By Ray Birch
ARLINGTON, Va.—Employees at many credit unions across the country have now been returning to the office for at least a few days a week, but one attorney is cautioning that if credit unions don’t recognize the existence of a “new type of employee” and a new work environment, their risk of being named in a lawsuit will likely rise.
David Reed, partner at Reed & Jolly, PLLC, pointed out there have already been more than 5,000 lawsuits filed by employees in the past year related to their work environment as a result of having been away from the workplace for two years or more.
Reed told CUToday.info credit unions should have carefully prepared for employees coming back—which includes training supervisors and managers on how to work with employees in what is turning out to be a new workplace landscape–by reviewing policies and procedures to see if they still fit, and even onboarding tenured staff again before they return to full-time work in the office.
Reed said these steps will likely lead to a better working environment for all and reduce potential lawsuits. Specifically, said Reed, the biggest threat of litigation lies in the area of retaliation claims.
“A lot of people and employers are just happy to be back,” said Reed. “They're so happy to get in some kind of interactive routine and they miss the fact that all of these return-to-work stories don't have a happy ending. They need to look at what they need to address.”
The First Step
David Reed
The first thing employers must recognize is that the workers retuning to the office may look the same, but appearances can be misleading.
“That is a real risk…they are not the same people who left more than two years ago,” said Reed. “So, managing in the old ways, before the pandemic, may not work anymore. Life has happened in a very dramatic way. You now have people in the office who have been working in their flannel pajamas and sneakers and everybody's been happy and the dog loves them and suddenly you want them to come back in.”
To welcome employees back properly, Reed emphasized employers must realize they have two years of remote work to “unwind.”
“You can't just unwind this in days or weeks,” said Reed. “It means not only complying with all the laws, rules and regulations, it means doing this in a way that's going to be as a close to a win-win for everyone.”
Taking ‘Inventory’
To do that employers must “inventory” the current situation within their organization.
“Hopefully, employers have been talking to people, taking surveys and getting feedback throughout this remote working process,” Reed said. “I was just speaking with a billion-dollar credit union and they said in their collections department that three of the 10 employees said they are not coming back to work in the office.”
To help ensure that employees feel more comfortable coming back to the office full time, and to also help avoid conflicts between management and workers—and between employees themselves—Reed said the smart organizations have been conducting onboarding again for all staff.
It’s “very similar to what they did before any employee was hired and set foot on the job for the first time,” he said.
Reed said doing so will help set a better tone for the organization going forward, will help staff understand the new work environment, avoid conflicts, and let employees know the company cares about them in this new working world.
‘A Big Issue’
All of these careful steps will help steer the credit union away from potential lawsuits from staff, Reed reiterated.
“Harassment claims will be a big issue,” said Reed. “People that have been working in their own kingdoms for two years come back and maybe they don’t have as nice of a working space as they had at home. People may not react to this well. Plus, the whole interactive thing. People haven't been around a whole lot of other people at work in while. People, too, can’t just rush out and leave work to grab that 50-cents-off a Starbuck’s coffee offer. And maybe they can’t store the groceries they bought at lunch in the work refrigerator. You have to get people reacclimated to working in the office.”
Reed said all of these things can lead an agitated employees. Reed emphasized that re-running the onboarding process clearly explains to all employees what the new work policy and procedures are.
“You have also got to train your managers to better work with employees today,” Reed explained. “You have somebody who says they don’t feel comfortable in the office or they have a medical issue, or they have some reason to be treated differently. Well, that's a clear notice for somebody to initiate the interactive process to see what can be done to help.”
Reed recommended managers must be trained to be sensitive to these requests and handle them properly, adding that managers and supervisors have the greatest chance to diffuse a potential issue.
The Retaliation Threat
Of all the lawsuit threats, the biggest, said Reed, is the retaliation claim.
“That is one of employers’ biggest fears now,” stated Reed. “It’s the most nefarious, I believe. For example, even if an underlying claim is without merit—I come to my boss and say, ‘David keeps messing with me. David doesn't respect boundaries. David's making inappropriate comments.’ An investigation is initiated and you two talk to two three other people and everybody says David's always at his desk and does his job and barely interacts with anyone. We haven't seen these issues at all.”
The company then says to the person who made the complaint that no underlying harassment issues have been found.
“So far, that's a good story,” said Reed.
But what about the person who made the complaint?
“All of a sudden that person who made the complaint doesn’t get access to overtime or the same choice in scheduling,” said Reed, adding such scenarios are common. “They could claim retaliation and win. You don’t have to have an active, accurate, underlying complaint to win a retaliation claim.”