environment.

It has become very clear that remote work will exist beyond COVID19. As employers start to plan for remote work beyond the pandemic, they must transition from the emergency “make it work” environment of pandemic remote work to one that addresses the long-term post-pandemic reality of managing their at-home workforce.

Revisit Stale Telework Policies Employers need to revisit stale “telework” policies. Many human resources professionals have, for the first time, personal work-from-home experience arising from the pandemic. Utilize your experience in reviewing your company policies to ensure they address the situations your remote employees are now experiencing. Remote work policies or agreements should provide clear guidance to employees on the process, expectations, and obligations of a remote work arrangement. Include factors that must be established for an employee to continue to be eligible for a work-fromhome arrangement. Consider position, service and performance requirements.

Manage employee expectations regarding the duration of work-from-home agreements. Make sure you document the approval of a work-from-home arrangement in writing. Clarify which job functions are essential. Provide a limited period of time for approval, and reserve the right to revisit as circumstances may dictate. The policy needs to allow the business to reconsider any such arrangements if, and when, business circumstances change.

Remote Work as an Accommodation Employees with disabilities may seek to work from home as a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), regardless of the pandemic. The employer must determine if working from home is a reasonable accommodation.

This determination should be made through an individualized, flexible "interactive process" with the employee, which needs to be documented.

You may need to request information about the individual's medical condition (including reasonable documentation) if it is unclear whether the employer’s condition is a "disability" as defined by the ADA. You may also want to discuss other types of accommodations that would allow the person to remain full-time, or part-time in the workplace. In some situations, working at home may be the only effective option for an employee with a disability.

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If a work-from-home accommodation is denied as unreasonable post-pandemic, and the employee (or others performing the same job duties) was required to work remotely during the pandemic, the employer must be prepared to explain what circumstances have changed. For example, was the work-from-home situation during the COVID crisis ineffective? Was the employee unable to perform all of the essential functions of the job from home? If the employee’s productivity decreased, you must be able to establish the impact on the business.

In other words, the short-term emergency pivot to at-home work during the pandemic does not necessarily translate to an argument for employees that all work-from-home arrangements are inherently reasonable under the ADA post-pandemic. However, it is the employer’s burden to establish that the accommodation is now unreasonable, through consistent documentation of issues that occurred during pandemic telework.

Data Privacy & Security Keeping confidential data private and secure is a challenge when working in the office. It becomes exponentially harder when employees are working from home. Employers must develop privacy and security protocols as part of their remote work policies.

The employer’s IT team should control remote devices, such as company-owned laptops, through required password management, firewall configurations, multifactor authentication, reasonable session timeouts. The company should consider mandating that all work be performed on company-owned devices that use updated antivirus protection programs. Employees should be performing work using secure Wi-Fi, preferably through an employer Virtual Private Network (VPN).

Employees should be instructed to always secure their company laptop and work data. Prohibit anyone else in household from accessing company devices. Consider a rigorous policy regarding who is allowed to print remotely and what data is allowed to be printed. Also consider the use of in-home shredders or shredding companies that visit homes to properly destroy confidential documents.

As always, it is most important to formalize these requirements in your policy, train employees on the requirements, and provide continued communication and reminders about the importance of these security requirements.

Wage & Hour Considerations Employers must clearly communicate with remote workers regarding time-keeping, scheduling, meal and rest, and overtime requirements and policies. One issue that often develops in remote work arrangements is employees performing “off-the-clock” work. Working off the clock occurs when a non-exempt employee does work and does not record the time. As a result, the hourly employee is not paid for all time worked as required under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

This is more likely to happen in a remote work environment because employees are less likely to maintain a set schedule and there is often a blur of work and personal time. To mitigate off-the-clock and other wage and hour risks, remote work policies must include a clear timekeeping policy and user-friendly time-keeping systems. Hourly employees should be certifying their time worked each week. Make sure to build into your guidance that employees should report technology (or other) issues that impact their ability to work. Quickly address and fix tech problems and to compensate employees for any off-the-clock time that was not properly recorded.

In an effort to address employees working overtime while working from home, adopt a protocol of email approval (or another method) of overtime work in advance. If an employee violates this policy and works overtime without prior approval, you must pay for any time worked, regardless of whether it is authorized. An employer can address a violation of the policy requiring advance authorization to work overtime through consistent enforcement of the policy and discipline. However, all time worked must be paid.

Expense Reimbursement Must employers reimburse the employee for expenses incurred resulting from remote work? If so, how much and for what expenses?

It matters if the work-from-home arrangement is at the request of the employee or if the employer is mandating the remote work. If the employer is requiring the work-from-home arrangement, then the employer may be required to pay for such expenses, depending on the state, or even locality, where the employee is actually working.

Alabama follows the FLSA rule regarding business expenses, which mandates that the employer must not pay an hourly worker below the federal minimum wage. As such, expenses incurred by the employee as required to perform work from home cannot effectively reduce the wages to the employee below the minimum wage. Your policy should put specific parameters on what items, and how much, the employer will reimburse.

Unconventional approaches.

Ingenious results.

At Littler, we’re lawyers. We’re also innovators and strategists, passionate problem solvers and creative disruptors. And we’re committed to helping our clients navigate the complex world of labor and employment law by building better solutions for their toughest challenges.

The Wandering Employee Because each state has different laws applicable to all aspects of employment, the employer’s legal obligations can change if the employee “wanders” to another state. Employees may be entitled to the benefits of certain laws even if the employer does not operate in that state.

Fueled by ingenuity.

Inspired by you.

The first step in addressing wandering employees is to determine where your employees actually work. Reissue requests to employees to update their working location. Once you have determined if you have employees who have wandered, determine if there are any issues arising from the state or municipality in which they are now working. Finally, when you roll out a new work-from-home policy, include a requirement that the employee disclose any change in work location. The policy should also state that the current work location is the only approved location.

3424 Peachtree Road NE | Suite 1200

littler.com Atlanta, GA 30326 420 20th Street North | Suite 2300 Birmingham, AL 35203 100 North Tryon Street | Suite 4150 Charlotte, NC 28202 333 West Vine Street | Suite 1720 Lexington, KY 40507 3725 Champion Hills Drive | Suite 3000 Memphis, TN 38125

Janell M. Ahnert, Shareholder Littler Birmingham Office JAhnert@littler.com www.littler.com

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“ It’s one thing to pass the American Rescue Plan.

It’s going to be another thing to implement it.”

What Employers Need to Understand About the

American Rescue Plan Act Of 2021

President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., March 12, 2021

By GEOFFREY LINDLEY

With but a signature from the President’s pen, the $1.9 trillion economic relief package entitled the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARP) became law. However, as the President noted, enacting such sweeping legislation and actually putting it into effect are two different things entirely. The 240 plus page bill contains significant legal changes that affect much of the American way of life, including the relationship between employers and their employees. This article will outline a few important parts of ARP relevant to employers.

FFCRA Tax Credit Extension Last year Congress passed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), which took effect April 1, 2020, and provided federally mandated paid leave subsidized through payroll tax credits to employers.

The FFCRA, contained two key provisions: (1) the Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act (EPSLA) and (2) the Emergency Family and Medical Leave Expansion Act (EFMLEA). Both provisions applied to private employers who have fewer than 500 employees and to public employers. However, public employers were not entitled to the payroll tax credit. The provisions of the FFCRA expired on December 31, 2020.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA), signed by President Trump on December 27, 2020, allowed employers to voluntarily extend the FFCRA paid leave provisions for employees who had not yet used all of their leave through March 31, 2021, and still receive the payroll tax credits. However, ARP made further changes.

EPSLA The EPSLA provided up to 80 hours of paid sick leave to all employees who were unable to work in the traditional sense or work remotely because of a need for leave under the following circumstances: 1. the employee was subject to a government quarantine or isolation order related to COVID-19; 2. the employee was advised by a health care provider to self-quarantine because of COVID-19 concerns; 3. the employee was experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 and sought a medical diagnosis; 4. the employee was caring for an individual subject to a government quarantine or isolation order related to COVID-19 or was advised by a health care provider to self-quarantine because of COVID–19; 5. the employee was caring for the employee’s child whose school or place of care was closed or whose child care provider was unavailable because of COVID-19; or 6. the employee was experiencing any other substantially similar condition specified by the Secretary of Health and Human Services in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Secretary of Labor.

For leave related to reasons (1), (2), and (3) above, an employee received full pay capped at $511 per day, but for leave related to reasons (4), (5), and (6), an employee received 2/3 pay capped at $200 per day.

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ARP allows employers to again voluntarily extend FFCRA paid sick leave and receive tax credits but with the following changes.

• As of April 1, 2021, employers must replenish their employees’ paid sick leave balance by providing an additional 10 days of leave. The tax credit is limited to the value of 80 hours of wages.

• The leave applies to the original 6 FFCRA reasons but also allows for tax credits for the additional reasons: (1) the employee is awaiting test results or is seeking a medical diagnosis regarding COVID–19 and such employee has been exposed to COVID–19 or the employee’s employer has requested such test or diagnosis; (2) the employee is obtaining a COVID-19 vaccination; (3) or the employee is recovering from any injury, disability, illness, or condition related to the vaccination. Leave for these reasons is at full pay.

EFMLEA This leave applied to employees unable to work in the traditional sense or remotely because they had a child whose school was closed or a childcare provider was unavailable because of COVID-19 and provided for up to 10 weeks of paid leave at 2/3 of the employee’s regular pay with a maximum total payment of $10,000. However, ARP allows employers to claim tax credits for EFMLEA leave for any of the qualifying reasons in the FFCRA, including the three new reasons for paid sick leave noted above. Additionally, the leave is increased to 12 weeks at 2/3 pay with a $12,000 cap. ARP is not clear but, absent DOL guidance, the better interpretation appears to be that this leave runs concurrent with classic FMLA leave.

The FFCRA extended tax credits under ARP apply to leave from April 1, 2021, through September 30, 2021, and also apply to government employers, not including the federal government. Employers who discriminate with regard to this leave in favor of highly compensated employees, in favor of full-time employees, or based on employment tenure do not qualify for the tax credits. Lastly, ARP does not explicitly prohibit an employer from choosing to extend just one of these paid leave options.

Unemployment Benefits From the CARES Act to the CAA and now ARP, the United States government has subsidized increased unemployment benefits.

Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (PUC) PUC allowed qualified applicants awarded unemployment insurance benefits by their state to receive their regular state weekly unemployment benefits plus an additional $600/week through July 31, 2020. The CAA provided $300/week in addition to normal unemployment benefits from December 27, 2020, through March 14, 2021, and ARP extends this amount through September 6, 2021.

Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) PEUC provided for qualified persons actively seeking work to receive an additional 13 weeks of unemployment benefits beyond the normal limit set by the states up to a cap of 39 weeks. This program ran through

December 31, 2020. However, the CAA extended PEUC through March 14, 2021, and increased the limit to 50 weeks. ARP further extends the program through September 6, 2021, and increases the limit to 79 weeks.

Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) PUA provided up to 39 weeks of unemployment benefits to those who could not work for COVID-related reasons and were otherwise ineligible for regular unemployment compensation or extended benefits under state/federal law or PEUC. PUA was to end on December 31, 2020, but the CAA extended the program through March 14, 2021, and capped benefits at 50 weeks. ARP further extends the program through September 6, 2021, and increases the cap to 79 weeks.

COBRA Premium Subsidies The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA) provides the opportunity for a covered employee to elect continuing health insurance coverage through his or her employer if a qualifying event occurs such as termination of employment for reasons other than gross misconduct or a reduction in hours. Normally, employees must pay for COBRA coverage up to 102% of the cost to the plan.

LCYFFL0118

ARP now provides a 100% COBRA premium subsidy from April 1, 2021, through September 30, 2021, for employees who have experienced a reduction in hours or an involuntary termination and their covered relatives who elect COBRA continuation coverage. Employees eligible for other group coverage such as a spouse’s plan or for Medicare do not qualify. Employers must provide the subsidy to assistance eligible individuals (AEI) who have elected COBRA, and employers are then eligible for a tax credit against their Medicare payroll taxes.

Additionally, employers are required to provide the following notices under ARP for which the DOL has prepared model forms: • COBRA continuation coverage election notice to AEIs who become eligible between April 1, 2021, and September 30, 2021 (AEIs have 60 days after the notice is provided to elect COBRA and the premium assistance); • COBRA extended election period notice to AEIs still in their traditional COBRA coverage window (generally 18 months from the qualifying event) who are current COBRA enrollees, enrolled but later dropped COBRA, or declined COBRA (this notice must be provided by May 31, 2021); and • expiration of premium assistance notice, which must be provided within 15 to 45 days prior to the AEI’s subsidy expiration.

Please note that ARP also changed other laws applicable to employers not specifically covered in this article, including but not limited to: • increasing dependent care flexible spending accounts; • extending the employee retention credit through the end of 2021; • Paycheck Protection Program loan modifications; • Affordable Care Act subsidies; and • pension funding relief.

Employers should familiarize themselves with the legal changes made by ARP discussed and noted herein and prepare accordingly.

Geoffrey A. Lindley, Attorney glindley@raineykizer.com Rainey Kizer Reviere & Bell PLC www.raineykizer.com

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How to Enhance Your Authentic Leadership

By TRACY DUBERMAN

Leadership requires the expression of an authentic self. In the chaotic times which we are living in today, people want to be led by someone “real.” But while the expression of an authentic self is necessary for great leadership, the concept of authenticity is often misunderstood, not least by leaders themselves. They often assume that authenticity is an innate quality—that a person is either authentic or not. In fact, authenticity is largely defined by what other people see in you.

Being authentic not only improves the quality of your interpersonal relationships, but also your performance as a leader. An authentic person is open and honest, transparent in their intentions and expectations, and practices their values consistently.

Authentic leaders are genuine and true and have a vision of success that is wholesome and optimistic. They also understand the importance of leading through demonstration and collaboration, rather than barking orders and demanding results. Truly authentic leaders translate words into actions – they stick to their convictions and are clear and concise in communicating to their teams to achieve better business results.

Authentic leadership is a relatively new theory of leadership that originally stemmed from the four cardinal virtues of ancient Greek philosophy. These virtues are prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude, and have molded the modern theory of authentic leadership to comprise four key elements: 1. Balanced processing (prudence): Authentic leaders keep an open mind to all possible courses of action - to be fair-minded when making decisions and lead open discussions with others to choose the best possible option.

2. Self-awareness (temperance): To be an authentic leader, it is important to be emotionally balanced and in control, and to know one’s own strengths and limitations.

3. Relational transparency (justice): Authentic leaders do not have hidden agendas and are fair in their dealings with others.

4. Internalized moral perspective (fortitude): Lastly, authentic leaders place great attention on ethical consideration and have the courage to do the right thing (Table I).

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Establishing authenticity as a leader is a two-part challenge. First, ensure that your words are consistent with your deeds. Second, find common ground with the people you lead.

How to become an authentic leader?

Start with knowing oneself. As Daniel Goleman, leading authority on emotional intelligence (EI), reveals in his research, EI is of greater importance than cognitive skills, intellect, or technical abilities in driving the success of top performers.1 EI enables leaders to self-monitor and develop key leadership characteristics such as leading authentically. Unlike intellect, which remains generally stable over a person’s lifetime, EI can be developed with practice: 1.

Beginning with self-awareness, start by outlining your values, and strengths and weaknesses to gain an understanding of who you truly are and why you behave in a particular manner. Painting this clear picture of yourself helps you to understand what drives your behavior, and as a result, it becomes easier to articulate your values to others and recognize any triggers that can lead to unproductive behaviors.

2. We are all human and sometimes fall prey to over-reactivity. To counter this, practice self-regulation to prevent yourself from acting reactively or impulsively. The simplest way to practice self-regulation is to engage yourself and your team in reflection, particularly in difficult or stressful situations where you may have the propensity for emotional decision-

making. Identify the cause of the emotional reaction, and brainstorm more adaptive ways to respond than allowing your emotions to get the better of you. If the source of your frustration is external, attempt to view the situation from the perspective of others and recognize how over-reacting may negatively influence the overall outcome of the situation.

3. Over time and with concerted effort, these self-awareness and regulation strategies will become part of your leadership fabric and can be applied to any intra- or inter-personal situation in which proper control of one’s emotions and an understanding of others will enable you to demonstrate your authenticity.

Enhancing Authentic Leadership Through Coaching One can learn to live and lead more authentically through executive coaching.

The authentic coach works with their client to be successful through their self-discovery. They enable their clients to tap into their skills, knowledge, and experiences to cultivate learning and growth. Through a process of self-awareness, introspection, and interpersonal communication, a client can successfully remove barriers to performance and develop the skills and motivation required for positive behavioral change, increased authenticity and, in turn, improved organizational engagement.2 1 Goleman, D. (2004), “What makes a leader?”, Harvard Business Review, available at: https://hbr.org/2004/01/whatmakes-a-leader 2 Lowman, R. L. (2005). Executive Coaching: The Road to Dodoville Needs Paving With More Than Good Assumptions. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 57(1), 90-96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1065- 9293.57.1.90

Tracy Duberman, PhD, President & CEO

The Leadership Development Group 973.722.4480 tduberman@tldgroupinc.com www.tldgroupinc.com

Tracy Duberman, PhD is the founder of The Leadership Development Group (TLD Group) Inc., and co-author with Bob Sachs, PhD of From Competition to Collaboration: How Leaders Cultivate Partnerships to Deliver Value and Transform Health. Tracy has been recognized as an expert on leadership across various sectors, and speaks on ecosystem leadership, innovation in talent development, and effective succession planning.

About Us The Leadership Development Group is a global talent development consulting firm for leaders, teams, and organizations. Our solutions include executive, leadership assessment and coaching, organizational development consulting, and group leadership academies designed to engage and empower leaders to take on challenges and position their organizations for success. TLD Group’s worldwide faculty of over 400 organizational development practitioners, coaches, academicians, and consultants with deep expertise in leadership development offer targeted insights and deliver highly impactful results.

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Winning the Talent War:

A New Workplace Experience

Exists in Mobile

By REBECCA MURTAGH

When two global enterprises—a pharmaceutical company and a Fortune 100 financial firm— reached out to us, their overarching goals were common to many that use Modo: easily build a feature-rich, branded mobile app to drive employee productivity and keep them connected.

pandemic. As a result, companies have been innovating their workplace app experience to make it easier for remote employees to navigate through their workday as easily as those who are in the office. To make that experience successful, say HR leaders, a company’s mobile app needs these attributes:

The Fortune 100 financial service organization first tried to build an app in-house, but eventually turned to our platform to provide the backbone. They used their workplace app to coordinate a massive backto-the-office migration.

• Collaborate - Empower employees to collaborate with and schedule in-office time with their cohorts.

The pharmaceutical company also needed to support their return-to-office plan and realized that a mobile app was a critical element to making it happen. In less than 30 days, they were up and running and actively moving employees back to the office.

The common thread between these companies and the hundreds of others we work with is that their mobile app strategy was the critical link to executing employeefocused efforts like those to manage remote and hybrid workers, or to move them back to the office when the time is right. These are cross-departmental projects led by Human Resources, which has an eye on the employee experience. And, when the workplace app is one employees embrace because it delivers on the experience they desire, this also makes it an effective tool in the quest to find and retain talent.

What Employee Engagement Looks Like for the Remote or Hybrid Worker What we are hearing from our customers particularly the HR staff tasked with mobile, is that employees now more than ever desire flexibility in how and where they work, which is a trend that was gaining momentum before the pandemic but became essential during the 44

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• Connect - Ensure employees feel connected to their work, their colleagues and the company culture both globally and locally.

• Manage - Help employees go about their day, such as finding parking and transportation options, choosing where to eat, booking safe workspaces and conference rooms and locating co-workers.

• Access - Streamline and provide equitable access to needed information and resources and ensure employees are able to contribute equally to the business regardless of their location or time zone.

• Influence - Drive healthy choices and influence behaviors with nudges, quick polls, and service offerings.

• Assure - Make them feel comfortable about working near and around others in the office.

• Inform - Build employee confidence that they are safe by sending real-time localized mobile alerts.

• Engage - Provide satisfying engagement experiences, on par with how consumers engage with other mobile apps they use in their everyday life.

The Right Workplace Experience Attracts and Retains Top Talent 92 percent of HR leaders say the “employee experience” is a top priority in 2021. Data further supports what we’ve encountered with our customers: that employee expectations have changed dramatically since the pandemic started. Recruits are looking for a safe place to work and want a company that has a modern, feature-packed mobile app.

That app should reflect what they value in a workplace. They want more than a job.

They want an experience and flexibility in work hours and location without sacrificing the opportunity to connect with peers.

And while companies have always included security features, employees today need assurances that these security and safety features will prevent transmission of the virus to them and the people they care about.

Employees move about the office differently now, too. They avoid crowded conference rooms and elevators and make decisions about where to go and when to come into the office based on if they will be safe and able to avoid illnesses. This means that mobile apps need to include the following: • Provide intuitive access to key resources and optimize a hybrid environment - In addition to connecting to tools commonly used for scheduling and reserving conference rooms, a mobile workplace app needs an intuitive dashboard showing each employee their open tasks and their performance on those tasks. The app is also an effective way to drive behaviors – such as through push notifications – and solicit timely feedback through in-app surveys and quick polls. We call these “nudge” opportunities. Just as a Fitbit nudges the wearer to get up and walk around, workplace nudges can

promote healthy behaviors and remind workers to wash their hands, to take a mental-health break, or to engage with their colleagues. With mobile, an app can send nudges telling workers when their cohorts will be in the office and that drives the organic collaboration and hallway conversations that feed innovation.

• Serve as a trusted source of information - Certain mobile app platforms make it easy for anyone in a company – such as HR – to keep the app updated and use it to deliver consistent communication. It is perfectly suited to automatically deliver information that is tailored to individuals based on their role and location, while also broadly communicating to all employees more quickly than emails.

• Inspire confidence that they will be safe coming to work - A mobile workplace app can prepare employees with what to expect when coming into the office, helping reduce their anxiety.

It enables this in numerous ways, such as by serving up virtual tours on how to navigate their return and deliver

wellness assessments and health checkins. It can also assure them that the building and their workstations have been sanitized.

• Once in the office, empower employees to safely navigate office life - From the palm of their hands, employees can quickly find needed resources – including PPE – and with indoor wayfinding navigate new office layouts and protocols. They can know when it is safe to exit an elevator and when to approach a colleague’s work station. They can find where a colleague is located when they aren’t at their desk or in the office and they can request that their desk or a conference room be sanitized.

On average, we pick up our mobile phone 58 times per day, and more than half of those are during working hours. need not be a tech-heavy endeavor requiring outside consultants and massive investment.

HR leaders can spend time focusing on the experience. Instead of spending time with programming, HR can deliver a unified digital experience while fostering the corporate culture. And when it is well conceived and executed, your company workplace app not only helps current employees but sets your company apart with prospective ones.

Meeting Employees Where They Are Our phones are already our primary communication and connection tool. On average, we pick up our mobile phone 58 times per day, and more than half of those are during working hours. One study reveals 66 percent of Americans check their phones 160 times every day. And yet, deploying a mobile app

Rebecca Murtagh is the chief marketing

officer of Modo, the industry-leading app building platform for companies and higher education institutions in the US and worldwide.

www.HRProfessionalsMagazine.com

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Ask For and Provide Comforting Support Through Phone Or Visual Media.

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Having a Goal, Something to Work Towards, or Look Forward to Post Pandemic.

Ways Emotional Intelligence Can ~ 5Help Us Through Pandemic Fatigue Photo credit: enterprisersproject.com

By HARVEY DEUTSCHENDORF

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During the past year of Covid 19, few of us have escaped unscathed. For those who remained working, but had to switch to remote work, there was the extra burden of childcare during school shutdowns, lack of support from the traditional workplace environment, learning new technical skills and zoom fatigue. For those out of work there was the constant worry about paying rent, mortgage and putting food on the table. Fatigue and constant fear were constant companions of front- line health care workers who had to treat those affected. Seniors living in care centers faced extra fears, witnessing the infection rates in their facilities. Those living alone and without the support of family and friends were affected extra hard by the isolation. The pandemic created even more hardships for those who were already struggling with addictions and homelessness. “JAMA Psychiatry released a study recently where they showed that ER visits across the country were at higher levels during the pandemic than in 2019 with mental health, substance abuse, overdose issues,” said Dave Marlon, an optimistic addiction treatment provider, who runs Vegas Stronger out of Las Vegas, NV, a nonprofit advocating for the end of the opiate epidemic as well as working to get homeless off the streets and into treatment. “The pandemic really accelerated a lot of the trends we were already seeing,” Marlon said. On top of that was the constant and overriding fear, uncertainty and isolation that we all experienced to some extent, regardless of our circumstances. COVID created a situation we had not experienced before, were not prepared for and were unsure of how we would come out of it. This caused unprecedented stress and pushed coping abilities to the limits. Despite this, there were certain tools that helped us cope and even come out of the crisis stronger.

5 Ways Emotional Intelligence Can Help Us Come Through This Difficult Time.

Be aware of what we can control and focus on that. Those who made the most of their time unprecedented during the pandemic deliberately chose to put their time and energy focusing on what they could control rather than outside forces outside of their control. They let go of spending time thinking of what others were doing, actions of government and toilet paper shortages. Instead they chose to focus on positive ways of spending their time and energy, getting scientific valid information and following it, keeping up a healthy diet, exercise and sleeping patterns. While staying informed, they chose their sources carefully and ignored all the misinformed, inaccurate and totally lacking in factual evidence information going around.

Being Aware Of Our Anxiety Levels And Look For Ways To Reduce Them When Possible.

Are you feeling particularly anxious going out shopping? Choose an off time such as evenings when there are less people out. Take turns shopping with a family member, neighbor or friend to decrease your chances of virus exposure. If financially able, consider a home delivery service. Follow all scientific advice when it comes to distancing and wearing a mask.

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Being forced to distance from family and loved ones was one of the most difficult parts of these times for many of us. Although realizing that it is not the same as physical touch and hugs, emotionally intelligent people were very aware of the importance of reaching out and maintaining ongoing contact with those important to them in their lives. They did not wait for others to reach out, but took the initiative, understanding that it might be difficult for others to take the lead. This helped alleviate some of the feelings of isolation, anxiety and disconnection that we all experienced to some degree during this time. Able and willing to be vulnerable, they were able to reach out and ask for help when they felt the need.

For those who lived through it, Covid 19 will define us for the rest of our lives. When we look back, we will find that those who had a future vision that they were working towards were better able to cope with these times. Perhaps beginning to work towards a goal or dream that has been dormant will take our minds off our present situation and help us focus on something positive that motivates and excites us. Is now a good time to write that book, learn to play a musical instrument or take up that hobby we didn’t have time for before?

Ask Yourself How You Want to be Able to Look Back on This Time.

One of the ways of coping through difficult times that I talk about in my book, The Other Kind of Smart, www.theotherkindofsmart. com, is imagining myself looking back upon an event or situation a number of years down the road. This too will pass, and we will look back on it. When I asked myself that question, it was important that I remember this time as being a productive growth period. I did not want to look back and see this time wasted. “A lot of the people we’ve seen thrive during the pandemic have found ways to strengthen their mental health, mindfulness, pick up new hobbies, and find ways to stay connected while staying distanced,” said Marlon. As a result, this time has resulted in increased writing, learning and exploring new interests. I always wanted to learn to play the blues harmonica and finally took online courses. This time provided me with an opportunity to learn a skill which will provide me with pleasure for the rest of my life. Look for opportunities to start doing something that will provide you with feelings of pride and satisfaction when you look back on this time.

Harvey Deutschendorf is an emotional intelligence expert,

internationally published author and speaker. To take the EI Quiz go to theotherkindofsmart.com. His book THE OTHER KIND OF SMART, Simple Ways to Boost Your Emotional Intelligence for Greater Personal Effectiveness and Success has been published in 4 languages. Harvey writes for FAST COMPANY and has a monthly column with HRPROFESSIONALS MAGAZINE. You can follow him on Twitter @theeiguy.

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