How Employers Can Avoid Making Remote Work a Legal Minefield

Remote work has been a boon to both employee productivity and morale at many companies, but it’s also exposed employers to a new range of risks.

Drawing up clear work-from-home policies, communicating them to employees, getting confirmation that workers understand and accept the rules, and having procedures in place in the event they say they did not receive or acknowledge the policies: These are all steps employers need to take to reduce the risk of inadvertently violating the law or being hit by employment claims. That’s according to attorneys at Cozen O’Connor, who led a webcast last week on how employers can craft effective work-from-home policies—a particularly timely topic given the role flexibility is playing in retaining workers in a sizzling talent market.

“If you’re looking to hire people or retain employees, obviously wages is a hot issue with what’s going on with inflation,” said Cozen O’Connor member David Barron.

“But right neck-and-neck with that issue is: What is your work-from-home policy? If your competitors are allowing work from home and you’re not, that’s going to be a hiring/retention issue. It’s going to be a morale issue. It’s a productivity issue. It really impacts every aspect of the workplace.”

Here are takeaways from the webcast:

1. Establish—and Communicate—Clear Policies

To avoid wage and hour violations, as well as claims, employers should lay out clear policies that let employees know what hours they should be working, when they need to take breaks, and what specific job duties are.

It’s also essential to create explicit procedures for employees to record their hours and report unscheduled work, as well as to prohibit employees from working outside of their regular work hours if they are not exempt from overtime rules.

Anticipating common scenarios that could come up while employees are working from home and communicating to employees how you expect them to handle them is also key.

“If it’s an 8-to-5 job, what are they supposed to do if someone’s at the door or there’s a delivery person, or a kid, or some other issue that they need to deal with? Are they supposed to clock out? Is that just acceptable?” Barron said.

2. Make Sure Employees Read and Understand Policies

Aaron Holt, a member of the firm, said he’s recently seen claims from remote workers alleging they never authorized the signatures that appear on their employment contracts. “When you are sending them the policies and you’re requiring them to acknowledge that they have it, in the event one of those workers says … ‘That is not my signature,’ what would you say in response?

“What evidence could you marshal in the event that actually became a litigation point to prove that, in fact, they did receive those papers, those policies, and that they’d agreed to abide by them?” Holt asked.

“If you have a handbook acknowledgement, consider adding a line saying that the employee authorizes use of electronic signatures,” Holt suggested.

“Have a way to verify that they, in fact, received the policies. That can even be as simple as a read receipt, if you’re emailing them the policies for remote workers. It could be a signed physical acknowledgement; it could be third-party software like DocuSign. Have some kind of tracking log to monitor this.”

It’s also important to make sure someone at the company is actually looking through all the electronic documents they receive from new employees.

“What you don’t want to have happen is later on, a few years down the road, when you have to pull that information due to litigation that, in fact, you don’t have a signature or any kind of verification that this person actually signed an acknowledgement to abide by your policies,” Holt warned.

From: Corporate Counsel