Name: Rachel Fletcher
Title: Director of Human Resources
Company: Colliers International – Atlanta Realty, LLC
1. How many years have you been working in HR? 4
2. Favorite thing about working in HR? There are many things! The main two I equally enjoy are solving problems and the diversity each day.
3. Best piece of advice you ever received about a career in HR? HR is about dual focus, the employee and the business.
A few weeks ago, our colleague posted about whether obesity would become a protected class.
Biases based upon appearance don’t end with obesity. Studies show that:
Can our current set of federal, state, and local discrimination laws and regulations properly address appearance-based discrimination? Or does this bias demand that unattractiveness be made a new protected class?
What does it mean to provide a “safe” workplace?
For careful employers, the concept of workplace safety is not limited to preventing accidents (slips, falls, and equipment injuries) that lead to workers’ compensation claims. Employers must also consider the threat of workplace violence, which usually takes one of three forms: (1) violence between co-workers; (2) violence between employees and customers; and (3) violence between employees and the general public. Each industry faces unique challenges in preventing workplace violence. Let’s consider two examples – a bank and a hospital. The bank is likely to be more concerned with preventing a robbery than the hospital. On the other hand, the hospital may focus more on protecting employees from potentially violent patients. In both examples, the careful employer must take reasonable steps to assess and prevent violence against employees.
Organizations like the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) have been fighting for decades to establish federal and state laws that specifically prohibit discrimination in employment based on a person’s weight. According to a NAAFA report from 2007, the likelihood of weight-based employment discrimination is 12 times more likely for overweight adults, 37 times more likely for obese persons, and 100 times more likely for severely obese adults. Yet to date, no federal legislation exists that specifically prohibits discrimination based on weight, and only one state (Michigan) and a handful of cities have passed laws that make weight-based discrimination illegal.
A few years ago, the New York Times ran an article about investigations into the legality of unpaid internships at for-profit businesses, explaining that such investigations were being conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor, as well as by the labor departments of several states, including California, Oregon, and New York.
At that time, many practitioners expected that there would be a tidal wave of class action lawsuits brought by former unpaid interns but, surprisingly, that wave did not come…until now.
The California legislature recently passed a bill prohibiting employers – with some specific exceptions – from obtaining and using credit reports to screen candidates and employees. Check out this report at Law360. California becomes not the first, but the sixth state to have passed similar legislation, joining Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Illinois and Maryland. Even more states are considering similar restrictions, and there’s even a proposal before Congress that would do the same thing on a national level. What else? Oh, the EEOC takes the position that the use of credit reports may be biased against minorities and females. Here’s the EEOC’s official take. So, not only may using these reports be unlawful in many states, but you could also face charges of discrimination over the use of credit reports. Finally, don’t forget that the bankruptcy code, which applies nationwide, prohibits an employer from discriminating against an employee on the basis of bankruptcy – basically, you can’t fire someone solely because of a bankruptcy, whether your business is a financial institution or not.
Online social media presents great rewards – and potential risks – for employers. With more than 500 million active users on Facebook alone, there is no question that a large percentage of employees in every workforce use some form of online social networking. Even when information on social media networks is not publicly available (such as when employees use “friends only” privacy settings in a social media network such as Facebook), employees often grant access to (“friend”) their supervisors, many of whom also use the same social media. Likewise, there is no doubt that social media use goes on during work hours and at work – even where employers takes steps to restrict this behavior.
Who in HR can say they have not been tempted to “spy” on an employee on Family and Medical Leave Act (“FMLA”) leave to make sure that they are not faking it? Wouldn’t it be great to catch that employee you are sure is lying as he is playing golf when he should be home recovering from his back surgery? Or catching the employee on leave supposedly recovering from a hysterectomy right after she returned from a week-long vacation in Mexico?
Surely, under these circumstances you could safely terminate the offending employee…couldn’t you?
When the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began, employers faced many issues with employees departing for military service. Now that soldiers are returning in greater numbers and coming back to their jobs, are you keeping in mind all of the requirements under federal law, including USERRA and the FMLA – and even the ADA?
Do you enjoy updating your résumé?
If your answer is “No,” you may be pleased to hear that some companies no longer ask for a résumé. As explained in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, a number of technology firms do not require job applicants to submit résumés. These companies are more interested in the applicant’s “web presence,” which can include Twitter feeds, LinkedIn accounts, or Youtube video profiles.