Quick Hits - April 13, 2022 - American Society of Employers - ASE Staff

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Quick Hits - April 13, 2022

OFCCP updates the Veteran Hiring Benchmark:  The benchmark as of March 31, 2022 is now 5.5% (which is the estimate of the number of veterans in the workforce)The unemployment rate for veterans is 2.4%.

New U.S. Supreme Court Justice – Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson:  By a narrow margin on April 7, 2022, the Senate voted 53-47 to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve as the 116th Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court—she will be the first Black woman to serve in this distinguished position. The vote saw three Republican Senators crossing the aisle to join Independents and Democrats, all of whom favored the nominee. Judge Jackson will take her seat on the High Court Bench following Justice Stephen Breyer’s upcoming retirement.  Judge Jackson is highly qualified for the position.  Judge Jackson currently serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Prior to that she was a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for eight years. She has also worked as Of Counsel at Morrison & Foerster LLP, Assistant Federal Public Defender in the appeals division of the Office of the Public Defender for the District of Columbia, Assistant Special Counsel at the Sentencing Commission, and as an associate in two law firms.  Judge Jackson attended Harvard University for college and law school, where she served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

What do managers think of job hopping? According LinkedIn’s 2022 research, U.S. LinkedIn users who changed their jobs increased 37% in 2021. Generation Z workers — those born in 1997 or later — were the “most restless,” the report showed.  About 25% of respondents say they hope or plan to leave their current employers within the next six months. Other research by CareerBuilder in 2021 found that Gen Z workers would spend an average of two years and three months in a job, while millennials (25 to 40 years old) stayed for just six months more. In comparison, Gen X employees (41 to 56 years old) spend an average of five years in the same job, while and baby boomers (57 to 75 years old) stay in their jobs for about eight years. While job-hopping is “more acceptable than ever” now, a job switch with under a year of tenure is still “too quick,” said Amy Zimmerman, the chief people officer of Relay Payments. A minimum of 18 months at a job is acceptable, but it will be “wonderful” if a tenure lasts between three and five years, said Randstad’s Managing Director for Singapore and Malaysia Jaya Dass.  It’s more acceptable these days, but if they are job hopping, how should the total compensation package be structured?  Source:  CNBC 3/30/22

Never assume anything:  Neither an applicant who, due to his prescription opioid use, had been rejected for a position involving the use of forklifts, nor the company that rescinded the job offer based on safety concerns, was entitled to summary judgment on his ADA regarded-as claim, ruled a federal district court in Ohio. After finding that the negative side effects of medicine can be an impairment under the ADA, and that the employer considered the applicant's perceived disabilities arising from his opioid use, the court concluded this was enough to show it regarded him as disabled. However, the Court in turning to whether the applicant was otherwise qualified for the job, noted evidence he held a similar job at another company where he operated forklifts while taking the same medications and apparently had no safety incidents. But the employer's argument that his opioid regimen rendered him a risk to the “health and safety” of others “starts on solid legal footing,” the court observed. However, the court pointed out, employers must conduct an “individualized inquiry” to determine whether an employee's disability or other condition disqualifies him from a particular position.  Source:  CCH 3/29/22

Do you work at a toxic environment? Research out of Harvard shows that firing a toxic jerk added more than twice as much to a company's bottom line as hiring a superstar. Another recent study showed a toxic workplace was the single biggest predictor of whether employees would join The Great Resignation and head for the door. To figure out exactly what caused a problematic workplace to rise to the level of true toxicity, an MIT team combed through 1.3 million Glassdoor reviews, using text analysis to determine what sort of words and topics in reviews led to the biggest reductions in a company's culture score. Here are the five biggest signs of toxicity they uncovered.

  1. Disrespect
  2. A non inclusive environment
  3. Unethical behavior
  4. Ruthless competition
  5. Bullying

So, if reviewing the company culture reveals any of these attributes, HR should address it immediately or risk more of The Great Resignation. Source:  Inc.

Does your organization show it cares?  At the onset of the pandemic, nearly half of employees felt that their employers genuinely cared about their well-being. Now, two years later, that figure has plummeted to a nearly 10-year low. Today, less than a quarter of workers feel their organization cares about them. Employers should take note. Gallup found that team members who feel their organization cares about their well-being have higher customer engagement, profitability, and productivity, coupled with reduced turnover rates and fewer safety incidents. Findings support that successful companies, as a whole, were more flexible than their counterparts and focused on all aspects of employee wellness and development. Communication was clear, and managers were enabled to make the best decisions for individual team members.  Source:  ATD 3/18/22

HR is now in SEC sights:  As the Securities and Exchange Commission ponders new mandates for 2022, HR may find itself center stage.  In 2020, SEC amended a rule to require companies to disclose "human capital resources" if they are "material to an understanding of the registrant's business" without much detail. That could change this year. A Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is expected in April regarding board diversity, and an updated NPRM regarding human capital management disclosures could come imminently. For example, some have already tied executive compensation to diversity and inclusion metrics. Others have established executive roles tied to ESG strategy, Willis Towers Watson reported at the end of 2020. Among the biggest challenges for implementing these changes is understanding how to measure success and then hold the right people accountable for it — a challenge HR practitioners may be familiar with by now.  But not every HR department is ready for that, Rebecca Ray, executive vice president of human capital at The Conference Board, said, and now there's executive pressure to get it right.   Source:  HR Dive 4/4/22

Do you know somebody who went to work experiencing COVID symptoms? Overall, about one in 10 (11%) workers say they went to work with COVID-19 symptoms or after being exposed to someone with the virus because they couldn’t afford to take time off, according to a recent KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor report. The surge in COVID-19 cases triggered by the omicron variant led to widespread work disruptions, with about 4 in 10 workers (42%) – including six in 10 of those with lower incomes – saying they had to miss work at least once in the past three months because of a COVID-19 illness, quarantine, or closure.  Among all workers, a quarter (26%) say they missed work because they had to quarantine following a COVID-19 exposure, 20% percent missed work after testing positive, and 13% percent missed work because their employer was closed or had reduced hours due to COVID-19 concerns. In addition, nearly three in 10 employed parents (28%) say they had to miss work to stay home with a child who had to quarantine or because their child’s school went virtual.  Among lower-income workers (with annual household incomes below $40,000), six in 10 (60%) say they had to miss work in the past three months for at least one of these reasons. This includes a third (35%) who say they missed work because their workplace had closed or reduced hours due to the pandemic.  Source:  CCH 3/25/22

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