Do I get time off work for my COVID shot? Can I take a sick day?

Posted on May 28, 2021 by particularkev

Elizabeth Shi, RMIT UniversityAustralia’s COVID vaccine rollout has reached its next phase, now people aged 50 and over are officially eligible to receive their shot from a GP, respiratory clinic or mass vaccination hub. People under 50 are also getting vaccinated in some states.

These are the first age groups to be vaccinated in Australia likely to be in paid work. Until now, most people to have received their shot will have been over 70, and probably retired. So people eligible now might wonder how to fit in a vaccine appointment around work commitments.

If you need, or want, to be vaccinated during work hours, do you take a day’s leave or a sick day? And if you’re ill with side-effects, can you take a sick day to recover?

Let’s assume you’re not a doctor or nurse, or have some other occupation with a workplace, on-site vaccination clinic. This means the vast majority of Australians will need to factor in time travelling to the clinic, administration (such as filling in consent forms), the shot itself, 15-30 minutes waiting in case there are any immediate side-effects, and travelling back to work.

Let’s assume for now you’re an employee, entitled to paid annual leave and paid personal leave (which includes sick leave). If you’re a casual or independent contractor, the situation’s different and explained below.

Can I get time off work to get my COVID vaccine?

Whether you’re a full- or part-time employee, taking time off to get the COVID vaccine is similar to taking time off for the flu vaccine. You will usually need to take paid annual leave.

Unless your employment contract says otherwise, you are not entitled to take paid sick leave to get vaccinated. Sick leave is only for when you’re ill or injured. Being vaccinated is not considered an illness or injury.

Despite this, employers can exercise their discretion to allow you to take paid sick leave to get vaccinated.

Can I take sick leave if I feel unwell afterwards?

As a full- or part-time employee, you are entitled to take paid sick leave if you feel unwell after being vaccinated and can’t work.

You may need to provide reasonable evidence you are unfit for work, such as a medical certificate.

What if I’m a casual employee or an independent contractor?

Casual employees and independent contractors are not entitled to paid annual leave or paid sick leave.

However, if you are a casual employee and are feeling unwell after receiving your vaccine, check if your organisation has a provision for “special paid sick leave”. Some do.

This type of special leave is not a mandatory legal entitlement. But if your organisation doesn’t provide it, you may be able to negotiate it. Independent contractors can also negotiate with the business that contracts them.

To address the hardships casuals and independent contractors face, Victoria has announced a two-year trial of its Secure Work Pilot Scheme, which is due to begin by 2022.

This will provide up to five days of paid sick leave and carer’s leave at the national minimum wage for casual or insecure workers in sectors with high rates of casual employment, such as aged care, cleaning and hospitality.

What if I work in retail or hospitality?

If you work in retail, hospitality or some other sector that puts you at higher risk of COVID due to increased customer contact, you might be wondering if there are special provisions for you.

Under workplace health and safety laws, your employer must, so far as is reasonably practicable, provide and maintain a work environment that is safe and without risks to health.

But that doesn’t mean your employer has to give you paid time off during working hours to get vaccinated. That’s different to, say, the employer of a construction worker who has to provide a hard hat or other personal protective equipment for safety reasons.

Vaccines and hard hats seem to be treated differently, even though you could argue they both protect workers from serious illness or injury.

What other options are there?

If you’ve used up all your paid annual leave, you can request unpaid leave to get your vaccine.

Then there’s the alternative of booking an appointment for one of your days off, with some clinics offering extended hours, including evenings and weekends.

The Fair Work Ombudsman has more information about your workplace rights and obligations when it comes to COVID vaccines.

Elizabeth Shi, Senior Lecturer, Graduate School of Business and Law, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Exploitation in the Digital Economy

Posted on May 11, 2021 by particularkev

As boundaries between work and home vanish, employees need a ‘right to disconnect’

Posted on May 2, 2021 by particularkev

Barbara Pocock, University of South AustraliaIf you have been in a children’s playground recently, you may have seen a distracted parent absorbed in an intense phone conversation, swatting a child away.

Sure, some are ordering tickets for The Wiggles, but most are not — they are working. They might have officially knocked off, be on leave or it might be a weekend. But as surely as if they were in the office, they are at work.

Many of us know that tug of double consciousness: the child’s pressing need pitted against a complex issue on the other end of the phone demanding every neurone we can muster.

You do not have to be a carer to feel this tug. It still finds plenty of people who just want some quiet time, an uninterrupted run, a life beyond work.

It’s the growth of this tug, affecting more and more women and men, which has fuelled the push for a “right to disconnect” from work. This includes a recent significant victory for Victoria Police employees to protect their time away from work.

Availability creep

Our forebears would not recognise the ephemeral way we work today, or the absence of boundaries around it. But powerful new technologies have disrupted last century’s clearer, more stable, predictable limits on the time and place of work.

This is called “availability creep”, where employees feel they need to be available all the time to answer emails, calls or simply deal with their workload.

Sydney CBD skyline with headlights on the freeway. — Australians did even more unpaid overtime during COVID than before the pandemic.
Mick Tsikas/AAP

And that was well before a pandemic that piled revolution upon revolution on the way we work. A 2020 mid-pandemic survey showed Australians were working 5.3 hours of unpaid overtime on average per week, up from 4.6 hours the year before.

These longer hours are often associated with job insecurity. In a labour market like Australia’s, where insecure work is widespread, there are strong incentives to “stay sweet” with the boss and work longer, harder and sometimes for nothing.

Health implications

So, work is now untethered from a workplace or a workday, and our workplace regulation lags well behind. This has serious implications for our mental health, work-life stress, productivity and a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.

Of course, flexibility is not all bad. As a researcher collecting evidence for decades about the case for greater flexibility for employees, I see silver linings in a pandemic that achieved almost overnight what decades of data-gathering could not: new ways of working that can suit workers (especially women) and their households.

However, this change has a dark side. Digital work and work-from-home have shown themselves to drive long hours of work, and to pollute rest and family time. Poor sleep, stress, burnout, degraded relationships and distracted carers are part of the collateral damage.

Disconnecting in Australia and internationally

A growing international response attests to the importance of disconnection. And it has now reached our shores.

Last month, Victoria Police’s new Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA) included the “right to disconnect” from work. It directs managers to respect leave and rest days and avoid contacting police officers outside work hours, unless in an emergency or to check on their welfare. The goal is to ensure that police, whose jobs are often stressful, can switch off from work when they knock off and get decent rest and recovery time.

Swimmers at Bondi Beach pool. — There is a growing push to protect employees’ time outside work hours.
Bianca De Marchi/AAP

The “right to disconnect” has taken several forms internationally in recent decades. At individual firm level, some large companies such as Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler now simply stop out-of-hours or holiday emails or calls.

Goldman Sachs has also recently re-stated its far from radical “Saturday rule”, under which junior bankers are not expected to be in the office from 9pm Friday to 9am Sunday.

The French example

Some countries now regulate the right nationally.

Since 2017, French companies employing more than 50 people have been required to engage in an annual negotiation with employee representatives to regulate digital devices to ensure respect for rest, personal life and family leave. If they can’t reach agreement, the employer must draw up a charter to define how employees can disconnect and must train and inform their workers about these strategies.

While enforcement of the French law has attracted criticism (as penalties are weak), it has fostered a national conversation —now reaching other countries like Greece, Spain and Ireland. In early 2021, the European Parliament voted to grant workers the right to refrain from email and calls outside working hours, including when on holidays or leave, as well as protection from adverse actions against those who disconnect.

What’s next for Australia?

The Victoria Police EBA has encouraged a new level of discussion in Australia. The ACTU has backed a right to disconnect, especially for workers in stressful jobs.

Individual businesses will now be examining their obligations to ensure maximum hours of work are adhered to and “reasonable” overtime and on-call work is managed to avoid possible claims for unpaid work.

This week, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that supermarket giant Coles is trying to prevent out-of-hours work.

The consequences for companies can be expensive when digital work is not well managed. In 2018, the French arm of Rentokil was ordered to pay an ex-employee the equivalent of $A92,000 because it required him to leave his phone on to talk to customers and staff.

Beyond fair remuneration, a duty of care to provide a safe and healthy workplace is also implicated in digital work that leaks beyond working hours.

What needs to happen now

Large public sector workplaces are likely to follow Victoria Police’s example. However, EBAs now cover just 15% of workers, so this pathway won’t help most workers, many of whom are instead covered by one of the 100 or so industry or occupational modern awards.

These awards could be amended to include a right to disconnect. But more simply and comprehensively, the National Employment Standards (which apply to all workers regardless of whether covered by an award or an EBA) could be amended to provide an enforceable right to disconnect with consequences for its breach, alongside existing standards of maximum hours of work, flexibility and other minimum rights.

Given many women, low paid, private sector, un-unionised and relatively powerless workers in smaller workplaces have little chance of negotiating or enforcing a right to disconnect, it is vital the right to disconnect applies across the whole workforce.

Barbara Pocock, Emeritus Professor University of South Australia, University of South Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Can my boss make me get a COVID vaccination? Yes, but it depends on the job

Posted on March 1, 2021 by particularkev

Cecilia Anthony Das, Edith Cowan University and Kenneth Yin, Edith Cowan University

As Australia prepares to roll out a national vaccination program – aiming for a 95% uptake rate – big questions remain for employers and employees.

Employers have a clear incentive to want employees vaccinated, to protect clients and co-workers as well as to avoid legal liabilities of potential workplace COVID transmissions.

But can an employer insist on vaccination as a condition of employment?

That’s an ambiguous legal question, as indicated by two recent unfair dismissal cases taken to the federal Fair Work Commission. Both involve employers in 2020 making an influenza vaccination a requirement, and employees losing their jobs for refusing.

The bottom line from both cases is that an employer can make vaccination a condition of working – but with significant caveats. It depends on “balancing” the employer’s duty of care to others with the employee’s reason for refusal, and the circumstances of the work they do.

Employers have a duty of care

The first relevant case is the Fair Work Commission’s ruling in November 2020 on an unfair dismissal claim by child-care worker Nicole Arnold against Goodstart Early Learning, Australia’s largest early learning provider.

In April 2020 Goodstart made a flu vaccination a condition of employment, though allowing exceptions on medical grounds. Arnold objected. In correspondence with her employer she cited the Bible, the Nuremberg Principles and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But she gave no medical reasons. She was dismissed in August 2020.

The commission dismissed Arnold’s application to have her case heard on the basis Goodstart’s vaccination policy was arguably reasonable to satisfy its duty of care to children, while Arnold’s refusal was arguably unreasonable.

Commissioner Ingrid Asbury ruled:

While I do not go so far as to say that [Arnold’s] case lacks merit, it is my view that it is at least equally arguable that [Goodstart’s] policy requiring mandatory vaccination is lawful and reasonable in the context of its operations which principally involve the care of children, including children who are too young to be vaccinated or unable to be vaccinated for a valid health reason.

It was, Asbury said, a matter of balancing an employer’s duty of care with the needs of employees who may have reasonable grounds to refuse to be vaccinated. She saw no exceptional circumstances to rule Arnold was unfairly dismissed.

Work circumstances count

The second case involves an unfair dismissal claim by care assistant Maria Glover against Queensland aged and disability care provider Ozcare, for whom she had worked since 2009.

Ozcare provides free flu vaccinations to employees annually. Glover, 64, had previously declined to get the shot due to allergies and her understanding she had an adverse reaction to a flu shot as a child.

In April 2020, Ozcare introduced a policy making influenza vaccinations mandatory for all employees in its residential aged care facilities or having direct client contact in its community care services. Its reason was the risk to clients who caught the flu and then contracted COVID-19.

It required supporting evidence for a medical exemption. Glover did not do so. This resulted in Ozcare no longer rostering her for work from May. She filed her unfair dismissal claim in October.

Aged care worker with elderly man. — Ozcare made influenza vaccinations for workers mandatory due to the risk for clients getting the flu and then COVID-19.
Shutterstock

A final ruling by the Fair Work Commission is still pending. The case was complicated by Ozcare’s lawyers arguing Glover had not been dismissed. But a preliminary decision on January 18 – in which Commissioner Jennifer Hunt ruled Glover had been dismissed – included observations relevant to the merits of future cases involving vaccination refusals.

Hunt considered a future scenario (in November 2021) when employers of men playing Santa Claus in shopping centres may be required to have a flu vaccination “and if a vaccination for COVID-19 is available, that too”. In such a situation, where social distancing is impossible, a vaccination might become an “inherent requirement” of the job. In the court of public opinion, Hunt said, this might not be considered unreasonable. But a court or tribunal would need to consider the context.

In particular, Commissioner Hunt noted:

In my view, each circumstance of the person’s role is important to consider, and the workplace in which they work in determining whether an employer’s decision to make a vaccination an inherent requirement of the role is a lawful and reasonable direction. Refusal of such may result in termination of employment, regardless of the employee’s reason, whether medical, or based on religious grounds, or simply the person being a conscientious objector.

What this all means

What these two rulings boil down to is that an employer can make a vaccination an inherent requirement of employment, and dismiss a worker for refusing – even if they have a legitimate reason. But it depends on the role and exposure risks.

But if risks to others can be minimised through social distancing and other measures – say, for instance an employee works from home – dismissing an employee for refusing to get vaccinated could be ruled unfair. Particularly if they have a good reason – that is a medical condition, not a pseudo-legal objection. It depends on the balance of the employer’s duty of care to others against the employee’s claims.

So it’s not clear-cut. As things stands it is risky for employers to adopt a blanket policy to make COVID-19 vaccinations compulsory.

Bringing greater clarity

Employer groups would like a more straightforward legal landscape. As the head of the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia, Peter Strong, has noted:

There is the issue of vaccinated employees refusing to work with non-vaccinated employees. Where does the employer stand, legally and practicably, in that situation? Where does the employee stand?

In the US the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (which enforces federal laws against workplace discrimination) has ruled employers can require all employees – with some religious or disability-related exemptions – to get vaccinated to enter a workplace.

Australia’s federal industrial relations minister Christian Porter has reportedly told employers the government will not mandate vaccines in workplaces.

That means making the legality of workplace vaccination policies more “black-and-white” will need to come from the state and territory governments, using their regulatory powers under their work health and safety acts.

Cecilia Anthony Das, Lecturer, Edith Cowan University and Kenneth Yin, Lecturer in law, Edith Cowan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Fired for storming the Capitol? Why most workers aren’t protected for what they do on their own time

Posted on January 12, 2021 by particularkev

The man on the right wearing the Trump hat was identified by his badge as an employee of Navistar Direct Marketing, which fired him.
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Elizabeth C. Tippett, University of Oregon

Can you be fired for joining a violent mob that storms the Capitol?

Of course you can.

Among the jarring images of white insurrectionists who broke into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 was a man marching through the building holding a Trump flag with his work ID badge still draped around his neck.

It didn’t take long for internet sleuths to zoom in on the badge and alert his employer, Navistar Direct Marketing, a Maryland direct mail printing company.

The company promptly fired the man and contacted the FBI, issuing a statement that “any employee demonstrating dangerous conduct that endangers the health and safety of others will no longer have an employment opportunity.”

Even though the Capitol Police let all but 14 of the rioters walk away, the FBI and District of Columbia police have begun tracking them down. Other companies have also taken action against employees identified in the many photos from inside the Capitol. Even the CEO of a data analytics firm found himself without a job following his arrest.

Based on my experience as a law professor and lawyer specializing in employment law, I doubt that Navistar management is losing sleep over whether its decision was legally justified.

It’s not even a close case. Non-unionized workers in the United States – about 90% of all workers – are employed at-will. That means you can be terminated at any time, without notice, for any reason. It doesn’t even have to be a good reason. Unless the company has guaranteed your job in writing, or there is a specific law that protects your conduct – such as laws protecting union organizing or whistleblowing – your fate is up to them.

The law is more protective when it comes to unionized workers and government employees. These workers may have the right to be terminated only for cause, and they might get a hearing process prior to being disciplined. Government workers are also protected by the First Amendment, particularly when it comes to free speech in their capacity as citizens rather than speech related to the workplace.

That’s why the teachers and off-duty police officers spotted at the Capitol have only been suspended pending investigations, rather than fired outright. For these workers, their fate may depend on whether they were peacefully participating in the day’s earlier rally – an activity that would be considered protected speech – as opposed to engaging in violence or joining the capitol invasion, which would be unprotected illegal conduct.

Things get murky if these government workers were displaying white supremacist symbols, like a confederate flag, at the rally. Courts have recognized limits on the public speech of police officers to uphold public confidence, community relations and department morale.

A throng of Trump supporters stand in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on Jan. 6 as one snaps a picture. — A supporter of President Donald Trump appears to take a selfie at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

But as the Brennan Center, a liberal-leaning law and public policy institute, observed in an August 2020 report, “few law enforcement agencies have policies that specifically prohibit affiliating with white supremacist groups.” The absence of such policies could make it harder for departments to later discipline off-duty police officers for their role.

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State lawmakers who participated are a different matter. Because they were elected by the people, they can’t be removed like ordinary employees. That might require a recall election or a state impeachment process.

But for most of the folks who snapped selfies in the Capitol – or ended up in someone else’s – if they don’t get a knock on the door from the FBI, they may soon be getting one from HR.

Elizabeth C. Tippett, Associate Professor, School of Law, University of Oregon

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Don’t know what day it is or who said what at the last meeting? Blame the coronavirus

Posted on August 5, 2020 by particularkev

Celia Harris, Western Sydney University and Catherine J. Stevens, Western Sydney University

We are all living through a major historical event, a once-in-a-century pandemic that has radically changed how we work, learn, travel, socialise and spend our free time.

But for many of us juggling working from home, schooling at home and Friday night Zoom drinks, this is a period likely marked by memory failures. We forget who said what, who was at which meeting, what tasks and appointments we have, and even what day it is.

Why doesn’t our memory serve us well in this pandemic? Anxiety may be one explanation, but another reason comes from the way our memory works.

How we remember things

Recalling specific details from particular past events – such as who was at last Friday’s drinks, and who was there the week before that – is a complex mental feat.

To do it, our memory relies on distinctive cues, both to recall past events accurately and to remember to perform future actions.

Distinctive cues for a particular event might include the physical surroundings, people, tastes, sounds, smells, or the weather.

People sitting outside at a cafe. — Cues from the location can help you remember who you met there.
Flickr/Alex Proimos, CC BY-ND

We remember which friend was at drinks because we recall details of the location – the bar we were at, where each person was sitting, what we were eating, and so on. This context helps us place the right person in that situation when we recall it later.

We remember who said what in a work meeting because we can visualise where they were sitting. We remember what day it is because we have landmarks in the week that remind us: karate lessons, choir practice, Friday afternoon traffic.

Same, same, same

Unfortunately, the pandemic has erased many of these cues. Many of us have instead been spending time sitting at our computer when ordinarily we might be at work or elsewhere. And this could leave us less able to distinguish events from one another.

A man on his laptop in a video hookup with work colleagues. — When home becomes the workplace everything tends to blur.
Shutterstock/Kate Kultsevych

Our memories are designed to focus on things that are new or distinctive. This means we are more likely to remember events when they are accompanied by a change in our environment, such as an overseas vacation. Conversely, we tend to merge events that are broadly similar.

This is useful as it helps us keep track of events in a systematic and useful way, without needing to perfectly record all the details of every event.

But in lockdown we don’t have physical transitions to differentiate one event from the next. We no longer walk between meetings or commute from the office to home. Many different events now share the same context (staying at home), which means your memory tends to blur them together.

What can we do about it?

Once we understand that our memories are going to find the current circumstances challenging, there are things we can do to improve the situation.

One way is to make an effort to create distinctive cues where possible. Can we all wear silly hats for our Friday night drinks (or board meetings)? Can we hold work meetings for different projects in different rooms of our house?

Ask someone different each time to chair recurring meetings? Going for a walk during meetings where we only need to listen can create a new set of physical cues to associate with what is being said.

Another way is to rely more heavily on our external memory systems: diaries, calendars, notes and records. Accepting that our internal memory might fall short means we can compensate by deliberately using tools and resources to store the information on our behalf.

These systems can later act as contextual memory cues too. For example, we can add a screenshot to our video meeting notes to record who was there and their location on the screen.

A written note to remind you to take a photo each day — A screenshot or a photo can help create a reminder of an event.
Flickr/Pete, CC BY

These kinds of recommendations are often given to people who experience memory failures for other reasons, such as brain injury.

But similar principles might help all of us whose internal memory resources are not designed for spending our time almost exclusively in one place.

When embracing external memory systems, it is important to ensure they are readily accessible and always accurate, so we can trust them completely and be sure of getting the reminders we need.

Working from home is the new normal for many of us. Developing new strategies that support our memory performance might help reduce the number of things we forget, and stop our recollection of the COVID-19 times turning into an amorphous mush.

Celia Harris, Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow, Western Sydney University and Catherine J. Stevens, Director, MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour & Development, Western Sydney University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

‘Far too many’ Victorians are going to work while sick. Far too many have no choice

Posted on July 30, 2020 by particularkev

Julian Teicher, CQUniversity Australia and Bernadine Van Gramberg

There is nothing new about people turning up to work when they’re sick. During the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, many Melburnians had no option but to carry on working in defiance of public health advice, during an era before paid sick leave and with virtually no social safety net.

Today many employees are entitled to sick leave. And yet Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews this week complained that “far too many people” are going to work with COVID-19 symptoms, describing this as the “biggest driver” of the state’s persistently high rates of transmission.

It’s easy to understand Andrews’ frustration. But while times have indeed changed for many employees since 1918, those in the casual and part-time workforce face the same stark choice – stay home or get paid – as their counterparts more than a century ago.

Casuals account for 25% of the Australian workforce, mainly in lower-paid jobs. This creates huge vulnerability, both in terms of these workers’ personal circumstances and in the public’s efforts to suppress COVID-19.

This pandemic has starkly revealed the consequences of casualisation in industries such as food distribution, meat processing, health care and private security. In April, a cluster of cases associated with the Cedar Meats abbatoir in Melbourne’s west was traced to casual workers employed by a Brisbane-based labour hire contractor.

Labour hire came under further scrutiny over the Victorian government’s decision to manage its hotel quarantine with the help of three private security firms, one of which subcontracted to other labour hire firms. One guard claims to have been hired via WhatsApp and said he received no training and was paid as little as A$18 per hour. Add to the mix alleged shortages of PPE and hand sanitiser, and the recipe for uncontrolled transmission begins to take shape.

Multiple jobs, no sick pay

The problem is compounded by the fact that many casual and part-time workers need more than one job to make ends meet. This means when they turn up to work despite being sick or waiting on test results, they are turning up sick to more than one workplace.

It gets worse still. Many people with more than one job work in the health sector, and particularly in aged care, where hourly wages are low. According to industry peak body Leading Age Services, 20-30% of the aged-care workforce have jobs in more than one facility.

Federal Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck has pledged to help aged-care providers cover the costs of employees’ entitlements so they can work at just one facility. But the problem is an entrenched one.

What help is available?

The Andrews government has offered various forms of assistance to encourage workers to stay home if unwell or being tested for COVID-19. But there are some exclusions.

Workers can claim a one-off payment of A$1,500 if unable to work during isolation, and a A$300 payment to cover isolation while awaiting COVID-19 test results, but only if they don’t already receive any other benefits or income and have already exhausted any paid leave entitlements. As the aged-care workforce is predominantly low-paid, an estimated 16% are already on some form of benefit and will likely miss out.

In April, the Fair Work Commission updated the terms of many industry awards to specifically include annual leave or unpaid leave for COVID-19-related absences. Yet this ruling did not cover casual workers or the 40% of workers on enterprise agreements, and unpaid leave would be an unpalatable option for those who have already used up their paid entitlement.

This week the Commission ordered paid COVID-19 leave in three health and aged-care awards to cover both ongoing and casual workers, although some employers have complained the measure will be difficult and costly to implement.

Workforce casualisation is part of a wider move towards increasing “labour flexibility”. This is touted as a way for workers to enjoy more control over their lives, but in practice it allows employers to offer lower-paid, less secure jobs while freeing themselves of obligation to their employees and in some cases even receiving government subsidies into the bargain.

A classic example is private aged-care homes, which are staffed via layers of labour hire agencies, have received a federal government cash injection to help them deal with COVID-19, and are not bound by the same staffing conditions enforced in Victoria’s public aged-care facilities.

These facilities are in a full-blown public health crisis, accounting for a worrying proportion of Victoria’s COVID-19 cases. Yet their owners have argued that the government and even the elderly residents themselves should fund their workers’ pandemic leave.

It is a profound irony, given how “flexible” work practices have worsened the spread of COVID-19, that Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg are now calling for even more labour market flexibility as part of the process of economic recovery from the pandemic.

Julian Teicher, Professor of Human Resources and Employment and Deputy Dean (Research), School of Business and Law, CQUniversity Australia and Bernadine Van Gramberg, Pro Vice Chancellor (Graduate Research and Research Training), Swinburne University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In praise of the office: let’s learn from COVID-19 and make the traditional workplace better

Posted on July 1, 2020 by particularkev

Geoff Plimmer, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington; Diep Nguyen, Edith Cowan University; Esme Franken, Edith Cowan University, and Stephen Teo, Edith Cowan University

Having had to rapidly adjust to working from home due to COVID-19, many people are now having to readjust to life back in the office. Many will have enjoyed aspects of what is sometimes called “distributed work”, but some may be dreading the return.

So is there a middle ground? Could hybrid work arrangements, known for boosting well-being and productivity, be a more common feature of workplaces in the future?

We say yes. Organisations need to recognise the valuable habits and skills employees have developed to work effectively from home during the lockdown. But they will need good strategies for easing the transition back into the physical workplace.

In doing so, they should aim for the best of both worlds — the flexibility of distributed work and the known benefits of the collaborative workplace.

Good riddance to hot-desking

A good start would be a proper re-evaluation the two worst aspects of office life: crowded open-plan designs and so-called “hot-desking”.

Cramped shared offices and free-for-all hot-desking are both known for their negative impacts on quality of workplace life. The results are often interpersonal conflict, reduced productivity and higher rates of sickness.

Some organisations have already done away with hot-desking in an effort to improve physical and mental well-being. Acknowledging the evidence that tightly packed, cost-saving, open-plan office arrangements have not delivered what was promised should be another priority.

Hopefully, the impact of COVID-19 on business as usual will spell the end of these often poorly thought through management fads.

Work-life imbalance: how do companies help their employees and also boost productivity?
http://www.shutterstock.com

Working from home can be isolating

At the same time, there is no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The office still has its advantages, and there is research showing that working from home has clear disadvantages for employees and organisations when it is offered as a permanent arrangement.

One study involved a large (anonymous) US Fortune 100 technology firm. It began as a traditional survey of what it was like for individuals to work from home, but evolved into a study of the effect of what happened to the company’s community when working from home was normalised.

The option of unrestricted distributed work meant employees simply stopped coming to work at the office. Many reported the well-known benefits of working from home, such as work-life balance and productivity.

They also reported a kind of “contagion effect”. As colleagues began to stay at home a tipping point arrived where fewer and fewer people opted to work in the office.

But this actually increased a sense of isolation among employees. It also meant the loss of opportunities to collaborate through informal or unplanned meetings. The chance to solve problems or be given challenging assignments were lost as well.

Those who participated in the study said social contact and productively interacting with colleagues was the main reason they wanted to come to work. Without it there was no real point. The research raises the possibility of a net loss in well-being if everyone were to work remotely.

Well-being and job satisfaction depend on a range of factors, including having clear goals, social contact and the structure of the traditional working day. Of course, jobs can also be toxic if there is too much structure. But fully distributed work may not provide the support, identity and community that offices provide for some.

Nor is technology always adequate when it comes to the subtle value of face-to-face catch ups. Five minute water-cooler talks and post-meeting debriefs still matter for both productivity, social contact and cohesion.

A different kind of management: motivating and maintaining morale in a distributed workplace requires new skills.
http://www.shutterstock.com

Management has to adapt too

None of which is to suggest there are not identifiable advantages of distributed work and the flexible workplace. As many of us discovered during the lockdown, just avoiding the daily commute helped with lowering stress and better work-life balance. Choosing when we worked was attractive too.

But this requires better management skills. Distributed workers require different (often better) engagement strategies, including the ability to build mutual trust.

Research into how best to manage the health and safety of distributed workers has found that some leaders simply can’t adapt to the digital environment. Trust, consideration and communicating a clear vision or sense of purpose matter more for distributed workers than for those in the traditional office.

Recognition, reward, development and advancement in a distributed working environment will all need special attention. So too will ways to deal with people not pulling their weight, maybe because of too much time on social media.

Even the simple benefits of spontaneous humour in meetings or informal team interactions are easily lost with “e-leadership”, so new ways of building and maintaining morale are vital.

This is not an either/or question. Rather, the challenge is to strike a new balance — how to retain the benefits of distributed work while maintaining the sense of community that comes from personal interaction in the office.

Geoff Plimmer, Senior lecturer in Human Resource Management, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington; Diep Nguyen, Lecturer, Edith Cowan University; Esme Franken, Lecturer in Management, Edith Cowan University, and Stephen Teo, Professor of Work and Performance, Edith Cowan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Heading back to the office? Here’s how to protect yourself and your colleagues from coronavirus

Posted on June 30, 2020 by particularkev

Lisa Bricknell, CQUniversity Australia and Dale Trott, CQUniversity Australia

One of the most profound ways the COVID-19 pandemic has affected our lives has been in the way we work. For people lucky enough to keep their jobs, and for those of us in professions where it’s possible, working from home has become the new normal.

Australia’s success in “flattening the curve” means restrictions are now being lifted. With this, many employers are bringing their staff back into the office, or at least contemplating doing so.

But as the current outbreaks in Victoria show, it’s dangerous to think we’re now safe from the threat of COVID-19.

So, what do we need to consider as we take those first tentative steps back into the office?

First, how does the virus spread?

While there’s a lot we still don’t know about SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, we do know it spreads most effectively from person to person in droplet form. Infected people emit these droplets when they sneeze, cough, and even speak.

Those droplets can be transmitted directly through the air — say when an infectious person coughs in the direction of someone else close by — or they can settle on surfaces, where they can remain viable for hours.

The virus enters the body of a non-infected person through contact with mucous membranes in the nose, mouth or eyes and attaches to cells in the upper respiratory tract to establish infection.

Many of us are keen to get back to the office.
Shutterstock

What does this mean for office workers?

In many workplaces, employees share a small office space, work in an open-plan office, or use “hot desks” that are shared between several different employees on different shifts.

Workers in these situations are often required to work for long periods in environments that make it hard to maintain the recommended 4m² distancing rule.

This combination — several hours spent in close contact — increases the risk of COVID-19 transmission. This is illustrated by an outbreak in an open-plan call centre in Seoul, where more than 43% of workers contracted COVID-19 during February and March.

Considerations for employers

First, each employee in a shared office should be able to have at least 4m² to themselves. If this isn’t possible, it would be a good idea to stagger staff or allow them to continue working from home for now.

Second, think about airflow. Small offices often have insufficient airflow to dilute the virus, and, if an infectious person is present, could end up with high concentrations of viral particles over the course of an hour or so.

Conversely, higher rates of airflow combined with poor ventilation can also lead to infection, as droplets can be carried further.

So where possible, increase ventilation and air exchange in open-plan workspaces. Increasing the ratio of fresh air intake to recirculated air can reduce the concentration of virus particles in air conditioned spaces. Even simply opening windows can reduce viral spread.

Ramping up cleaning practices is a must.
Shutterstock

Third, cleaning protocols need to be increased. Where once a twice weekly visit from a contracted cleaner to vacuum the floors, empty the bins and quickly wipe over surfaces was considered sufficient, during COVID-19 you need to ensure a thorough daily clean of all surfaces.

Frequently touched surfaces, such as desks, light switches, door handles, phones, staircase railings, touch screens, keypads, taps and toilets should be given special attention and may require more frequent cleaning.

Fourth, if a worker becomes sick with respiratory symptoms, isolate them from other staff and arrange for them to go home. Advise them to get tested for COVID-19 and not return to work until they have a negative result.

Similarly, reinforce the message, “if you’re sick, get tested and don’t come to work”. Now more than ever, the culture of “soldiering on” while unwell puts others at risk.

Finally, you might also consider asking employees to wear face masks at work. Face masks are unlikely to protect the person wearing them but can limit the disease being spread by coughs and sneezes.

Considerations for employees

First, you should clean equipment like keyboards, phones and mice regularly, and definitely between each user if desks are shared. Simply wipe your desk and equipment with a domestic spray cleaner.

Second, the best protection against the virus is personal hygiene. Washing your hands with soap and water offers excellent protection against SARS-CoV-2. When you can’t wash your hands, use an alcohol-based hand sanitiser instead.

You should wash or sanitise your hands regularly throughout the day, especially any time you touch anything you suspect someone else has recently been in contact with.

Both employers and employees can reduce the risk COVID-19 will spread in an office environment.
Shutterstock

Third, maintain a distance of 1.5m from other people to protect yourself from airborne droplets.

Fourth, practise good respiratory hygiene by coughing and sneezing into a tissue or the crook of your elbow. This prevents viral particles spreading over surfaces and toward people around you.

Lastly, if you have any symptoms, don’t go to work. Get tested as soon as possible and stay at home until you receive the results.

Lisa Bricknell, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Health, CQUniversity Australia and Dale Trott, Lecturer, Environmental Health, CQUniversity Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A four-day working week could be the shot in the arm post-coronavirus tourism needs

Posted on June 1, 2020 by particularkev

Jarrod Haar, Auckland University of Technology

When New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said recently, “I’ve heard lots of people suggesting we should have a four-day week”, she inevitably ignited debate.

Ardern was not, as some critics seemed to assume, just flying a kite. She was responding to various ideas about how to boost domestic tourism. Like the hospitality industry, tourism has been economically ravaged by the COVID-19 lockdown, so her remarks received a lot of coverage.

But Ardern added a caveat that received rather less attention: “Ultimately, that really sits between employers and employees.”

This suggests it is unlikely to become official government policy, but rather something businesses might choose to adopt if it made sense.

The idea has already gained traction in Australia and America, highlighting a widespread interest in new ways of organising work. Ultimately, Ardern was suggesting the end of lockdown might present organisations with a chance to do things differently.

But could it work? How would organisations do it? And what would be the benefits?

One company has shown the way already

In New Zealand, the four-day week was pioneered in 2018 by Andrew Barnes, now a champion of the concept after trialling and then adopting it for his finance company, Perpetual Guardian. Employees now work a four-day week on their previous five-day salary. They work normal eight-hour days, not simply longer hours to make up a normal 40-hour week.

Perpetual Guardian calls it the “100-80-100” model: 100% productivity for 80% time at 100% salary.

Research showed employees reported significantly better well-being than before the trial, including a better work-life balance and lower job stress. They were more engaged and reported higher job satisfaction.

Managers reported the same level of productivity. Furthermore, management found their teams were more creative, more helpful, and provided better customer service.

Overall it was a win for employees and their employer.

Perpetual Guardian’s Andrew Barnes.
Author provided

From my own research I’ve identified a few key factors that determine success. Firstly, it needs leadership support. Having a leader who can champion the adoption of a four-day trial is vital.

Barnes recommends a trial as the first step to discovering whether it is an option for your organisation or not. As evidence of the benefits builds (for example, Microsoft in Japan reported a 40% increase in productivity), employees might want to lobby their managers to give it a go.

Employee engagement is vital

My research also showed employees are central to making a four-day week work. Ultimately they have to create better ways to work – for example, collectively identifying what was previously wasted time and seeking solutions. In one case, a team told me they reduced a two-hour weekly meeting to 30 minutes a fortnight.

How to reschedule the week is another factor: organisations might adopt a fixed day off – such as Melbourne firm Versa, which chose Wednesday. Or they might rotate the day off among team members.

The latter approach requires a strong creative focus on maintaining team productivity. But there is no one way to make it work. While Perpetual Guardian operates 32-hour weeks, Versa works a 37.5-hour week in four days.

What is most important is that workers are empowered to think about productivity and wastage and to make their work more efficient and effective. Even if an organisation trials the four-day week but chooses not to adopt it, it will still gain useful insights into working methods and productivity.

Beyond the benefits to employers (more focused and attentive staff, better customer relations) and employees (enhanced well-being and engagement), there are potentially wider social benefits too.

More leisure time equals greater opportunity

Reduced commuting times due to fewer days in the office mean fewer cars on the road, less congestion and lower CO₂ emissions. Offices use less power and, if an organisation is growing, potentially feel less pressure to expand if a rotating day off is in place.

If supporting tourism is the goal, business owners might be encouraged to close for one day a week, ideally a Friday or Monday, perhaps in split shifts if they need to remain operating five days a week. This would maximise people’s ability to plan a three-day weekend of travel – potentially within a “trans-Tasman bubble”.

Were Australian organisations to adopt a four-day week too it could significantly increase two-way traffic, enhancing both economies.

Paying workers 100% of their salary for 80% of a traditional working week while maintaining productivity would, in theory at least, increase opportunities for discretionary spending.

Combined with a patriotic call to use the extra time to support hospitality and tourism, it could align with the prime minister’s desire to find innovative ways to stimulate economic activity.

Healthier, happier and more productive workers helping other businesses stay viable? That sounds like a win-win for all.

Jarrod Haar, Professor of Human Resource Management, Auckland University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Sharing my thoughts with the world from a Particular Baptist perspective

Can I get time off work to get my COVID vaccine?

Can I take sick leave if I feel unwell afterwards?

What if I’m a casual employee or an independent contractor?

What if I work in retail or hospitality?

What other options are there?

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Availability creep

Health implications

Disconnecting in Australia and internationally

The French example

What’s next for Australia?

What needs to happen now

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Employers have a duty of care

Work circumstances count

What this all means

Bringing greater clarity

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How we remember things

Same, same, same

What can we do about it?

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Multiple jobs, no sick pay

What help is available?

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Good riddance to hot-desking

Working from home can be isolating

Management has to adapt too

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First, how does the virus spread?

What does this mean for office workers?

Considerations for employers

Considerations for employees

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One company has shown the way already

Employee engagement is vital

More leisure time equals greater opportunity

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