If you are a business owner and have a pregnant employee or don’t know the rights around pregnant employees, I strongly urge you to do some reading as soon as possible.  Pregnant employees have the right to be free from discrimination.  As an employer and also as an employee – you must clearly understand these rights.  There are cases all the time in the news about employers that discriminated against a pregnant employee or an employee returning to work.
Here is a nice concise article for additional information.
http://blog.firstreference.com/2013/05/29/understanding-the-rights-of-pregnant-employees-in-ontario/?

Working from home…do you offer this to your
employees?

Many employers are reviewing their work from home policies due to the recent Yahoo announcement that they were clawing back this option.  If employers didn’t have this option, certainly many are now thinking twice about offering it.

My two cents…  if an employee was not hired with the specific work from home arrangement due to their location or otherwise, then working from home is an option for an employer to provide. Some
employees do indeed view this as a benefit.  It saves on commuting costs, can increase employee morale and can  increase productivity.  However, be well aware that not all employees can work from home.  Some are easily distracted by the surroundings, some are not disciplined enough and some can take advantage of the situation all leading to lower productivity.  Having said this, there are many that perform quite well in this situation often starting work before their normal time, working through lunches and having a much more productive day due to the less frequent interruptions from the workplace.

If you are thinking about implementing this arrangement, I would think about the following:

*  If you have current issues with dysfunctional teams and lack of communication and comradely – I would hold off on work from home arrangements until you have combated a lot of these issues

*  Ensure you create a policy or some “rules” around this option as if you encounter things like abuse of the policy, performance issues etc., you can “claw it back” or take it away from those in the situation until these issues are rectified

*  Monitor the before state of productivity and the after tate of productivity to ensure there isn’t an adverse reaction on your bottom line.  This will also show you if there was an increase in productivity which will help you substantiate keeping this option in place

*  If working from home is not an option you can implement at this time but you want to do something in this regard, think about offering flexible hours…set some core hours, but flexibility on start or end times as long as a full workday is put in

*  Many employees and potential employees view this option as a benefit – if it is working well in your company – market this option in your job ads

The bottom line is that if you are thinking of implementing this option, ensure that things are running smoothly before you consider it and ensure you list options to remove the benefit if necessary.

We would love to hear your comments on your experience, challenges etc., feel free to email them to: christie@1stophrconsulting.com

In a recent article found in the Kitchener Record, a Manpower survey states that we can expect Canadian employers to continue with a similar hiring climate as per the last quarter.  ManPower surveyed 1900 employers across Canada in many different sectors and 20% do plan to hire in Q2.

In the Kitchener/Waterloo area, 17% plan to hire while 5% plan cutbacks.  Across Canada, the word is that there will be growth in public utilities and transportation sectors.

Statistic Canada released that 50,700 new mostly full time and private sector jobs were created in February, leaving our national unemployment rate at 7%.

This is all good news!