Has demand for a secondary or new service exploded since you furloughed employees? In most employment-at-will situations, you are able to employ the best person for the job you need done. This means that, if currently-furloughed employees do not have the skills or talents to effectively perform the job duties you need, you should be able to hire a new employee. It is essential to hire someone who has different abilities, education, or experience than anyone currently in your workforce that enable them to perform that service when and how you need it.
There may be more restrictions to your ability to hire a new employee if you have employees under a CBA (labor contract) or depending on how you worded the furlough notice.
As always, document your decisions and procedures to be able to show that you hired the new employee based on the services they could provide rather than to replace a furloughed employee for a discriminatory reason.
Affinity HR Group is BSCAI's endorsed HR partner, providing HR support, recruiting and employee engagement services. For a link to our menu of services for BSCAI members, go to www.AffinityHRGroup.com/BSCAI
There is very little guidance from the CDC on how one should handle voluntary travel within the United States as the stay-at-home orders open up. If you are concerned with employee vacations, it is best to discuss with your employees the risks involved and the appropriateness of self-quarantining.
If they are able to work from home, you may want to request that they do so. If they are unable to work from home, you should discuss whether you will require them to take paid time off, or whether you will pay them to remain at home. Finally, we encourage you to do some research. The CDC has an up-to-date tracker of infection rates for all counties across the country. Having a clear understanding of the risks before employees go on vacation should help to guide your decision about self-quarantining upon return.
Employees have shown up sick for work. Can you send them home and require that they use their sick leave? Yes, you can. If you do send them home, reassure them that you want them to take the time to recover and that you will help to ensure their work gets done. Remind them that sick leave is offered so that they will stay home when they are sick. And if they are worried about lost wages, try to identify ways for them to make up the time once they return to health.
We are very good, generally, at identifying and pointing out behavior that we want to change – otherwise known as corrective feedback. Most managers spend little to no time giving positive, behavior-reinforcing feedback. We love to recommend the Ten Penny Challenge. Ask your manager(s) to put 10 pennies in a right-hand pocket. Tell them that their job is to give their direct reports positive feedback. Each time they do so, they place one penny from the right-hand pocket into the left pocket. Tell them that at the end of each day, it is your expectation that they will have worked all of the 10 pennies from the right pocket into the left one, thereby forcing them to focus on giving positive, supportive, and effective feedback to employees. You may want to start out with just five pennies if they’re not in practice to give positive feedback. But if they are true managers and managing people is their core responsibility, then working through 10 pennies a day should be their primary objective each day!
While the First Amendment protecting free speech exists for public companies and government agencies, it does not generally extend to private companies. And while some speech is protected under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), such as discussions about pay and working conditions, political conversations are not protected under federal law at all.
If you would like to establish a policy keeping politics out of conversations at work, you can do so. Should you choose to do this, you may want to establish that you are doing so to prohibit conversations that may become aggressive, threatening, disrespectful, or worse. You may choose to prohibit public-facing employees from wearing political paraphernalia. And you should remind employees of your policies around code of conduct and workplace safety such as non-harassment and discrimination.
Affinity HR Group is BSCAI's endorsed HR partner, providing HR support, recruiting and employee engagement services. For a link to our menu of services for BSCAI members, go to www.AffinityHRGroup.com/BSCAI.