August 18, 2021
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Remote Work May Impact Career Advancement

     

There are few silver linings to be found in the last 20 months. But one bright spot has been the expansion of remote work as an option. It has had an impact on everything from traffic congestion to worker satisfaction. The flexibility remote work offers is also a boon to companies competing for workers. However, as companies expand their work-from-home policies, they need to be mindful of how it can affect office culture and promotions.

In an article for the New York Times’ “Dealbook,” Sarah Kessler writes that there is the potential for a new form of bias to appear, one that favors workers who choose to attend work in person. In interviews with experts, workers, HR managers and executives at companies including Zillow, Kessler lays out how this bias might affect workers.

For example, in a traditional office setting, when a meeting ends, many attendees may continue the meeting informally at their desks, over lunch or after work. Some of this facetime invariably is with people who have the power to affect promotions. But, when a meeting is a video conference in which some are working from home and others who are in an office, those who are remote do not have the opportunity to put in the requisite facetime and may not stick out to managers when it’s promotion time.

It’s too early to assume that this is going to be the case, and some companies are already considering ways to eliminate this missing interaction or prevent the scenarios where remote workers are passed over for choosing to work from home. Zillow and Salesforce, for example, are eliminating in-person meetings all together. Thus, even if workers are in the office, they will still attend meetings from their desks. Other companies are trying to find ways to facilitate digital “water cooler” moments.

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Another Tough School Year on the Horizon

August 23, 2021
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The Delta variant impact has been felt, including by parents who were relying on schools being open for in-person sessions this fall. After a year and a half of stop-start at schools, the fall semester is already being hampered with many schools having to close or quarantine significant portions of their population. This is especially bad news as there has been little headway made by legislators or the private sector in finding ways to provide parents with paid leave to deal with care-related emergencies, most notably by the sudden closure of schools.

Alex Berke Quoted in Law 360 Piece on the Cuomo Sexual Misconduct Fallout

August 4, 2021
Sexual Harassment
Alex Berke quoted in Law360 Article, “Cuomo Sexual Misconduct Report A Road Map For Lawsuits.”

31st Anniversary of ADA Has Special Significance This Year

July 29, 2021
Disability Discrimination
Thirty-one years ago this week, then-president George H.W. Bush passed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) into law. It was a milestone in Federal law with wide ranging implications throughout US society, and, because of its extension of civil rights workplace protections to those with disabilities, special impact on our own practice in employment law.

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