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