Employers that want to get the most benefit from their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts should be mindful of how traditional workplace dress codes could set them back. So reports Employee Benefit News.

“There shouldn't be a required dress code in office environments, even when people have client interactions,” says Ritu Bhasin, author of "The Authenticity Principal" and founder and CEO of Bhasin Consulting, a DEI consulting firm. “If we do away with dress codes, whether it's hybrid, in person or virtual, we give people the autonomy to decide how to dress.”

While employers should prioritize autonomy, traditional business attire mostly derives from what able-bodied white men deem is appropriate for themselves and white women, Bhasin says. Women of color will not meet those “standards,” she adds.

“Dress codes reflect the behavioral expectations set by dominant cultural identities,” she says. “Because the normative we are being judged against is a white male normative, we are reminded we don't belong, that we lack choice and our identities are vilified.”

Read the full article from Employee Benefit News.

More employees are returning to the office worldwide, giving hope to employers that this will mean a return of pre-pandemic levels. So reports Employee Benefit News.

WeWork found that bookings from its all-access and on-demand members shot up 20% the week after Labor Day on Sept. 5 compared with the weekly average from its 700 global office locations. When looking at the same week from last year, global keycard swipes skyrocketed more than 70%. The company’s global head of real estate, Peter Greenspan, said that its data on keycard swipes pertains to 40 million square feet of office space.

“This September feels more like the real return to the office that has been touted for two and a half years now,” he said. “You've heard, 'Return to the office, return to the office, now it's after this holiday, now it's after this summer.' This data, at least to us, indicates that this is a stronger return to the office than the previous ones.”

Read the full article from Employee Benefit News.

General Motors has reassured its corporate workers that it is holding off on a requirement that they come to their physical offices at least three days a week. So reports CNBC.

The company announced the requirement on Sept. 23, but by Sept. 27 retreated and informed workers that they would not mandate specific days to come into the office. It will be left up to individual teams to decide their staffs’ work schedules, the company said.

Both messages are a big change from GM’s flexible “work appropriately” rules that were announced by CEO Mary Barra and celebrated by the company in April 2021. Those rules promoted a flexible policy that could change based on a variety of factors, including the employee, week and project. “Our plan was always, and still is, collaboratively design the solution that best balances the needs of the enterprise with the needs of each of you,” reads the memo, signed by Barra and other executives, a copy of which was seen by CNBC.

In a follow-up message to workers, they were told they would not be required to return to their offices before the first quarter of next year. “While we have maintained a highly collaborative culture over the past two years during a very challenging time, the intangible benefits of in-person collaboration are going to be a critical success factor as we move into a period of rapid launches,” the follow-up message read. “This evolution is about being ready for the next phase of our transformation.”

Workers were reportedly confused by the announcements in light of GM’s flexible “work appropriately” rules.

Read the full article from CNBC. 

Most employers understand their responsibility to safeguard their employees from harassment at work by other employees and managers, but may fail to understand that duty also pertains to harassment from customers or vendors. So reports JD Supra.

“Several recent cases brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) reinforce the concept that employers can be liable for the harassing conduct of third parties if the employer knew or should have known of the conduct and failed to take timely remedial measures,” Heather Garrison, counsel with Spilman Thomas & Battle, writes for JD Supra.

Garrison notes one case where a gas station and convenience store owner recently settled an EEOC lawsuit for failure to stop a customer from sexually harassing a female employee. That owner agreed to pay $75,000. Employers need to make sure their harassment policy covers customers as well as other third parties, including clients, contractors and vendors, Garrison notes. “Make sure employees know how to bring forth complaints against these third parties,” she writes.

Read the full article from JD Supra.

As remote work has become the new norm for many employers, it’s become imperative to create training programs that can be as effective as in-person training. That's according to the Forbes Human Resources Council.

The challenges of implementing a solid remote training program include dealing with varying time zones, connectivity challenges, work patterns and cultural differences, Alan Price, CEO at BrightHR, writes for Forbes. His human resources software firm provides technology support for small- and medium-sized entities worldwide.

“When designing a training program to be sent to your remote employees, try to put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself a series of questions,” Price writes. “Is the interface easy to use and access? Does it teach them the skills they value and that will benefit the business? Have I set realistic targets and deadlines, and how can I track their progress?”

While Price acknowledges that remote work can exacerbate loneliness and take away from the camaraderie that workers can feel in an in-person environment, “remote working can become less of an isolating experience if managers step in to foster connection between their atomized employees.”

“Part of doing this is by encouraging meetings, cooperation and competition, and the sharing of expertise between team members,” he notes. “Develop a culture of peer-to-peer learning, ensuring they don’t lose out on the human touch that they might miss from the office.”

Read the full post from Forbes. 

Upskilling platform GrowthSpace recently received $25 million in funding from venture capitalists, signaling strong interest in startups focused on bolstering workers’ skills. So reports TechCrunch.

The investment led by Zeev Ventures brings the total that GrowthSpace has managed to raise to $44 million amid a tight job market where employers are desperate to retain workers. Upskilling focuses on teaching employees new skills. Last year, Walmart announced that it would invest about $1 billion over the next five years to help its staff obtain higher education and training, and these investments have helped GrowthSpace and other upskilling platforms.

Upskilling and reskilling platforms took in $2.1 billion from venture capitalists from early 2021 and through this year. GrowthSpace was founded in 2018 by Dan Terner, Izhak Kedar and Omer Glass. “Terner realized that there was no effective, outcome-driven employee development platform to enable companies [including his] to better invest in their employees,” Glass said. “This led to the creation of GrowthSpace … During the pandemic and amid current economic uncertainty, companies have realized that they needed to double down on talent development.”

Read the full article from TechCrunch.

Employers need to be ready to attract and keep upskilled workers or risk losing them to competitors that offer more lucrative career opportunities. So reports Human Resource Executive.

“It’s the individuals who innovate and activate every piece of technology [inside an organization],” EY consultant Mike Bertolino said in his Upskilling the Adaptive Workforce keynote address at a recent conference. “Until computers become synthesized and work on their own, they will always need humans to use them.”

Upskilling programs can help employers bolster their recruitment and retention efforts at a time when it’s especially challenging for many firms to be properly staffed. But companies need to also go beyond and make sure they create opportunities within for ambitious employees who want more or risk losing them, Bertolino said.

“We live in an age of hyper-disruption and every company must transform or they will die on the vine,” he said. “Instead of asking, ‘How do I train my people?’ we [need to] ask instead, ‘How can I create an adaptive workforce?’”

Read the full article from Human Resource Executive.

Human resources continues to contend with huge workplace challenges two years into the COVID-19 pandemic and one of the most serious is the mental well-being of employees.

“Mental health conditions may not always be apparent and may be mistaken for performance-related issues,” Rose Nicole Eichberger, Jessica Guarrancino and Atoyia Harris, attorneys for Proskauer Rose, write for JD Supra. “Given increased public awareness surrounding mental health and the corresponding legal trends, employers may want to evaluate their current infrastructure, including, but not limited to, providing support for employees with mental health conditions and reviewing processes and policies to address any claims raised.”

Employers need to be proactive about removing any stigmas that might exist in their workplace around mental health, and may want consider implementing a disability affinity group. Creating policies that ensure reluctant employees that it is OK to talk about a mental disability and making sure these efforts are well-publicized also is a good idea. Employers should also do their due diligence and a cost analysis to evaluate special work accommodations to see if such accommodations would really impact business operations.

“With regard to an employee's request to work remotely, the EEOC has advised that employers are not required to grant such an accommodation request simply because the employer previously closed its offices and allowed employees to work from home as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,” writes Eichberger, Guarrancino and Harris. “However, an employee may point to their success teleworking during the pandemic to support that the accommodation is reasonable.”

Another complication for companies is the failure of many health plans and insurance carriers to prioritize mental health coverage versus physical health issues even as the pandemic is seen as a mental health crisis, MarketWatch notes, citing a recent government report.

The Department of Labor, Health and Human Services and the Treasury Department in their report note that mental health services may be harder to obtain. One health plan, for example, had excluded methadone and naltrexone as treatment options for substance abuse, while an insurance company for two health plans covered nutritional counseling for diseases such as diabetes, but not for anorexia, bulimia and binge eating, according to the report. Three health plans had no therapy coverage for autism.

The “findings clearly indicate that health plans and insurance companies are falling short of providing parity in mental health and substance-use disorder benefits, at a time when those benefits are needed like never before,” Labor Department Secretary Marty Walsh said in a statement.

A recent survey by WTW (formerly Willis Towers Watson) found that 86% of employers have made their employees’ mental health, stress and burnout a top priority this year. Still, 49% of survey participants have not formalize their approach to reach these goals. A quarter of respondents have adopted mental well-being programs.

“As we move into 2022, employers struggling with recruitment and retention will look to make their wellbeing programs a differentiator to attract and engage top talent,” said Regina Ihrke, senior director, health and benefits at WTW. “For years, employers have used financial rewards to encourage employees to take action for their own well-being; however, as those incentives have often failed to change employee behavior, employers are seeking new avenues to engage and incent employees to take charge of their own well-being.”

The WTW surveyed more than 300 employers who managed a total of 5.3 million workers.

The Total Brain Mental Health Index for the final quarter of 2021 found that 25% of U.S. workers screened positive for post-traumatic stress disorder, which was up 54% from the prior three months and 136% higher compared with the pre-pandemic period. Depression soared 87% from last fall to the end of the year and was 63% higher than prior to the pandemic.

Australian employers and human resources departments are facing new worker compensation challenges as they contend with major workplace disruptions from the coronavirus. So reports Insurance Business Australia.

“As the Australian business community faces the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, business owners, managers, and human resources (HR) teams are also tackling the ongoing responsibilities to workers and protecting our workplaces,” according to the workplace risk team at insurance broker Gallagher Australia. “Even with new arrangements to work off site, employers must still comply with relevant work, health, and safety (WHS) and workers’ compensation (WC) legislation.”

One immediate challenge is how companies and HR leaders successfully convey how their employees can file a Covid-19 compensation claim for an injury or illness when they are working remotely, according to the article.

While it may be hard for a worker to prove they contracted the virus based on their working conditions at a remote location, “as an employer you still have an obligation to provide safe work duties, so you need a management plan that enables this in terms of working from home and performing appropriate tasks,” Gallagher Australia notes.

Read the full article from Insurance Business Australia.

Costco Australia is handing out an A$750 (US$478) bonus to 4,000 employees who have worked during the coronavirus pandemic. So reports Human Resources Director.

The bonus payments are happening as supermarket chains in the country rush to recruit thousands of workers to deal with the tremendous demand for groceries now. Costco also has provided a temporary pay boost of A$3 per hour for all employees who worked from March 2 to April 5.

“Costco’s action sets an example for the others,” says Gerard Dwyer, retail union SDA’s national secretary. “It is an acknowledgement of the service Costco workers are providing–an acknowledgement of the risks they are taking to keep the community fed and healthy.”

Read the full article from Human Resources Director.

Human resources teams in Asia Pacific cited their management's ability to oversee crisis and to implement business continuity plans as their top concerns in a Covid-19 world, according to a recent survey. So reports Human Resources Online.

Aon’s APAC Pulse Survey is entitled “Navigating the impact of COVID-19 on workplace and rewards practices.” Nearly 70% of the 304 companies surveyed cited management's ablity to oversee the crisis and business continuity as their biggest challenges. The survey included companies in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, China, Japan, Korea and the Pacific region.

Actions taken by firms to deal with the pandemic include holding off on hiring and freezing pay and promotions as well as having more employees work remotely and providing them with financial help. Overseeing flexible work arrangements and boosting employee awareness were cited by 63.5% and 55.6%, respectively, as challenges HR are tackling. About 13% noted inadequate employee medical insurance as a problem.

Just over 42% of companies gave their respective HR departments a three rating (scale of 1 to 5) for being properly trained, equipped and ready to handle challenges from the pandemic, while 27.6% gave their HR teams a four rating.

Read the full article from Human Resources Online.

A number of Indian companies are providing their employees with online/virtual tools to keep their children entertained as they work from home. So reports The Economic Times.

Genpact, Accenture, Deloitte, AMD and other firms have introduced programs intended to keep their employees’ children occupied so their parents can get in a few hours of relatively uninterrupted work. Daycare centers in India, as in other parts of the world, are not an option as these facilities are shut down, meaning parents and their children are together the whole day.

Employees can tap into parenting communities online to get tips on how to keep their children engaged, set up virtual playdates with kids of their colleagues, have them participate in virtual summer camps and offer online classes on coding. “Employee engagement has now assumed new dimensions to include family engagement as well,” says SV Nathan, chief talent officer at Deloitte India. That firm provides parents with webinars on how to do activities, including crafts and cooking, with their kids.

Meanwhile, IBM India notes that 99% of it workforce is now able to work from home. So reports Business Standard. “What has been different in the past few months is embracing this approach at scale, not just among our sizeable employee population in India, but around the world,” says Sandip Patel, managing director, IBM India and general manager for India/South Asia region.

“Our information technology (IT), human resources, business units, crisis management, legal, government relations, corporate social responsibility, operations and security teams have quickly come together to make (work-from-home) a reality for over 99% of IBM India employees,” Patel adds. “The remaining 1% of our people are focused on critical assignments and we are taking every possible precaution to ensure their safety.”

Rolls-Royce, a manufacturer of aero engines, has decided to eliminate more than 4,000 jobs that will include human resources, finance and purchasing positions. So reports The Guardian.

The goal is to boost profits by cutting out mid-management jobs.

"We are proposing to move to a considerably simplified staff structure, with fewer layers and greater spans of control across the group," a company spokesman said.

The company is expected to cut 4,600 positions globally, HRM Asia reports, with one-third of those cuts expected to be carried out by year-end. The firm has a global workforce of 55,000, with 26,000 in the UK.

The former CEO of France Telecom and six other executives will face trial over allegations that they had a role in at least 19 employee suicides. So reports BBC News.

The executives are accused of "moral harassment." Former CEO Didier Lombard and the other executives deny that restructuring efforts they undertook in 2006 led to the suicides. Lombard had tried to eliminate 22,000 jobs and retrain at least 10,000 workers.

"I'll get them out one way or another, through the window or through the door," Lombard was quoted telling senior managers in 2007. Starting in 2008, at least 19 workers killed themselves,12 attempted suicide and eight suffered depression. Guilty verdicts could result in two years in prison and $35,000 in fines.

France Telecom, a multinational telecommunications corporation, became Orange in 2013. "As it has always said, Orange rejects the accusations and will make its case during the public hearing which will be scheduled in the coming months," an Orange spokesman said.

Read the full article from BBC News. 

A London court sentenced a UK financial analyst to 16-weeks in jail in May for harassing a colleague and posting porn photos purporting to be her. So reports CPS.

Davide Buccheri, 25, was convicted of harassment stemming from actions that lasted eight-months long from September 2016 to May last year. The harassment began after the colleague refused to go on a date with him.

Buccheri then uploaded photos of the woman he took from her social media site onto an adult porn website alongside actual pornographic photos. Actresses in those pornographic images resembled the coworker.  

Buccheri then reached out to managers at his firm, M&G Investments, and reported the photos in an effort to get the woman in trouble.

"This was a sustained campaign of harassment against a young woman beginning her career in the financial services industry," says Aimee Emby, from the Crown Prosecution Service. "Not only did Buccheri's actions cause this victim considerable distress and anxiety, his denial of guilt forced her to relive her ordeal."

Buccheri also was ordered to fork over US$6,705 in compensation to the woman.

Read the full article from CPS. 

Breakfast cereal giant Kellogg's is allowing the 420 workers at its Salford headquarters to clock out of work by noon on Fridays this summer as long as they finish their work. So reports Metro.

The summer hours are designed to improve productivity and give workers more flexibility with a longer weekend.

"Flexible working is something we take very seriously and we encourage all our UK office-based employees to make the most of the summer hour scheme," says Sue Platt, Kellogg's UK human resources director. "Summer hours is part of a package we offer to ensure we provide work-life balance opportunities to all employees."

Read the full article from Metro.