On June 25, 2019, Governor Pritzker signed the Illinois
Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act into law, making Illinois the 11th
state to legalize recreational cannabis. The law went into effect this January
and dispensaries sold over $10 million worth of recreational marijuana in the
first week.
The legalization of Illinois recreational cannabis has
potentially serious ramifications for business owners, HR professionals, and
managers. Many fear that their employees will show up high at work or get high
at work during breaks. And because using recreational marijuana is no longer in
itself illegal in Illinois, employers can’t enforce zero-tolerance policies
towards its use – just its use at work.
While there are valid concerns, Illinois recreational
marijuana legalization doesn’t pose an existential threat to employers. As long
as you are careful and implement a few straightforward policies, there is no
reason to fear legal recreational cannabis.
So, how can you protect your business from having employees
show up high at work and from discrimination suits for taking action against
employees for being high at work? In this article, we’ll explore:
Concerns About Recreational Marijuana in
Illinois
Preventing Employees From Being High at Work
Protecting Yourself Against Lawsuits for
Policies Against Marijuana in the Workplace
Why Illinois Recreational Marijuana Legalization
Isn’t a Threat to Businesses
How to Learn More
Concerns About Recreational Marijuana in Illinois
Whether you support it or not, Illinois recreational
cannabis legalization is a reality. What does that mean for you as a business
owner, manager, or human resources professional?
For the most part, your policies on recreational marijuana
and drug testing in the workplace shouldn’t have to change. But the way that
you enforce those policies may need to be modified.
Despite what some business owners think, and some overeager
employees might insist, your employees aren’t suddenly allowed to show up high
at work. Employers are still allowed to have zero-tolerance policies for the
consumption of recreational marijuana, intoxication from recreational cannabis,
or the storage of marijuana during work hours or while on call.
But you’re no longer allowed to take action against
employees who use recreational marijuana outside of company time and are not
high at work. Many employers might not have a problem with this on the face of
it. After all, off the clock employees’ time should be their own unless the
after-effects impact their job performance.
However, even if you fully support the use of recreational
cannabis outside of work, the legalization of recreational marijuana in
Illinois makes it harder for you to prevent employees from being high at work.
And it exposes you to potential discrimination lawsuits if you take action
against employees for being high at work based on evidence of their use of
recreational cannabis in general rather than just at work.
After all, there is no equivalent of a breathalyzer for
marijuana as of yet. That means that there is no surefire way to tell if an
employee is high at work. And methods for drug testing in the workplace have
varying degrees of accuracy. Many companies that are currently drug testing for
marijuana are using hair follicle drug testing. But hair follicle drug testing
is only useful to tell whether or not an employee has used recreational
marijuana in the past several weeks or even months. That means that hair
follicle drug testing is now more or less obsolete for drug testing in the
workplace in states with legalized recreational cannabis. And urine tests are
not even a reliable solution for drug testing in legal states as they can
deliver positive results for recreational marijuana use anywhere
between two weeks and a month in the past.
You might think that you can still take action against
employees for using recreational marijuana during off hours because recreational
cannabis is still illegal on a federal level. That might be true if the
Illinois law simply allowed employers to control marijuana use at work and did
not give the same right for off-work hours. But the 600-page law amends the
Illinois Right to Privacy in the Workplace Act that prohibits employers from
punishing employees for using legal substances outside of work to expand the
definition of legal substances to include recreational cannabis and medical
marijuana. So while you won’t break federal law by punishing employees for
consuming recreational marijuana outside of work, you will be in violation of
state law.
So, how can you stop employees from being high at work
without breaking the new Illinois recreational marijuana legalization law or
exposing yourself to lawsuits?
Preventing Employees From Being High at Work
If you can’t rely on traditional drug testing in the
workplace to prevent employees from being high at work, what can you do?
The Illinois recreational cannabis law establishes reasonable
suspicion or good-faith belief that an employee is high at work as a legitimate
standard for taking action against that employee. So, until somebody invents foolproof
technology for marijuana-use testing to see if an employee is currently high at
work, your best bet is to leverage the reasonable suspicion standard.
How can you take advantage of the good-faith belief standard
as laid out in the Illinois recreational marijuana bill? The first step you
should take is to train supervisors and managers on how to identify drug use,
including distributing reasonable suspicion checklists that they can fill out
for incident reports, and educate all of your employees about the reasonable
suspicion standard that will be used to tell whether they are high at work.
That way, your team will be prepared to meet the standard and your company will
be sheltered from liability for enforcing the standard. You should also include
the reasonable suspicion checklists in all of your accident report forms,
especially if your business is especially susceptible to workplace-safety
issues.
According to the Illinois recreational marijuana
legalization law, these are the symptoms that your team should record if they
suspect an employee is high at work and that you can use to meet the good-faith
standard:
Changes in speech, dexterity, agility or
coordination
Irrational, unusual or negligent behavior when
operating equipment or machinery
Disregard for the safety of others
Carelessness that results in any injury to
others
Involvement in any accident that results in
serious damage to equipment or property
Production or manufacturing disruptions
So long as you are meticulous about recording symptoms at
the time, you should not have to fear reprimanding employees for showing up
high at work. Under the Illinois recreational marijuana bill, if an employer
demonstrates a good faith belief that an employee is high at work, the burden
shifts to the employee to prove that they were not impaired.
And you can still use drug testing in the workplace as part
of your efforts to dissuade employees from being high at work. Random drug
testing for marijuana is explicitly permitted under the new law and can provide
additional support for reasonable suspicion claims. And you can maximize the
usefulness of random drug testing by reviewing your methods for drug testing in
the workplace to ensure that you are testing for use in the past 6-12 hours
rather than the past 30+ days. For instance, replace hair follicle drug testing
with more accurate saliva or blood testing. Just don’t use drug testing as the
sole justification for any disciplinary actions.
Protecting Yourself Against Lawsuits for Policies Against Marijuana in the Workplace
Now that you know how you can effectively address the use of
recreational cannabis in the workplace, let’s take a look at how you can
safeguard yourself against lawsuits when you take action against an employee
for being high at work.
First and foremost, don’t take action against employees
without the standards we outlined in the last section and always air on the
side of caution, even if you meet the reasonable suspicion standard. It’s
generally not worth risking serious disciplinary action against an employee
unless their use of recreational marijuana poses a threat to their productivity
or workplace safety, and if that is the case, then they have probably well
surpassed the good-faith suspicion standard.
Beyond following proper enforcement procedures, another step
that you can take to minimize your liability is to give employees advanced
notice regarding any changes in drug enforcement policy and to provide
comprehensive education about the recreational marijuana policies and their
enforcement. This can head off claims of unfair surprise, prevent unnecessary
lawsuits from being filed because an employee didn’t know what the policies
were, and ensure that managers enforce the policies properly.
You may well have to review your drug enforcement policies
as well as your anti-discrimination policies because Illinois recreational
cannabis legalization adds pressure behind previous discrimination issues.
Recreational marijuana enforcement has a history of racial bias and you have to
tread especially carefully to avoid any semblance of bias, whether conscious or
unconscious. So, conduct rigorous implicit and explicit bias training and make
sure that random drug testing in the workplace is genuinely random and applies
to all employees equally.
So long as you follow these steps, you shouldn’t have too
much to worry about regarding discrimination lawsuits as a result of the
legalization of recreational marijuana in Illinois.
Why Illinois Recreational Marijuana Legalization Isn’t a Threat to Businesses
The good news is that unless you work in an industry fraught
with workplace-safety concerns, such as construction, Illinois recreational
marijuana legalization is cause for caution rather than concern. As long as you
put the right systems in place, there’s no reason to be too worried about the
legalization of recreational marijuana. You will still be able to stop
employees from being high at work and take action against employees who do use
recreational marijuana at work, without fear of damaging lawsuits.
And while you should protect yourself from repeated
workplace intoxication that causes performance or cultural issues and from
discrimination lawsuits, casual use by employees should not be an issue for
most employers. Ten other states have legalized recreational marijuana and
businesses continued to thrive. States with legalized recreational cannabis states
represent four
out of the top five state economies in the country and California, the
poster-child for legalization, is the largest state economy in the country.
Illinois business owners will be fine – so long as they handle the transition
correctly.
Illinois recreational cannabis even presents opportunities
for employers to set themselves apart and win the war for talent. According to
a 2019 survey
by PBS Research, Civilized, Burson Cohn & Wolfe, and Buzzfeed News,
half of Illinoisans surveyed said that their ideal workplace would permit
marijuana use outside of work but that two-thirds were uncomfortable with use
in the workplace. If those numbers are accurate, most employees are likely to
respect the prohibition of marijuana use at work and business owners can
improve their employer branding by taking a hands-off approach to recreational
cannabis use outside of work.
How to Learn More
The legalization of Illinois recreational cannabis has made things a lot more complicated for business owners and HR professionals throughout Illinois. There’s no way that we can cover all of the complexities and details of how you should handle the legalization of recreational cannabis, prevent employees from being high at work, and protect yourself from discrimination lawsuits in one article. Nor are we attorneys who can give you sufficient legal advice.
That is why we’ve enlisted the help of an attorney who is well-versed in all things employment law to help guide business owners and HR professionals through this turbulent transition. Heather Bailey is a partner at SmithAmundsen’s and an expert in employment and labor counseling and litigation. She’ll be joining our very own HR Client Manager Karina Castaneda for a comprehensive free webinar on understanding the ins-and-outs of the Cannabis Regulation Act and how it affects Illinois employers.
A new employee’s first days and weeks of work are a crucial time. Their early impressions of the organizational structure, leadership, climate, and culture of their new environment will directly affect the way in which they approach work in the coming months and years.
On the other hand, when incoming talent is thrown into the fire or not provided the education they need to hit the ground running, it significantly lowers productivity, both for the confused, under-served new-hire and their teammates, who must constantly take time out of their own work hours to triage knowledge and skill gaps.
Preventing those hang-ups is one of HR’s main responsibilities. With a proactive, straightforward, integrated approach to onboarding, you can ensure that creating a great experience for your new hires doesn’t come at the expense of your current team’s productivity.
Moving forward, we’ll explore:
The true scope and definition of onboarding
How HR, IT, and each department or team within an organization can support great onboarding
Five things all organizations need to do to get onboarding right
What is Onboarding, Really?
In an HR context, onboarding is the process through which new hires gain the knowledge, skills, tools, strategies, and motivation they need to become great team members and productive employees.
That’s actually good news for HR professionals, as it helps focus on what most of us are really passionate about: setting people up for success.
Let’s break down that onboarding definition and look at each individual element with an eye toward what a strong procedure can truly accomplish.
Knowledge Transfer Requirements for New Employees
Your hires need all sorts of knowledge in order to thrive in their new roles. They already have most of the functional understanding they need – that’s why you hired them – but you need to teach them your specific expectations for success.
Incoming talent likely has a track record of success on some level, but that doesn’t mean every one of them knows how to complete day-to-day tasks in the specific way your team prefers. Ensuring your new-hires hit the ground running in a positive, productive manner means identifying and mitigating skill gaps as quickly as possible.
The skills you need to reinforce with your new hires will vary depending on the role and each professional’s existing skillset, but it’s best to have plans in place to address issues like:
Skill assessments for incoming talent to gauge education needs
Tutorials and lessons on relevant work software/ERPs/etc.
Leadership coaching for new or emerging managers
Specific device training for technicians
Guidance on professional communication
Tool Acquisition for New Employees
Connecting your new employees with the physical tools they need to do great work is just as important as equipping them with the right knowledge and mindset.
Knowing what each new-hire needs requires a deep understanding of your organizational chart and proactive communication across a number of departments.
For each team member you welcome into the fold, you need to determine and fulfill their needs as quickly as possible, including:
Access credentials and digital accounts for relevant software/systems (email, salesforce, or github etc.)
Work computers (desktop, laptop, etc.)
Company mobile devices (cell phones, tablets, etc.)
Device accessories (keyboards, chargers, etc.)
Traditional office supplies (Pens, folders, etc.)
Strategy Development for New Employees
At some point in their careers, your new employees are going to run into problems. Maybe they’ll have a life-changing event that necessitates an insurance change. Maybe they’ll have an issue with a co-worker that requires mediation, the list goes on and on.
You can greatly reduce anxiety for your team members and set them up for instant success by identifying as many of those common problems and frequently asked questions and proactively addressing them with new hires.
HR can support talent immediately and improve their overall experience by helping them develop strategies for:
Addressing problems with colleagues or supervisors
Reporting facilities or maintenance-related issues
Contacting security
Connecting with IT support
Discussing performance, goals, and progress
Communicating across departments
Building Motivation for New Employees
Knowledge transfer, skill building, tool acquisition, and strategy development are the four most important onboarding considerations when it comes to delivering a new employee who is ready to do a great job and become a fully integrated member of your team and culture.
Frameworks and structures for bonuses, raises, equity options, etc.
Introduction to the value of day-to-day perks and employee culture initiatives
Opportunities to interact with and receive mentorship from standout talent
Education on company success stories, exciting innovations, and other news
Onboarding as a Whole-Company Responsibility
When you look at the scope of what’s been laid out, it’s apparent that no HR professional or department can build a great onboarding process in isolation. Integrating and empowering new team members as quickly as possible must be an organization-wide value and priority in order to harness onboarding for talent maximization.
During any onboarding process, IT should be one of your closest allies. They provide the functional tools and support that complement the great job your department does preparing new hires to become great employees.
For now, however, let’s consider the traditional departmental divides to think about how responsibilities are generally spread out across HR, IT, and each new hire’s department or team.
HR Onboarding Checklist
Completion of onboarding documents and forms
Data entry in HCM and appropriate employee databases
Policy review/handbook sign-off
Payroll enrollment
Benefit enrollment
Physical orientation to the office or workspace
Introductions to new supervisor and team
IT Onboarding Checklist
Hardware assignment
Account/credential creation
Digital workspace creation
Offering availability for increased support during onboarding time
Team-Based Onboarding Checklist
Introduction to work/communication norms
Connecting new hires with resources that close their skill and knowledge gaps
Proactively communicating with HR about emerging need during onboarding period
How Interdepartmental Collaboration Improves Onboarding
The better the integration between their work efforts, the faster and easier it is to provide comprehensive onboarding and create a new talent orientation that sets everybody up for success.
At the same time, coming to the table to discuss and address onboarding needs together fosters collaborative problem-solving between different teams and departments who might otherwise not interact with each other. That whole-company understanding of supporting and managing talent helps create a strong organization from top to bottom.
Top 5 Employee Onboarding Musts
You Must Work Together with Your Colleagues
As we just detailed above, no business can onboard talent effectively if any individual or single department is responsible for the whole process.
If your HR department is feeling crushed under the weight of onboarding responsibilities, it’s crucial to reach out to your colleagues and advocate for the support you need to improve engagement and results across the organization. Tell your leaders what you really need from them to do an excellent job.
If you’re not getting the support you need from IT or some other department, find a way to address the issue, either by connecting with tools that allow your HR team to take on traditional IT tasks or by building integration and closer communication between your teams.
2. You Must Ensure Each Member of Your Team is Fully Accountable
When your onboarding process is complete, every single new hire should know which responsibilities, requirements, policies, and procedures are relevant to them. Without that backbone of accountability, it’s impossible to manage talent proactively or demonstrate how your department is creating a safe, productive workplace.
Of course, it’s not just important for employees to know the rules and policies; it’s crucial that there is a secure, high-integrity documentation trail backing up that work. That way, if issues do arise, there are vetted and agreed upon mechanisms in place for dealing with the issues.
If your onboarding procedure doesn’t empower your HR department and leadership team to manage, discipline, and hold new-hires accountable for their actions and performance, it’s time for a redesign with accountability in mind.
3. You Must Help Your Hires Make the Best Benefits Elections
Employee benefits overspend is a profitability killer, and as an HR department, preventing it should be one of your top priorities.
New hires need support in order to understand what your company’s benefits offerings really mean and which ones are the ideal fit for their situation. That means you need to provide them with whatever education and clarification they require to get the coverage they need without selecting something that will create excess costs for themselves or the company.
Part of that puzzle is connecting them with the right materials they need (your benefits broker should be a major help in this effort), but it’s equally important that your enrollment and benefits selection interface is clear, easy-to-use, and designed to answer user questions and prevent confusion.
4. You Must Offer Each Team Member a Workspace That’s Uniquely Theirs
Nobody wants to feel like they inherited the last employee’s setup – it’s a buy-in and motivation killer. Your onboarding process should be standardized in a way that makes things easy for your HR, IT, and other onboarding support professionals but also personalized in a way that truly welcomes each employee to the team.
By the time their onboarding window is complete, each new hire must feel like their functional and professional needs have been met in a way that sets them up to do great work from the outset. That requires a toolkit for provisioning and account creation that creates a bespoke digital workspace for each individual and a framework for communication between departments to make sure needs are recognized and addressed from every angle.
When new employee onboarding feels tailored to a hire’s needs without stretching or inconveniencing any members of your team, you know you’ve built something inspirational and effective for everyone.
5. You Must Make Onboarding Powerful but Easy
This is a theme we’ve come back to time and time again: onboarding should be easy. It must be straightforward in a way that protects the productivity of your core team, and it must feel approachable and engaging in a way that builds buy-in with your new talent.
With that said, that ease of experience can’t come from cutting corners or procrastinating. To work well, your onboarding process must be comprehensive, well-organized, and backed by professionals across your organization. Otherwise, you’re just creating more backlogged work and compromising your opportunity for workforce maximization.
Creating something that balances that flexibility and robust support can seem like a major challenge, but there’s a variety of emerging employee onboarding software providers stepping up to help companies understand how they can streamline and integrate this work.
Key Takeaways
We’ve taken a broad look at onboarding to explore its goals, responsibilities, and a few strategies and guiding lights you can use to improve your approach. While it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the weight of the responsibility of onboarding, it’s important to understand that, once you have effective onboarding processes running, it’s much easier to manage current talent and anticipate future needs.
Remember:
Getting onboarding right strengthens a company from top to bottom
Onboarding can’t just be HR’s responsibility – it’s a team-wide responsibility of which HR should be the hub
A successful onboarding process ensures each new employee is ready to be a fully productive member of the team in terms of capability, accountability, and cultural fit
It’s important to engage and support new hires by making onboarding personalized, easy, and well-supported
How to Learn More
Rippling is revolutionizing the onboarding process by helping HR professionals support their new hires better than ever.
By integrating all aspects of the onboarding process into a single digital platform, Rippling accelerates the new employee orientation experience, connecting hires with the tools, coverage, and credentials they need with a minimal number of clicks.
To learn more about how Rippling can smooth the employee onboarding process at your business and create a new way of managing HR and IT responsibilities, contact them today.
Too many in management, from ground-level supervisors to
C-level leadership, have trouble answering questions regarding their team’s
performance in an honest, fact-driven way that speaks to actual performance and
not just day-to-day habits or cultural fit. This disconnect isn’t for lack of
trying– just about everybody understands that great work must be done to create
a great enterprise. It’s articulating what that performance looks like and
actually assessing it within your employees that’s so tricky.
Make no mistake: strong performance management is the
difference between a promising organization growing into a business juggernaut
or stagnating at not-quite-there. It’s what separates a solid leadership team
from an excellent one and determines who are the flashes in the pan and who are
the sustained innovators and disruptors.
Moving forward, we’ll explore:
Why industry standard approaches to performance
management are often not efficient nor impactful
Why all businesses must modernize their approach
to performance management in the near future to address the needs of the modern
workforce
Specific mindsets, tools, and approaches
organizations can use to begin transforming their performance management
processes
Why Most Approaches to Performance Management are Outdated
The way we work, interact with our colleagues, and use
technology on a daily basis has outgrown the traditional strategies that drove
performance management and assessment in the 20th century. Our
approach to accountability has fallen behind the pace of work, and that creates
risk.
Perhaps the greatest example of this is the fact that most
discussions about employee feedback and performance management are still built
on qualitative feedback from direct supervisors. Managers fill out a scorecard
for each employee, provide verbal or written comments, and, when applicable,
create plans for improvement.
Here’s what’s missing from this traditional approach: in
nearly every business where this legacy assessment practice is used, there are
tech-based work management systems in place creating data that could be used to
inform a much realer, more focused ongoing discussion.
That means many in business are choosing qualitative over
quantitative and giving preference to supervisors’ thoughts and feelings over
actual measures of worker quality and productivity. That method defies
everything we know about the power of data and analytics in the modern workplace.
Furthermore, the traditional performance management model
treats each individual employee as though they were an island, emphasizing only
their direct relationship with their individual work and their direct
relationship with their supervisor/manager/assessor. That approach is out of
alignment with what we’ve collectively learned about the power and importance
of teambuilding and company culture over the last twenty years.
Why Modernize Your Approach to Performance Management?
In order to gain the best possible understanding of the
potential of your team and asses your areas of strength, weakness, and need,
it’s crucial to have a modern, data-driven performance management and
assessment framework in place. Any organization articulating a performance
management strategy for the first time, or any business with a framework more
than five years old, should prioritize this work to support short- and
long-term viability.
Talent relations is increasingly an area of federal, state,
and local regulation. Outdated performance management frameworks leave
organizations open to lawsuits, sudden terminations, and potential
non-compliance issues. An up-to-date approach to performance management sews up
those holes in policy and provides better legal protection for the organization
as a whole and each manager or assessor as an individual.
Modern, responsive performance management demystifies the
process from top to bottom, creating better support for those in charge of
assessment and greater authenticity for those being assessed. Each stakeholder
has an appropriate voice in the process, the ability to provide documentation
to back up their claims, and the goal-setting framework necessary to ensure
everybody grows professionally together.
When you bring your performance management strategy into the
era of technology, it breaks down the traditional boundaries between “boss” and
“employee” to foster a more productive overall culture and push everyone toward
excellence.
Three Things You Can Do to Modernize Your Performance Management Approach
Stop Viewing Performance Management as an Annual Appraisal
A year is an incredibly long term. If you managed a sports
team, would you give every player a year of starting time before you assessed
their performance? The answer is, probably not.
Great players get the most playing time and the most
compensation, and the worst achievers are obviously sent packing, but it’s that
80% in the middle who the true coach can influence and push toward improvement.
Good coaches make constant, ongoing assessments, make constant, ongoing
feedback, and incentive the day-to-day work on a constant, ongoing basis.
Turning your management/supervisory team into “coaches”
doesn’t happen overnight, but it does have the potential to completely
transform what work and culture feel like in your business. The first step to
unlocking that potential is eliminating your yearly (or even quarterly)
performance management model and shifting toward an ongoing assessment
structure.
As we’ve said, the increased availability of worker data
thanks to technology makes this work much easier. Managers can use ERP
interfaces, project management systems, and so on to monitor what employees are
doing, how they are working toward goals and deadlines, and so on, each day or
week. It’s easier than ever to see when someone is falling behind and make a
correction or recognize an employee who is taking things to the next level at
your organization.
While it seems like that kind of constant supervision creates new work for
managers and new stress for workers, it actually streamlines and reduces both
over time.
Adjusting to these new practices can take some time for
supervisors at first, but once they’re plugged into performance management
practices as part of their daily work, there’s no more quarterly or yearly
assessment season crunch, and what was once a major stressor is now a harmless
daily task. For workers, ongoing assessment means no more nervously waiting to find
out how you’re doing, and each individual assessment or evaluation feels less
stressful or punitive.
Build Clear Expectations and Establish Clear KPIs
We’ve addressed the concept of data several times already,
but it cannot be stressed enough: The only way to turn performance management
into a true performance driver is to stay rooted in data and objectivity.
One of the biggest issues managers have when it comes to
assessment is that they might be responsible for assessing a team of 25+ people
in a variety of different roles and simply don’t know where to start.
Data-minded thinking absolutely obliterates that issue and provides strong
anchor/talking points for any employee evaluation.
In order to make that work, though, your organization and HR
departments must have a well-defined organizational chart with goals and
measurable KPIs established for each professional, team, or department. Again,
that sounds like a major task at first, but once it has been completed, there
is a much more comprehensive vision for the organization and talent in place,
and far greater clarity when it comes to who should be doing what.
When you have clear KPIs and measures of success for each
position or role in the company, it’s easier to onboard new hires in a
meaningful way, help laggards see where they need to improve, and identify
superstar leaders of tomorrow. Employees can track their progress over time,
and managers can mold each worker’s skillset or professional growth in
relevant, individualized ways. That data-minded thinking makes everything less
personal and less punitive, inviting each worker to create a vision of success
for themselves in their particular role.
Establish High Performance as a Key Company Value
One of the biggest reasons employees fall short of
expectations is because they didn’t fully understand those expectations. Either
the importance of the work or the
value of doing an exceptional job is unclear or employees
aren’t sure what great work looks like to you.
By making performance expectations clear, visible, and a
daily part of the work experience in your organization, you can create a
company culture in which your employees strive to be their best selves, meet
identified goals, and brainstorm new ways of doing work better. When doing
great work is a foundational pillar of what you do, employees will continuously
be encouraged to go above and beyond.
Establishing a culture of high performance is much more
complex than simply saying you want to do it. In order for that culture to feel
authentic and for workers to buy in, you must create a clear roadmap that shows
what excellence looks like and how collective excellence will grow the company
and improve the lives of each employee.
Getting that right requires strong employee education, both
to get new hires oriented and to provide veterans with the tools they need to
grab onto the evolving face of work in their organization, as well as
outstanding communication and a commitment to fostering a strong bond between
the organization and its team.
Key Takeaways
Performance assessment has the potential to help a business
become its best, most profitable self, but in order for that to happen, a
modern, responsive system is required. Remember:
Performance assessment must be an on-going
process to work well
When you get performance assessment right,
everybody gains value: the business, the individual workers, and the middle
management who does the assessing
Quantifiable data and KPI tracking make
performance assessment easier, fairer, and help the whole process stand up
better to scrutiny
The key to any performance-centric strategy is
making sure team members truly value excellence and know what excellence in
their role looks like on a day to day basis
How to Learn More
If you’re a business leader looking to build an impactful,
forward-facing performance management strategy, be sure to join us on
Wednesday, December 11th to learn about
The Future of Performance Management!
This free webinar from Launchways will be packed with
actionable insights about emerging best practices for performance assessment
including…
How to assess the impact of your current
performance management program and get started on building something even
better
How to recognize the common pitfalls of
performance management
How to replace an annual assessment system with
a continuous feedback loop
How to deliver difficult feedback and establish
a shared view of reality
How to manage both high- and low-performing
talent effectively
The hour-long learning experience will feature presentations
and Q&A time with an all-star panel of veteran business leaders who know
what it takes to build, manage, and continuously improve a great team.
Presenters will include:
Jodi Wellman, Co-Founder of Spectacular at
Work, a leading executive coach who specializes in helping business leaders
maximize their teams to build success and balance.
Adam Radulovic, President at XL.net, an
experienced entrepreneur and small business leader with a track record of building
and managing profit-driving teams.
Gary Schafer, President at Launchways, who
has built multiple businesses from the ground up and specializes in scaling
high-performing teams for growing organizations.
Jon
Howaniec, VP & HR Director at Clark Dietz, who has over twenty years
experience building high-performing HR processes at fast-growth organizations.
Any business leader, HR Director, or manager hoping to
improve their skills as a coach, mentor, or accountability partner should make
time to check out The Future of
Performance Management: How to Modernize Your Approach and start the
process continuously improving their team this December.
HR practices and policies must evolve over time to reflect
emerging best practices, changes to regulations, and shifting cultural values.
Throughout the last decade, our shared understanding of what
the workplace looks and feels like has gone through significant alterations,
and as we near 2020, it’s a logical time for organizations of all sizes and
industries to reassess their HR policies and procedures.
With that said, many of HR’s biggest challenges are baked
into the nature of the work, but new technologies and innovative approaches are
turning those challenges into areas of new opportunity.
Moving forward, we’ll take a look at the biggest HR
challenges that growing businesses must have on their radar as we prepare for
the new year.
1.
Employee Performance
One of any HR department’s main responsibilities is creating
a team and an environment in which people can do great work. No human resources
department can operate at its highest level unless there’s a company-wide
awareness of expectations and accountability. As a business, you can’t correct,
reprimand, or discipline anybody with any real authority unless you’ve clearly
articulated goals, KPIs, and an evaluation framework that everybody knows and
cares about.
2.
Terminations
Getting termination right is just as important as getting hiring
right. The way you separate from former employees affects your reputation in
the talent marketplace and the morale of your remaining team.
If you don’t have a codified, iron-clad termination
procedure that’s been vetted by your legal team, you could be leaving your
organization open to potential lawsuits and fees. Regulations on termination
practice vary from state to state, so it’s important to be aware of your local
laws, especially if your organization has offices in various states.
The dialogue around planned employee leave has changed
tremendously in recent years. The aging population means that many professional
age workers are medical or legal custodians of older family members, and shifts
in parenting practices, mental health awareness, and beyond have an increasing number
of employees requesting time away from the office.
As the employer, you must be prepared for every conceivable
leave request and have policies in place that explain when and how much leave
is permitted, what process employees must go through for approval, and how their
return to the team will be arranged and executed. Any gap in your explicit
policies is a potential legal liability.
4.
Harassment Prevention, Training, and
Investigations
As we approach the fourth year of the #MeToo movement,
public and individual awareness of harassment has never been higher. That means
your prevention training procedures and reporting/investigation frameworks must
be stronger and more comprehensive than ever in order to provide the best
possible protection for you and your employees.
With that said, nothing is more important than
follow-through. If you have great policies on the books but don’t honor them,
you’re compromising your company vision and creating greater opportunity for
your organization to be hurt by legal disputes. If there’s one area of your HR
practice that you are targeting for improvement this year, make it your
harassment prevention, training, and investigation policies.
5.
Training for Managers
Team- and department-level leadership has the capacity to
build great engagement and motivation or send employees running for the door.
The best way to ensure the former happens (and to avoid the latter) is to
provide your management teams with consistent, explicit training on how to
approach coaching, mentoring, feedback, discipline, staffing, etc.
Managers in even the best organizations – especially
fast-growing ones – often have gaps in their knowledge of new employee management
strategies and best practices. That’s because many of them were promoted into
their positions for being all-star workers. While they still have the knowledge
and perspective that they showed off in that role, they don’t have the same
degree of experience and preparation regarding management responsibilities. By
providing them with impactful training, you build your management team into
more valuable leaders.
6.
PTO/Sick/Vacation Policies
One of the biggest mistakes organizations make is not clearly
articulating how different absences from work should be planned, coded, and
compensated. Depending on the state where your business is located, there may
be specific definitions of “Paid Time Off” versus “Sick Time” versus “Vacation
Time” that you must obey.
Policies must clearly establish a rate of PTO/sick
day/vacation time accrual, procedures and appropriate contacts for approval,
carry-over maximums, buy-back maximums, and so on. Remember, if you leave any
of those considerations out in your official policies, you can be subject to a
substantial legal penalty.
7.
Attendance
We’ve already discussed employee leave and PTO, but in
addition to those policies, every organization should have clear expectations
regarding employee attendance on record. Procedures should exist for
maintaining appropriate communication about attendance and building dialogue
around excessive absences with an eye towards creating a rich, clear
documentation trail for future discipline, termination, etc.
Of course, your exact framework must be dictated by the way you
track attendance. Policies must exist to explain expectations for both hourly
workers who have a timecard as well as salaried employees, temporary workers,
contractors, etc. The better a job you do articulating expectations, the better
you can do holding people accountable, keeping them at their desks, and
removing team members whose absenteeism affects overall team performance.
8.
Reimbursement Policies
Many states have recently added or changed legislation about
reimbursement of business expenses. As 2020 approaches, it’s crucially
important that you review your local regulations to double-check that your
employee reimbursement policy is up to date.
Your policies need to explain which expenses are
reimbursable, what documentation and forms are required for reimbursement
application, how applications for reimbursement will be approved, and how
reimbursement will be delivered to the employee. The entire program must be
spelled out in specifics, or you risk noncompliance.
9.
Legalization of Marijuana
State laws surrounding the use of cannabis have shifted en
masse over the last decade, and many jurisdictions now allow for legal medical
and recreational use. With that said, marijuana is still illegal at the federal
level, and as an employer, you need to understand how that could potentially
affect your business and employees who use cannabis.
As state and federal marijuana policy continues to evolve
and take shape, you must articulate a clear company policy for today and start
proactive planning about what tomorrow’s policy might look like, depending on
the results of elections and general direction of the culture.
10. ADA
Amendments Act (ADAA) Compliance
The Americans with Disabilities Act was a monumental piece
of legislation when it was passed into law in 1990s, and its scope and
complexity only grew with the ADA Amendments Act of 2008. As we near 2020 and
our understanding of “disability” continues to evolve, it’s crucial that every
corporate organization in America has a specific plan and support framework in
place to ensure compliance.
Of course, compliance isn’t just about workplace
accessibility; it’s about inclusion and providing team members with services to
ensure their needs are met. If you don’t have official policies describing how
employee needs will be assessed and met on a continuing basis, you’re only
halfway there. At the same time, it’s important to remember how employee leave,
absenteeism, and disability can all be interconnected, which means your
disability policy must account for leave and vice versa.
If not, now is the time! Illinois just became the 11th state to
permit recreational cannabis. Governor Pritzker signed this legislation, as
promised, on June 25, 2019. Beginning
January 1, 2020, the Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act (“Act”), will allow
adults (21+) in Illinois to possess and consume cannabis. While there is a lot
“rolled” into the 600 plus page law (pun intended), there are
significant employment pitfalls for employers with regard to enforcing drug
free workplaces. We are here to assist
you in avoiding these pitfalls and give you some practice tips in preparation
of the new law taking affect.
The good news is, the Act expressly permits employers to adopt and enforce
“reasonable” and nondiscriminatory zero tolerance and drug free workplace
policies, including policies on drug testing, smoking, consumption, storage,
and use of cannabis in the workplace or while on-call – which is obviously good
for employers.
However, on the flipside, the Act’s language indicates that employers are not allowed to take an adverse action against an applicant or employee for their marijuana usage outside the workplace. This is bad for employers since it makes it much more difficult for employers to identify and address use of marijuana by employees due to issues with marijuana testing not being like alcohol testing which calculates more accurately impairment at the time of testing. In particular, the Act amends the Illinois Right to Privacy in the Workplace Act (“Right to Privacy Act”), which prohibits employers from restricting employees from using legal products outside of work. Specifically, the Right to Privacy Act is amended to provide that “lawful products” means products that are legal under state law, indicating that recreational and medical marijuana are legal products that must be treated like alcohol and tobacco. Thus, employers may not discriminate against an employee or applicant who lawfully uses cannabis (recreationally or medically) off-premises during nonworking and non-on-call hours. Again, a difficult task given a test for marijuana alone will not be enough since testing does not include current impairment.
Much like with the Illinois medical marijuana law, this Act changes the
emphasis from whether an employee “used” marijuana while employed, to whether
the employee was “impaired” or “under the influence” of marijuana while at work
or working. As a result, drug testing without any other evidence of the
employee actually being impaired at work or while working will open the door to
legal challenges. Specifically, refusing
to hire, disciplining, terminating, refusing to return an employee to work or
taking an adverse action against an employee or applicant who fails a
pre-employment, random, or post-leave return to duty drug test for marijuana
will arguably create a claim for the employee against an employer for a
violation of Illinois law.
For example, an employee who undergoes a urine drug test (which shows use
of marijuana within 30-45 days) following a workplace accident may argue that
“recreational cannabis was lawfully used outside of work, and the
accident/injury was unrelated to the employee’s legal use of cannabis outside
of work.” Without more than the drug
test result, the employer would be in a vulnerable position to argue against or
defend such a claim. However, if the
employer completed a post-accident report, which included a reasonable
suspicion checklist, in which a trained
supervisor observed and recorded symptoms/behaviors of drug use, the employer
would be in a much better position to take an adverse action against the
employee and dispute any such claim by an employee based on the observations
and positive drug test.
With the changes to the Right to Privacy Act, it is important for employers
to understand the potential exposure and damages. Under this Act, aggrieved
employees can recover actual damages, costs, attorneys’ fees and fines. As
such, employers should make sure their practices and procedures are practical
in light of these changes, until and unless the legislature or a court provides
further clarity.
Interestingly, the Act neither diminishes nor enhances the protections
afforded to registered patients under the medical cannabis and opioid pilot
programs. The catch here is that while
cannabis use is not protected under federal law, the underlying medical
condition for which the employee is using cannabis is likely an ADA and IHRA-covered disability! Much like
under the Illinois medical marijuana law, the Act appears to require employers
to take an additional step before disciplining or terminating an employee based
on a “good faith belief” that the employee was impaired or under the influence
of cannabis while at work or performing their job. After the employer has
made a “good faith belief” determination and drug tested the employee – but
before disciplining or terminating an employee – the employer must provide the
employee with a reasonable opportunity to contest that determination. Once
the employee is provided a reasonable opportunity to explain, an employer may
then make a final determination regarding its good faith belief that the
employee was impaired or under the influence of cannabis while on the job or
while working, and what, if any, adverse employment action it will take against
the employee without violating the Act. Requiring an employee to go through drug
testing is still currently the best practice as a positive drug test will
provide additional support for a
supervisor’s reasonable suspicion determination.
Here Are Some Practice Tips to Protect Your Workforce
and Diminish Risk:
Educate yourself and evaluate all Company policies and practices that touch on providing and ensuring a safe workplace, including job descriptions (especially those safety-sensitive positions). Speak to legal counsel on an intimate basis. Assess workplace cannabis-tolerance and implement policies that can be enforced consistently amongst similarly situated employees. Policies that should be reviewed (and that could be affected) include those addressing health and safety (including accident reporting, smoking, and distracted driving), equal employment opportunity policies, workplace search/privacy policies and drug testing policies. You should also review with legal counsel, your drug testing vendor as well as your Medical Review Officer, the drug testing methodology being used to make sure that such is producing results that are useful, accurate and well vetted (e.g., using a test that determines cannabis use within the last 30 days is not as helpful as one that may test usage within 6-12 hours).
Ensure managers and supervisors are well trained and capable of enforcing policies. Remember – exceptions and favoritism lead to discrimination claims. Conducting training, especially training on reasonable suspicion detection, will be necessary to avoid legal challenges to a supervisor’s reasonable suspicion determination. Creating and/or updating forms for accident reporting (including witness statements), reasonable suspicion checklists, and established protocols for addressing suspected impairment in the workplace, is now more critical than ever.
Clearly communicate management’s position and policies to employees, especially where there is a shift in current policy or practice. Educate employees on the effect of lawful and unlawful drug use and the employer’s policies regarding marijuana. Remember, marijuana is still illegal under federal law, and, thus, you may have a zero tolerance policy within your Company. We now just have to balance that right with Illinois’ newest law.
If your Company does not have a process already, institute a reasonable accommodation process and policy for employees who are medicinal users of cannabis. While a Company is not required to keep an employee who must use marijuana while on the job or report to work under the influence, you still have obligations of going thru the ADA process with the employee to determine if you can or cannot reasonably accommodate their disability so that they may perform the essential functions of their job while not being impaired.
Engage competent legal counsel to assist you in this process and in addressing difficult situations before they lead to costly and time-consuming litigation.
Also important to note: more changes are coming to Illinois for employers on January 1, 2020! On August 9, 2019, Governor Pritzker signed Senate Bill 75 – the Workplace Transparency Act – into law. Effective January 1, 2020, major new changes will forever alter how Illinois employers manage harassment and discrimination issues as well as other workplace controversies. This new law requires mandatory sexual harassment training for employees; reporting and disclosure requirements; restrictions on employment agreements and several other mandates related to sexual harassment in the workplace. Be on the look out for an upcoming blog on these details so you are prepared for the new Illinois world of dealing with sexual harassment prevention.
About the Author
Heather A. Bailey, Esq., a partner with SmithAmundsen LLC, focuses her practice on labor and employment law issues for employers for the past 18 years. Heather may be contacted directly at: Direct Dial: 312.894.3266, Email: [email protected].
Illinois is seeing some big changes to anti-harassment training requirements for employers. Governor Pritzker signed Senate Bill 75, the Workplace Transparency Act, on August 9th, 2019. This bill amends the Illinois Human Rights Act to add sexual harassment training requirements, in addition to other changes to discrimination laws in the state.
The law is still being formalized by lawmakers, but this is
a major accomplishment, as Illinois hasn’t seen laws quite like this ever
before. This new bill comes after the Illinois Capitol in Springfield garnered
scrutiny and criticism for sexual harassment and related “pervasive behavior,”
as state senator Sue
Rezin told the Chicago Tribune,
particularly within Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan’s office.
The law is also a response to the entire #MeToo movement
that picked up in 2017. According to a report from the National Women’s Law
Center, 15
states have now passed new protections, including approximately 200 bills,
which are related to protections against workplace harassment.
As these new regulations are going through the approval
process, you’re now tasked as an Illinois employer with following updates and
understanding what it means for the way you run your business. Here’s
everything you need to know about the new requirements, some of which are still
being hashed out.
Annual Training Requirement
The bill outlines that employers must give mandatory annual
trainings on the following topics, beginning January 1st, 2020. The
comprehensive sexual harassment training program has to include the following
information:
Description and clarification of what sexual
harassment is
Examples of sexual harassment conduct
Information about government provisions, such as
what remedies are available to sexual harassment victims
Information about the employer’s responsibility
to prevent, investigate, and correct sexual harassment
Guidelines for the Service
Industry
The bill also outlines requirements for employers in the
bar, restaurant, hotel, and casino sectors. Hotels and casinos must offer
employees a way to alert security or managers with a portable notification
device if they need help, are being harassed, or witness an instance of
assault.
Bars and restaurants now must have a policy around sexual
harassment that gives employees guidelines on how they can report allegations
or file a charge with the state Department of Human Rights. These employers
also must offer annual harassment trainings, specific to the industry, in both
Spanish and English.
Other Provisions
The law also states that employers cannot require their
workers to sign nondisclosure agreements or arbitration agreements that are
related to harassment, discrimination, or retaliation.
In addition to protections for regular company employees,
independent contractors are also protected from harassment and discrimination
under the new law. As the gig economy is picking up, this is important, since
companies are working with contractors and consultants more now than ever
before. An NPR poll last year showed that one
in five jobs in America is held by a contract worker.
The bill also sets out requirements for employers and labor
organizations to disclose administrative or judicial decisions that are adverse
regarding harassment or discrimination in the previous year to the Illinois
Department of Human Rights. July 1st, 2020 is the first date of required
disclosures, and will be required every July 1 thereafter.
What happens if you
fail to comply?
The bill outlines penalties for employers that fail to
comply with the new requirements. These include civil penalties of:
$500 if the company has less than four employees
$1,000 if the company has more than four
employees
Repeat violations could be as much as $5,000 for each
instance.
Key Takeaways
The bottom line is that Illinois may pass legislation that
all employers, regardless of their number of employees, must provide sexual
harassment training to each and every employee.
Key points to remember about the proposed bill are:
If the bill is finalized, training programs must
be implemented beginning January 1st, 2020.
There are specific guidelines you must follow as
an employer when implementing the harassment trainings, such as disclosing information
about what harassment is and steps victims can take to report it.
Employers that are bars, restaurants, hotels,
and casinos have additional guidelines to follow regarding the safety of their
employees.
Employers cannot require workers to sign
nondisclosure agreements related to harassment, discrimination, or retaliation.
Independent contractors are also protected under
this law.
Penalty fees may apply if employers fail to
implement the sexual harassment trainings.
Launchways is your
trusted resource, always keeping you informed of upcoming changes related to
compliance. Once the sexual harassment training requirements are solidified, we
will offer a strategic solution to the training requirement.
