HRdownloads Blog

Employees have had a taste of working remotely, and many are requesting to work from home more regularly. One major takeaway from this large-scale shift to remote-based work is that companies are now open to more creative ways to get the job done. The question arises, whether to continue with the remote-based model or get back to the traditional workspace, post-pandemic? The best solution could be an overlap of both!

Note: Certain industries, particularly healthcare, might have different guidelines regarding what information they can require from employees. Consult government guidelines, advice from regulatory bodies, or legal counsel to ascertain appropriate limits on information collection.

Requesting doctor’s notes (or more generally, medical certificates) is normal practice when employees require sick time. Employers want to verify that employees aren’t abusing the system, and check that employees can safely return to work after they recover. This second reason is far more important in the context of COVID-19, and screening for COVID-19 symptoms is required in many workplaces now. Ontario’s government has gone further, requiring active screening measures throughout the province. Even so, many employers are still uncertain how to screen. What can you ask? How do you protect employee privacy? There are more questions employers have about medical certificates and COVID-19, so let’s walk through the basics.

Many employers are feeling the urgency of ensuring their employees are vaccinated as soon as possible and are considering making it a requirement. If employers want their teams to return to the workplace or continue working but with reduced health and safety measures, it’s likely that most won’t feel comfortable until their employees have been fully vaccinated. But as necessary as full vaccination is, the question remains: “Can employers require vaccination?”

While days are getting longer, we aren’t quite out of the woods yet, which means employees may be experiencing a type of depression known as seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Ongoing and changing restrictions have already caused a major shift in our mental health, which may be affecting workplaces more than we realize. Symptoms will likely be amplified by anxiety and isolation arising from “stay home” recommendations and may last beyond the winter months.

Employers may notice that employees are less ambitious or productive this time of year and may shrug it off as them adjusting to getting back into the swing of things. However, employers should be aware that their employees may be experiencing deeper mental health issues.

Violence and harassment must not be tolerated in any workplace, and most jurisdictions have laws that outline an employer’s responsibility to prevent them. Violence and harassment affect employee well-being, mental health, job tenure, absenteeism, and workplace satisfaction. They can cause high turnover, and in some cases be considered discrimination. So where do you begin your efforts to reduce or eliminate violence and harassment in your workplace? Your culture.

Canadians are starting to adjust to the new normal, which involves ongoing adherence to strict health and safety measures to slow the spread of COVID-19. However, as changes continue to occur, some people have had a higher comfort level than others with disobeying these guidelines. This has left many employers and HR professionals wondering what they can do if this disobedience becomes (or already is) a problem in their workplace.

We don’t know what we don’t know. An old adage, and truer now than ever. As business leaders, we must future-proof our organizations to cope with the increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world we live in. At HRdownloads, we firmly believe the most effective way to build a future-ready organization is to prepare future-ready leaders and staff. And the best way to do that is with engaging, exciting, and relevant training.

People tend to talk about self-care in apologetic terms, making excuses for why they took vacation or went for a walk on their break, or any of the more expensive and ostentatious behaviours people call ‘self-care’, but why? It seems obvious that self-care is important. Everyone needs a break, and our mental and emotional health need looking after just like our physical health does, so it shouldn’t feel controversial to take steps to protect ourselves from burnout or stress or just not feeling our best. And yet excuse-making persists, suggesting that there’s something about how we conceptualize self-care that feels indulgent or guilty to us.

We received many questions during our recent webinar, “COVID-ucation: Employers, Parents, School, and the Pandemic”. In a difficult time like this, we wanted to make sure the answers to these challenging questions were available, so we’ve created another multi-part question series on our blog to help ensure employers and HR professionals have access to the information they need.

There has been a lot of discussion in the media recently surrounding the second wave of COVID-19. Areas considered to be hot spots are implementing additional public health measures, and provincial governments have reintroduced stricter controls in some areas. Many employers are questioning what to do if their region comes under further restrictions.