Latest / Financial Survival Network / The Liabilities of Remote Workers -- Jon Bell #6025

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The Liabilities of Remote Workers -- Jon Bell #6025 · Financial Survival Network

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  There are situations where people where employers want to record what the employee's doing because
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  they have no other way of tracking them, so they put some software on
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  their computer, but they don't necessarily inform the employee of that at certain state's
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  required or some type of disclosure, So there could be some violations of law
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  in that respect. Though. Yeah, it's a mess. And then you
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  know, obviously now it's the talent pool. Some people allow people to work
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  from home or at least a hybrid schedule, hoping they could get better talent
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  for less money. You are listening to Carrie Let's's Financial Survival Network where you
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  get valuable information you just can't find anywhere else to thrive in today's trying times.
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  more than ever, and welcome. You are listening to the Financial surviv Network
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  on your host Carrie Lutts. Well, you know, the big trend remote
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  work seems to be the companies are backing off on that for a number of
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  reasons. One major reason that you probably aren't aware of is the potential legal
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  aspects, the liabilities involved with you working at home. What happens if you
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  know you're at home and you trip and you bang your head on your desk
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  and you wind up in the hospital. Who's liable for this workman's comp all
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  that there's a lot of legal issues. John Bell is with us from Bell
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  Lug Group, and John, you are New Yorker, and I guess you've
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  been dealing with this trend a lot, considering all those empty high rises in
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  Manhattan. Now that's correct, I'm going to laboring employment attorney in Siosi,
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  a long Island. So there's been so many dated in the landscape. First
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  off, getting everybody to the virtual reality of trying to be productive in the
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  in the from home, and then now the trend seems to be, like
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  you said, getting everybody back in the workplace, which is making some employees
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  very unhappy, and the legal implications involved both while they were home and now
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  transitioning back. You know, the couple of big ones that I've seen while
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  people have been working from home has been the hourly employees relating to time and
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  attendance and how that's being reported. Apparently a lot of employees now feel like
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  they have flexibility to work after hours and sometimes more than forty hours a week,
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  and it's up to the employer to somehow track that time and pay people
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  time and a half for that work, which is required under at least here
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  in New York, New York State and New York City law. And then
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  you have the federal law, the FLSA that guides us under the overtime laws
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  as well, So that seems to be a huge problem. There's also times
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  when people don't when employees don't necessarily record their lead if they have to go
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  out to a doctor's appointment or not take off some time during the day.
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  Employers are finding difficult to track when to use PTO when not, if you
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  could use it for all of the day, all of the day, and
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  things of that nature. So that's a big one, right, so tracking
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  your employees, and I would think there more sophisticated companies. The larger entities
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  have got systems in place to do all that tracking, but smaller companies probably
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  are remiss. And you know, in places like Germany, you're not allowed
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  to work more than forty hours a week and if you do, the company
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  can be fined a lot of money and they have to actually file reports on
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  time keeping with the government, how much your employees worked, et cetera.
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  And I've heard of a number of large companies actually just kind of fudging those
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  reports. Yeah, well, let's not get the word out too much around
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  here. And one of my employees now moving to Germany as a result.
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  That's it's caramel hey. And then like, how do you prove that you
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  work more than forty hours? It's if you don't have that tracking system in
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  place, it's very difficult to actually track people. I mean, and nice.
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  It's theory. The computer is on everybody's doing their business, it's tracking.
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  But the reality is tracking is a lot harder than that, Isn't it
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  Tracking a lot harder, And it's still fault on the employer. So the
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  employer can't point to the employee and say, well, the employee didn't let
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  me know they're we're working after hours. And what employers have to understand too,
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  is now they're getting used to a texting and calling situation when the employees
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  at home, and then they might lose those boundaries because they used to seeing
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  somebody in the office and speak with them, and they might call them or
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  text them later than you know the regular work hour and expect these people to
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  check their email after hours while they're not being compensated. Now understand again,
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  if you're properly on salary, properly on salary, then it's not an issue.
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  But a hourly worker, it is an issue. And the biggest issue
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  I'm seeing Kerry with coming back to the workplace. A lot of calls I'm
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  getting from small, medium, and large sized companies are the employees that don't
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  want to come back to the workplace but are claiming some type of medical condition
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  which is preventing them from come back to the workplace. So, in that
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  situation, if an employee provides medical documentation that they could perform the essential functions
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  of the job at home and they do have some type of medical condition which
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  allows them or whether they're required to work from GOLM, what does the employer
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  do and what actions to the employer has to take, such as engaging in
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  the interactive process. A lot of these employers are screwedining these medical records and
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  notes in believing the employees just making something like this up. But there has
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  to be some interactive process potentially or a view from your own physician to see
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  if it's warranted and it could be a reasonable accommodation where such requests get the
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  denied. Yeah, well that brings another thing though, the at home work,
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  the remote work really gives opportunities to people who are legitimately disabled and legitimately
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  can't get to the office or in the case of new mothers, new parents
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  where they might otherwise quit. But in this case, because they can work
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  from home, you still get the benefit of their efforts. Yes, and
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  that's a very good point. And then when the employer does make a quote
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  unquote exception or even if they're following the law under the Americans with Disability,
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  that other employees may catch wins of it and claim that they're being treated differently.
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  And why are they forced to go back into the workplace understanding that there's
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  a linked or requirement that you may have to provide that employee with a specific
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  accommodation. So then it causes unne unnecessary hostility in the workplace when one employee
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  is comparing themselves to another one. Yeah, so this thing seems like wonderful
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  in theory, but it's really kind of a mess, isn't it. It
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  is a mess. It is a mess. And from what my research is
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  the majority of people who are working from home, they are thirty five percent
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  more likely to be terminated when they refuse to come back into work. And
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  I understand an employer can change their mind and require people to come back to
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  work. The only exception that I know of is, like I said,
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  if there's a medical condition requires some reasonab accommodation. There may be some other
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  leave requirements, right like FMLA or paid family leave, the things that I
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  nature that could cover the growth of a newborn. But in that situation,
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  you're not working from home. You're allowed to stay home, and you have
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  some job security from when you want to return into the workplace. But for
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  actually working at home, it's basically the Americans with disabilities at that an employee
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  that qualifies can rely on to stay working from home and be gainfully employed.
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  Yeah, so it's really interesting because really with email, with texting, with
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  remote work, it kind of with the cloud based computing, this trend was
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  really underway for many years before we woke up one day during the pandemic and
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  realized, hey, you can work remotely. So we were going to get
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  here anyway. I guess the pandemic speeded it up by several years, and
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  it certainly did, and probably to a greater extent than we would have ordinarily
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  gone there. You know that there's substantial community difficulties where people work from home.
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  You just can't have those meetings. There's some cybersecurity risks that I've learned
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  of. Obviously in certain situations, you're dealing with lower productivity from workers.
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  There are situations where people where employers want to record what the employee's doing because
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  they have no other way of tracking them, so they put some software on
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  their computer, but they don't necessarily inform the employee of that. At certain
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  states required or some type of disclosure, So there could be some violations of
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  law in that respect. So yeah, it's a mess. And then you
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  know, obviously now it's the talent pole. Some people allow people to work
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  from home or at least a hybrid schedule, hoping they could get better talent
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  for less money. Yeah, well, I know, like my daughter,
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  you know, she's on permanent remote status with a major tech company, and
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  they seem to be very happy with the way it is. But I'm sure,
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  I'm sure it's very challenging, especially with that lerk Ser titious monitoring of
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  employees to shoot, be sure that they're living by the rules, because if
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  you don't tell them, I think you got some real problems there. Absolutely
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  absolutely we in my Love firm, we have about eighteen attorneys. Most of
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  them take advantage of a hybrid schedule work from home schedule, and you tend
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  to learn fairly quickly which attorneys can work in that type of environment and which
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  attorneys are taking advantage of it. So this flows not only to business organizations,
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  large companies, small companies, medium sized and professionals. Yeah, so
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  what about the more traditional like Workmen's COP thing you get injured at home,
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  you know, for one thing, Hey, you could still work from home
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  probably right, sure. I mean I've heard of employees that they're in technically
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  working and they're working from home and they bang their knee against their desk,
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  but in a worker's com claim to cover the medical fees and things of that
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  nature. So yeah, if you're in the course of your employment and you
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  injure yourself, you could follow workers COP and workers COP will cover you as
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  opposed to going through your regular medical insurance, which if you have insurance,
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  you can do that as well. So I guess you advise clients about this
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  if you put together some kind of checklist or guidebook or white paper for your
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  clients so that they don't run a foul. So personally, no, my
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  firm hasn't done that. We have our regular employer clients that we regularly counsel
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  and they contact us specific to certain questions. We also have employees that we
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  represent that where the employer allegedly runs a foul of the laws and rules,
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  which we've capitalized on because there has been a lot of there's been a number
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  of mistakes during this transition. So but yeah, the my advice would be
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  work with the knowledgeable HR representative or make contact with a local leave an employment
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  attorney to learn these rules, what you can do and what you can do
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  because it's a fluid environment employment law that you're not just related to working from
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  home and getting people back in the office, but generally with different changes in
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  the law that happened, you know, annually and even more frequent than that,
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  you need to be apprized because an employer could really get themselves in trouble
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  if not up on the different changes of the law at the time those laws
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  are being paid right and I would think that that really you have to you
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  really have to update your employee handbooks and manuals and things like that to reflect
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  the new reality here. Absolutely, there's always changed in minimum weight, in
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  paid family leading and things of that nature. All right, Hey, so
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  people want to find out more. They want to talk to you about this,
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  John, get some advice, some counsel. How do you reach you?
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  How do they reach you? H? Five y five? John Bell,
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  that's eight five five five six six two three five five. My website
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  is BELLLG is in Law Group, BELLLG dot com. All right, excellent.
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  Hey, you've got a question for John myself. You can always send
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  me an email Klatcarrie LUTs dot com and you can find a link directly to
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  John's site on our site, Financial Survival Network dot com in the show notes
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  of this interview. While you're there, sign up for your free newsletter.
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  John. Appreciate you coming on and we'll talk to you again soon. Carrie,
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  I really appreciate it. Thanks for listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network
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  your solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork
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  dot com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever,