The Author
Stefani SchwartzHatfield Schwartz Law Group
Stefani C Schwartz is Senior Managing Partner at the Hatfield Schwartz Law Group LLC. She has devoted her career to representing and advising employers in the complete spectrum of employment law, including discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and wrongful termination. Stefani is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Emerging Issues in Litigation.
Emerging Litigation PodcastProduced by HB Litigation and Law Street Media
Interviews with leading attorneys and other subject matter experts on new twists in the law and how the law is responding to new twists in the world.
Workplace Investigations:
Proactive Assessments Mitigate the Risk of Costly Litigation in a Newly Remote Environment
“Investigations are a straightforward, efficient, and effective way to combat the risk of litigation because they reflect the best aspects of the employer–employee relationship: understanding, respect, communication, and shared goals.”
Abstract: “Bullying, discrimination, sexual harassment and other forms of workplace misconduct can create a crisis for any company—and trying to ignore or cover it up will make a bad situation worse.” That’s the warning from a December 2021 article for Forbes, which goes on to say that in addition the damage to an employer’s reputation, a study by workplace misconduct reporting service Vault Platform found that workplace misconduct cost U.S. businesses more than $20 billion in 2021. In this article, the author discusses how proactively conducting workplace investigations can reduce an employer’s risk of winding up in court and paying the considerable tangible and intangible costs of misconduct, a risk further complicated by an increasingly home-based workforce.
Excerpt: During the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced new factors in the ever-shifting area of employer liability: large-scale layoffs and furloughs, the introduction and/or expansion of possibilities for remote work, the drive for a safe return to the physical workplace, and the dual needs for vaccination and accommodation of religious objectors to vaccines to name a few. These issues predate the current public health crisis but have been pushed to the forefront of employer concerns as a result of the virus. Yet this new arena provides opportunities for cultural, scientific, and legal progress. Many employers may benefit from the familiarity their employees now have with remote work, and the development of successful mRNA vaccines has wide-ranging implications. The changing legal landscape, however, introduces uncertainty for employers concerned about the risks associated with any particular action.
Consider, for instance, the decisions many employers have had to make about transitioning to a remote work environment, later transitioning back to in-person operations, and possibly having t revert to remote work as the COVID-19 situation changes. Those decisions are loaded with legal questions beyond the expected skillset of a business owner: Are you liable if one of your employees catches COVID-19 at your workplace? How do you deal with employees who do not want to be vaccinated? How are employees with different family situations, commuting concerns, and medical histories going to respond to your decision?
