Quick Hits - November 9, 2022 - American Society of Employers - ASE Staff

Quick Hits - November 9, 2022

Are COVID-related absences an issue for your organization? Nearly half of large employers (500 or more employees) surveyed by Mercer say that COVID-related absences and disabilities remain an issue for their organization. A third say that operations are affected by absences for acute illness, isolation, or quarantine. Leaves of absence related to long COVID (for symptoms such as fatigue, nerve pain, headache, balance issues and “brain fog”) are an issue for 14%; similar percentages report issues with accommodations and productivity losses. A major study found that 6% of people had not recovered 6-18 months after COVID infection, while 42% reported only partial recovery. When symptoms linger for such extended periods of time, long COVID cases can accumulate even as the overall number of COVID infections declines. Asked to compare the prevalence of short-term disability leaves this year compared to last year, only 18% said the incidence rate had dropped. The majority (56%) said it was about the same and 26% said it had actually increased.  While the majority of employers do not require vaccinations, about two-thirds of the Mercer survey say they actively encourage employees to get vaccinations, most commonly with communications from leadership (39%); directing employees to vaccination sites (28%); or even administering vaccinations onsite (26%).  Source: Mercer 10/20/22

UKG and Harvard Business Review study provides indicators to why equal pay is not achieved: The survey found that employers should be honest about where their company currently stands in pay equity. UKG's report revealed that while 74% of executives consider pay equity a moderate or highly strategic priority, only 41% believe their employers have achieved it. The survey also found that not every company is in a position where they can just write a check. Even if employers can even out salaries in a given year, unconscious bias and discrimination can creep back in and revert progress. And people may not feel comfortable discussing it. According to UKG's report, Black and Hispanic employees are twice as likely as white workers to remain silent about their pay, while 32% of Black employees and 25% of Asian and Hispanic employees cite discrimination as a factor in their salaries or hourly rates.  That bias, unconscious or not, can also make some employees blind to persistent inequities. When UKG asked employees if they believed their organization achieved pay equity, 40% of white men felt their company had accomplished this, compared to 23% of Black women and 16% of Asian women.    Source:  EBN 10/20/22

How many years should a noncompete last? During his employment at Syzygy, Bryan Harris signed an operating agreement with a non-compete clause preventing him from accepting employment for five years at a business that engages in activities "compet[ing] in whole or in part" with Syzygy. Harris quit Syzygy and, three days later, began working at Sherpa 6. Like Syzygy, Sherpa 6 works on sensor and communication integration and competes for Department of Defense contracts. Syzygy sued Harris and promptly moved for a preliminary injunction to immediately enforce the non-compete clause while the case was pending. The court granted Syzygy's request for a preliminary injunction to enforce the non-compete clause but reduced the duration of that restriction from five years to two years, which the court found sufficiently protected Syzygy's business interest. The court based this determination on the fact that Syzygy spends 15-18 months negotiating bids for government contracts and additional time to prepare such bids.  Therefore, with noncompetes, ensure that the restrictions on the time period is logical and reasonable and can be supported with current job conditions.  Source:  Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP 10/24/22, Syzygy Integration Inc. v. Harris, No. 22-1466 (E.D. Pennsylvania, 7/21/22)

Individuals with disabilities working at a higher rate than in past:  Employers, desperate for workers, are reconsidering job requirements, overhauling hiring processes, and working with nonprofit groups to recruit candidates they might once have overlooked. At the same time, companies’ newfound openness to remote work has led to opportunities for people whose disabilities make in-person work — and the taxing daily commute it requires — difficult or impossible.  As a result, the share of disabled adults who are working has soared in the past two years, far surpassing its pre-pandemic level and outpacing gains among people without disabilities. More than 35% of disabled Americans ages 18 to 64 had jobs in September. That was up from 31% just before the pandemic and is a record in the 15 years the government has kept track. Among adults without disabilities, 78% had jobs, but their employment rates have only just returned to the level before the pandemic.  One caveat:  research has found that discrimination remains common. One 2017 study found that job applications that disclosed a disability were 26% less likely to receive interest from prospective employers. And even when they can find jobs, workers with disabilities frequently encounter barriers to success, from bathroom doors they cannot open without assistance to hostile co-workers. Source:  NYTimes 10/25/22

Employees expect more from employers with respect to abortion issues:  Many workers aren’t satisfied with the actions thus far—about 44% want to see their employers doing more to ensure abortion access, according to a recent survey of 1,227 employed U.S. adults conducted by Catalyst, a nonprofit dedicated to issues among women in the workplace. Over half of younger employees ages 18 to 34 (52%) believe their companies aren’t doing enough to help workers get the access they need.  Two-thirds say their employer’s response to the court’s decisions and states’ limits on abortion rights has been “performative” and without real substance.  And more than half (53%) say their company still hasn’t had much of a response to the policy changes. About a third of the men and women surveyed report they’d like to see their CEO more actively advocating to protect abortion rights.  Given the employment marketplace, “It’s incumbent on the employer to communicate, to make sure that employees know where they stand, and to remove some of the ambiguity that comes with navigating the social and political issues right now,” Bansal Rizoli, the director of organizational strategy at Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit aimed at equitable economic advancement in the workforce, says.  Source:  Fortune 10/25/22

Are you dealing with stress eating? Concerns about inflation, the economy, the lingering effects of the pandemic and other global crises have caused stress levels in the United States to surge to new highs. For some people, that stress is showing up on the scale.  There are many biological mechanisms that explain why stress and anxiety can cause people to pack on unwanted pounds. In some cases, gaining weight can itself become a source of stress and stigma that fuels further weight gain. Our bodies evolved to secrete the stress hormone cortisol when our brain senses danger. Cortisol elevates your heart rate, blood pressure, and blood-sugar levels. In the short term, cortisol protects you from immediate threats by sending your body into fight-or-flight mode. But when your job, finances, and other circumstances ratchet up your stress levels on a regular basis, it can lead to chronic cortisol elevation.  One side effect of cortisol is that it promotes body fat, especially belly and visceral fat, which is a particularly toxic kind of fat that surrounds internal organs. Studies show that people with higher cortisol levels tend to have a higher body mass index.  Although easier said than done, try retraining your brain for better foods.  Instead of carbs try fruit, for example.  Source:  Washington Post 10/11/22

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