HR Daily Advisor is BLR’s FREE daily source of HR tips, news, and advice. HR Daily Advisor offers free webcasts, articles, and reports on topics important to HR and compensation professionals.
In what is being called a signal to foes of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the U.S. Supreme Court’s latest ruling on the health care law preserves the status quo for employers.
In a 7-2 decision, the Court found the states challenging the ACA’s legality in California v. Texas did not have standing to bring their challenge. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote the majority opinion and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Clarence Thomas. Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.
The decision, which gained the approval of four justices typically considered conservative, dismisses a challenge from Texas and other Republican-dominated states.
The majority opinion points out that to have standing, the states would need to “allege personal injury fairly traceable to the defendant’s allegedly unlawful conduct.” The opinion says none of the states making the challenge have shown such an injury.
Meaning for Employers
Nita Beecher, an attorney with FortneyScott in Washington, D.C., says she expects employers will be happy that they will continue to have an alternative for health coverage for nonemployees.
Also, Beecher says she expects the Biden administration will try “to shore up the ACA with changes that need to be made.” That effort may not be easy. “Right now, the only way they can fix it is either to change or eliminate the filibuster or try to pass the changes through reconciliation.”
Currently, the Senate is evenly divided between reliably Republican and Democratic votes. Vice President Kamala Harris can cast a tie-breaking vote, but to pass major legislation, 60 votes are needed to break a filibuster. It’s possible Democrats can use a process called budget reconciliation to pass legislation with just a simple majority, but that process is limited.
Regardless of what happens on the legislative front, Beecher says she believes the Supreme Court “is trying to tell Republicans that this is not the way to get rid of the ACA.” The latest case marks the third time the Supreme Court has upheld the law, which was enacted in 2010.
One effect of the ACA on employers is the employer shared responsibility provisions. Because of those provisions, certain employers—those deemed applicable large employers (ALEs)—must either offer minimum essential coverage that is “affordable” and provides “minimum value” to their full-time employees or potentially make an employer shared responsibility payment to the IRS. The IRS explains that to be an ALE, an employer must have had an average of at least 50 full-time employees during the preceding calendar year.
When an employee quits, it can throw your business into chaos. While you’re juggling finding the person’s replacement and making sure he or she wraps up the projects he or she was working on, it’s easy to let things slip through the cracks.
But a streamlined exit process is essential for any business facing an employee who chooses to leave. If you don’t have a system in place, you’ll find yourself missing important steps. Whether employees are leaving on good terms or they’re already halfway out the door, there are things that need to get done to ensure professionalism, security compliance, and your company’s path forward.
Here are four things you absolutely need to make sure happen when an employee quits to ensure a smooth transition for you and the rest of your team.
1. Conduct an Exit Interview
Why is this person leaving? It could be simple, like a family relocation, or it could be more complex, like a dissatisfaction with the work he or she was expected to do. The only way to really learn this is to conduct an exit interview.
Exit interviews can be eye-opening for a variety of reasons: They help you understand the hardest parts of the job role, they help you get a better grasp on how exactly employees spent their days, and they help you see changes you may need to make when it comes to filling the role in the future. It’s also a simple courtesy. If someone is leaving the company on good terms, you should give the person an opportunity to voice how he or she felt about working with you and why he or she is leaving. Even if it’s a cut-and-dried answer and there isn’t much you need to change about the role, it’s a way of saying you care about your employees and want to hear what they have to say.
As for who should conduct the exit interview, that depends on your company. It could be a manager, a supervisor, or someone in human resources. Having a person who doesn’t know the exiting employee well conduct the interview can be a good thing, as the employee may be more comfortable being open and honest. It can also be a good time to collect the employee’s formal resignation letter.
2. Complete Security Procedures
To ensure your company won’t be liable for future security issues, it’s essential you go through security procedures with the exiting employee, even if the person is someone you’d trust with your life. This may not seem essential, but you’d regret skipping this step if there were some type of security breach. A complete wipe of the employee’s security connection with your company is a must and could entail:
Retrieving any keys, including those for the parking garage or on-site facilities like gyms;
Wiping company laptops and desktops of any personal information;
Changing passwords and resetting e-mail accounts;
Making sure any important information, like keycodes, is left with the company for the next employee;
Collecting any company property, including anything the employee may have taken home or kept in his or her car; and
Removing access to any company databases.
3. Write a Job Description
Why is it so important to have a job description written before an employee actually leaves? Simple: to ensure you get the description right. You may think you know what someone did on a day-to-day basis, but there are likely tasks this employee was in charge of that you were unaware of. Thus, employees can be a great resource when it comes to crafting job descriptions and helping to find their replacement. In fact, if you have employees write the description themselves, you’ll have something to work from. To help the process along, you can give employees some questions to prompt them, such as:
What were your most important job roles?
What did you spend the most time doing?
What were some metrics you were in charge of?
What do more people need to know about your job position?
You can also take this opportunity to freshen up the roles and responsibilities of a particular position. But it’s still important to hear from the departing employee what his or her daily duties were. If they aren’t going to be covered by this position any longer, they still need to be covered by somebody. It’ll be easier to reassign these roles once you have them listed out clearly.
4. Tell the Staff
Lastly, it’s important that you and the exiting employee decide together how you’re going to inform the staff about his or her upcoming departure. It’s important that the rest of the team learn at relatively the same time—otherwise, there can be confusion and office politics that are hard to navigate. If you want to tell the executive team or higher-level employees first, that’s your call, but don’t leave too wide of a gap between that meeting and telling the rest of the employees.
Telling everyone simultaneously is the easiest way to go about this, whether it’s at an employee event or via e-mail. If the employee has a few close coworkers he or she would like to inform first, make sure you know when those conversations will take place so you have a firm understanding of who in the office knows and who doesn’t. Letting an employee “ghost” your business by simply not showing up one day without formally announcing it to the rest of the staff first is a mistake.
Although it may seem tempting to sidestep awkward conversations, the truth is that letting an employee simply disappear is actually going to create even more tension. It will also leave staff feeling like they don’t know what’s going on with the company, which is never something you want your team to feel. You and the employee should be on the same page; craft a plan to tell the rest of your staff, and then execute it.
Maintaining a diverse workforce is increasingly necessary for companies to be competitive and successful in the global marketplace. But what happens when diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives collide head-on with your obligation to accommodate an employee's religious beliefs? Employers are facing such dilemmas with increasing frequency as they build and strengthen their efforts toward a diverse and equitable workplace.
Title VII Protections
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Courts Bostock v. Clayton County decision recognizing that LGBTQ+ employees are protected by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, employers are increasingly finding themselves in the difficult position of having to weigh often diametrically opposed rights: religious freedom versus LGBTQ+ rights. How do you choose? It's simple: You don't.
The rights (one employee's "sincerely held religious beliefs" versus another worker's gender identity/transgender status and sexual orientation) are both protected by Title VII and other state and local laws:
For LGBTQ+ employees, Title VII prohibits discrimination and harassment based on gender identity/transgender status and sexual orientation.
The law also requires employers to reasonably accommodate their employees' religious observances, practices, and beliefs unless doing so would be an "undue hardship" (which isn't a high bar to clear).
An "undue hardship" is defined as any accommodation that would impose more than a de minimus or trivial cost on the employer's operations (a much lower standard than used for disability accommodations, even though similar terms are used). As a result, in many situations, you could deny religious accommodations because of the difficulty or expense. But that isn't the solution.
Although some religions strongly oppose LGBTQ+ initiatives as being contrary to their faith, employers can satisfy both groups while building bridges and expanding knowledge in the process. When you address the situations correctly, religious and LGBTQ+ employees can not only coexist but also thrive in an inclusive and diverse workplace.
Courts Have Strived to Find Balance
Thankfully, employers aren't left to operate in a vacuum. Courts have considered similar issues over the last few decades, most finding that even diversity initiatives can be subject to religious accommodation.
For example, a Christian employee refused to sign an antidiscrimination policy that required employees "to fully recognize, respect and value the differences." The employee claimed since Christianity considers some behavior to be sinful, he couldn't "value" it, so the employer fired him. But a federal district court in Colorado found the employer could have accommodated the individual without suffering any undue hardship by making a minor revision to the policy's language, i.e., by requiring employees to "fully recognize, respect and value that there are differences among all of us."
In another example, a former barista in New Jersey sued a coffee chain claiming she was wrongfully terminated after refusing to wear a "PRIDE" T-shirt because of her religious beliefs. Also, currently pending before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas is a case filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against a grocery store on behalf of an employee who refused to wear a rainbow-colored heart emblem endorsing LGBTQ+ values. The matter is set for trial in March 2022.
Some Courts Have Upheld LGBTQ+ Rights
In EEOC v. Harris Funeral Homes (a decision also addressed by Bostock, albeit on other grounds), a funeral home terminated the employment of its transgender funeral director. The 6th Circuit rejected the employer's reliance on religious beliefs as a defense to the employee's Title VII discrimination claim.
More recently, a federal district court found an employer didn't violate Title VII by not accommodating an employee who opposed the employer's practice of displaying a Pride flag during Pride month. The court noted merely expecting the employee to attend work in the same location that a Pride flag was displayed didn't amount to asking him to adhere to a conflicting employment requirement.
What Employers Should Do
Despite the hurdles, you shouldn't shy away from your diversity initiatives. Instead, consider each accommodation request independently, understanding the unique facts of the specific situation and knowing no "one-size-fits-all" response will achieve the balance needed for a harmonious and cohesive workforce.
When an employee requests a religious accommodation, you must consider it but aren't required to provide the specific solution requested, or even the employee's ideal accommodation, so long as the one you select is "reasonable." Furthermore, you are never required to grant an accommodation that would eliminate one of the employee's essential functions.
For example, an employee's request to avoid actively participating in LGBTQ+ inclusion initiatives during Pride Month may be reasonable. But transferring an employee to a role that doesn't require interaction with coworkers because of their LGBTQ+ status is not.
Faced with a clash between your DEI initiatives and an employee's request for religious accommodation, you should carefully consider whether both can be accomplished. You may need to resort to inventive solutions to accommodate the needs of all employees.
Bottom Line For Employers
Don't be dissuaded from promoting DEI efforts in your workplace or supporting both LGBTQ+ and religious workers, vendors, and customers. Developing a training program that demystifies different groups' underlying tenets and culture, whether LGBTQ+ or religious, will go a long way toward increasing understanding and bridging the perceptual chasm that will only get wider unless you continue to make efforts to bring people together.
Your initiatives to create and promote a diverse workforce will give employees a sense of belonging and interconnection and ultimately improve their morale and performance. And yes, that includes accommodating employees' sincerely held religious beliefs that run contrary to your DEI efforts. Even when a religious employee's requested accommodation isn't reasonable or is an "undue hardship," those of you who make the effort to explore the underlying concern, address the issue, and champion inclusivity for all will be rewarded with employee loyalty and longevity and a benefit to the bottom line.
American attitudes toward smoking have changed dramatically in the past several decades. A habit that was once commonplace in restaurants, workplaces, and even airplanes has been banned from most homes, offices, and even bars. Part of that changed attitude is driven by nonsmokers who understandably prefer to avoid second-hand smoke. Another element of the change has to do with paternalistic concern for the health of the smokers themselves.
In addition to these concerns, at least one business in Japan is thinking of its own interests as well. “Those quick smoke breaks some employees take for a few minutes at a time throughout the day add up, giving them extra time outside of the office than nonsmoking employees,” writes Marguerite Ward in an article for CNBC.
Ward points to a company in Japan where, while smoking is a big part of the culture, productivity impacts prompted change.
“After a nonsmoking employee submitted a complaint about how smoke breaks were affecting productivity, marketing firm Piala Inc. made a change to its paid-time-off policy,” Ward writes. The Japanese company—Piala Inc.—decided to grant nonsmoking employees an extra six days off per year to make up for the time smokers spend in the aggregate on smoking breaks.
The stated goal of Piala’s policy is to get employees to cut down on smoking through incentives, as opposed to penalties. And, according to the company, that policy has so far been successful, resulting in four of the company’s 42 smoker employees deciding to quit since the policy began.
Piala’s smoking policy is an interesting—and, so far, seemingly successful—strategy to combat adverse employee behavior through incentives, as opposed to coercion. It also highlights a fading, albeit lingering, concern among employers worldwide about counterproductive and time-consuming employee behaviors.
It would be interesting to see if a similar approach could be applied to other habits, such as social media use. If nothing else, it represents a creative human resources approach to a longstanding productivity challenge.
More than a year after the COVID-19 pandemic upended the nature of work as we knew it, it’s no surprise that there has also been a transformation in how people are recruited and hired for work.
As a cascade of layoffs in hard-hit sectors flooded the labor market with job candidates and as other fields ramped up recruiting to meet surging demand for services like e-commerce and information technology to support new or growing trends like remote working, buying, and learning, recruiting top talent became easier due to the deluge of highly qualified applicants and harder due to the inherent challenge of urgently sifting through hundreds or even thousands of applications.
Making matters even more challenging was the rapid shift to at least partially remote work modes, which forced recruiters to rely on digital solutions to carry out the hiring process. One survey found that video interviews spiked by 159% year over year in 2020.
As with many other COVID-era changes, what started as a stopgap solution will, in fact, be a prominent feature of the post-pandemic landscape.
Other trends set to reshape the world of recruitment include an ongoing expansion of hiring pools, a new approach to artificial intelligence (AI)-driven recruitment solutions, and a greater emphasis on candidates’ soft skills. Here’s what it all means for recruiters navigating the working world’s new normal.
Video Interviews Are Here to Stay
While video interviews were hardly unheard of before the pandemic, many businesses had little to no experience meeting job candidates on screen. One year on, they’re seeing substantial long-term benefits to the practice.
Since transitioning to video interviews, recruitment managers at P&O Ferries have spent 62% less time on the interview and assessment process, and they agree unanimously that they would prefer to continue with video as the first stage of the interview process, according to data provided by the company. U.K. online grocer Ocado has had a similarly positive experience, with 90% of hiring managers saying they want to continue video interviews post-pandemic and 94% of job applicants giving the video interview experience a 4- or 5-star review.
Not only does a hybrid interview process save employers time and travel costs, but incorporating video also allows hiring managers to review candidates’ answers by replaying the interview recording and analyzing automatic transcriptions, enabling a more objective and accurate assessment of candidates’ interview performance and overall suitability. Video also allows many candidates to shine in a way CVs never could, putting personality ahead of paper.
Location, Location, Location? Not Necessarily
With many employers planning to continue remote or hybrid work even after the pandemic ends, geographic barriers to recruiting top talent are breaking down.
This isn’t just good news for companies’ ability to find quality employees no matter where they’re located; it’s also a boon to their efforts to build a more diverse workforce.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion have moved to the forefront as critical factors in the overall culture, and corporate culture is no exception. When hiring is no longer as constricted by geography as it was before, it’s easier for companies to attract talent from a rich variety of ethnic, racial, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds.
A More Critical Approach to AI
In recent years, AI and machine learning as recruitment tools have grown a lot less theoretical and a lot more real, and the increasing use of digital HR platforms has been a key driver of this trend.
But while many employers have found AI-based solutions efficient and effective, some of these products have come with significant challenges. Case in point: Earlier this year, HireVue abandoned its facial monitoring tool amid criticism that the company had been too opaque about how the feature worked. Others have criticized algorithmic biases built into AI systems, highlighting the need for technology that is inclusive by design.
Despite the concerns, the adoption of these solutions is growing, with companies and recruiters reaping the benefits that are offered—and there is no going back.
When developed from the get-go with fairness built in, however, AI-powered technologies can not only streamline a time-consuming task but also help promote diversity and inclusion in the hiring process. Doing so requires an intensive approach to vet and test such solutions before full-scale implementation to ensure qualities like cultural fit, critical skills, and intuition are evaluated fairly and that a diverse range of backgrounds, attributes, attitudes, and points of view are baked into the AI as the ultimate hiring goals.
Soft Skills Take Center Stage
There’s no denying that the past year has underscored the necessity of flexibility at all organizational levels. That’s why more and more recruiters are placing a premium on candidates’ soft skills—especially their adaptability.
To that end, recruiters and HR professionals have had to reassess their hiring processes to better assess factors like time management and candidates’ ability to adjust course when necessary and work under high-uncertainty conditions. Even after the pandemic fades, these skills will serve employers and employees well into the future, particularly given the increasingly rapid pace of technological change and workplace innovation.
For all the challenges of the past year, the pandemic has also been a catalyst for new thinking and even positive growth and development in key areas, including hiring and recruiting. The recruitment and interviewing field has leapfrogged ahead to meet the demands of new procedures, with technology adjusting accordingly. Looking beyond the résumé, reducing the importance of physical locations, placing a newfound emphasis on soft skills and character, and ensuring fair and diverse hiring processes that benefit workers and workplaces are all issues being addressed in a more pressing way since the pandemic began.
A new era of more inclusive and dynamic recruitment is upon us—and that’s a development well worth embracing.