Joanne Kaldy

A new Kaiser Family Foundation survey has some interesting data about how many workers have left their jobs because of vaccine mandates. Among the findings:

• Only 5% of unvaccinated workers say they left a job because of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
• One-quarter of workers say their employer has required them to get vaccinated, up from 9% in June.
• More than a third (37%) of unvaccinated workers say they would leave their job if their employer required them to get a vaccine or be tested weekly. This number risks to 7 in 10 workers if weekly testing is not an option.
• Of the employers who have mandates in place, 71% say there has been no impact on turnover. Of those who say they’ve lost some workers to vaccination mandates, 25% report in a slight increase in turnover.

Today’s workers want a balance of traditional benefits with newer, more personalized perks. Pay is important, but job hunters also want:

• A company with a strong environmental agenda.
• Attention to employees’ physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing. For instance, workers want perks such as the ability to bring pets to work.
• Scheduling flexibility, including the ability to work remotely when possible.
• Opportunities to advance professional skills, including tuition reimbursement.

According to results from a new survey, 95% of business leaders say that their organization’s crisis management plans  and capabilities “need improvement.” Only about a third (35%) say their plans were “very relevant” to the pandemic. To ensure that teams are prepared to manage a crisis across settings, offices, and departments, consider the following:

• Encourage and enable agility. Make sure employees are trained to be inventive and adaptive in an emergency. Run drills and even games to give them chances to flex their creative muscles and problem-solving skills.
• Create redundancy with technology. Make sure that team members can find the latest information, documents, and project files they need at any given time, even if some connections or avenues of communication are disrupted or shut down.
• Build crisis response into structures and processes. Ensure that there are always multiple people who have information and knowledge necessary to navigate … [Read more...] about (10/4) Managing a Distributed Team Through Natural Disasters (And Other Crises)

Several recent worker surveys indicate that flexible work schedules and opportunities are key to attracting and keeping good people. Use these tips to create flex-work policies that existing and potential employees alike will find appealing:

• Start by understanding real employee needs. Look at how and how well your team works together, how well you’ve been able to arrange cross-functional collaborations, and what tools, information, or other supports would help improve performance and teamwork.
• Ensure alignment with your own employer branding. For instance, if you’ve been promoting your organization as being ‘like a family,’ make that promise real to accommodating workers’ needs for scheduling changes and new ways to work.
• Find out what your employees have missed about not being together. Determine how you can re-establish these things while providing scheduling flexibility.
• Be open to suspending pre-pandemic rules and establishing new … [Read more...] about (11/4) Creating 6 Flex-Work Policies for Employees with Different Needs

Unpaid meal breaks can cause problems for employers.  While the law is pretty clear (employees must be compensated for all work hours, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) has some specific guidance on meal breaks:

• Federal law considers even short breaks (such as 20 minutes) to be compensable time. However, FLSA says that employers don’t have to pay most meal breaks (which last about 30 minutes or longer). However, employees must be completely off the clock and free from work-related duties during that time.
• If employees eat at their desks, they aren’t automatically entitled to compensation for that time. However, if they are working and/or mandated to do so or if an employee is required to respond to calls, emails, or other communications during lunch, that time would be compensable.
• As a rule, employers can automatically make appropriate deductions from workers’ paychecks for unpaid mealtimes. However, they must be careful to ensure that they don’t … [Read more...] about (10/2) Back to Basics: What FSLA Has to Say about Lunch

According to a new report, more employees than ever feel unsafe at work and aren’t getting the help they need from HR. The most common forms of workplace misconduct identified in the report are bullying, harassment, discrimination, health & safety failures, corruption, and fraud. Over half (51%) of workers say they’ve been the victim of one of these types of misconduct; and 48% say they’ve experienced such a problem as often as once a month. More than a third of workers think their organization would brush aside at least some kinds of misconduct. At the same time, 30% of HR and compliance leaders agree that their company would dismiss a misconduct complaint if they thought it would damage profits or reputation. There is a great urgency to address misconduct, as there is some suggestion this problem has worsened since the pandemic. More than one in four employees in another study say they’ve experienced unwelcome sexual behavior online since COVID-19 first hit. And more HR … [Read more...] about (11/1) Workplace Misconduct Is At An All Time High – and HR Doesn’t Know How to Fix It

Once again, a new study indicates that there is a disconnect between what employers and employees think. This one shows the employers believe they’re doing a good job with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), while workers are much less enthusiastic:

• 97% of companies said they introduced new inclusion measures in the past year, although a fourth of employees said that their company hasn’t done anything new.
• 52% of employers said they’ve introduced ways to ensure equal pay across titles/positions, but only 24% of workers say their company has taken such an action.
• 27% of companies said they’ve introduced or expanded inclusive benefits/perks, but fewer than 1 in 10 workers said that their company has undertaken such efforts.

With staff in short supply, it’s never been more important to engage workers. Here are three hot tips:

• Keep it simple. Don’t make employee engagement activities long, complex, and/or inconvenient. For instance, a trip to an escape room may seem like fun; but if it takes workers away from work or family for a few hours, it can be more burdensome than engaging. Instead, consider brief, simple activities that are embedded as part of work, such as a weekly contest or quiz.
• Watch the frequency. Everyone is busy, so consider regular check-ins or five-minute conversations instead of weekly or even month surveys.
• Keep it work-centric. Measuring culture, satisfaction, and happiness are distinct things. Focus engagement on the experience of work and how work actually happens on a daily basis.

Employers don’t seem to know their employees as well as they think they do, according to a number of recent surveys. In one, employers rated their learning programs higher than their workers did. Among the findings:

• Employers overwhelmingly rated their professional development programs as good/beneficial while employees said they are neutral at best.
• Employees feel strongly that professional development is more important than other benefits. However, they want more choice in how to use these benefits.
• Employees rated their job satisfaction lower if their company doesn’t offer professional development.
• Women rated programs lower and reported less understanding and clarity about what resources are available to them than their male counterparts.
• Nearly a quarter (19%) of employees said they don’t get professional development benefits or don’t know if such benefits are available to them.