In today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape, smartwatches and other wearable technology devices have progressed past being a great holiday gift for your family member with the perennial New Year’s resolution to hit the gym and are increasingly prevalent in the workplace. These devices, ranging from smartwatches to powered gloves, can enhance employee productivity and improve … Continue Reading
In the rapidly developing world of AI, federal regulators are again signaling that businesses and HR managers cannot depend on a “data made me do it” defense to employment decisions made with the help of AI systems. Expanding on guidance it released in May, the US Department of Labor (DOL) issued new guidance on October … Continue Reading
The use of ChatGPT and its peers to make work easier and faster – whether permitted, tolerated or prohibited – is already part of everyday working life in many companies. However, the spread of that technology has raced far ahead of the law so the legal consequences of that use (employment rights and obligations, data … Continue Reading
Workplace monitoring has become a matter of particular contention in recent years. In a world where remote and hybrid working practices have become the norm, many employers have concerns about what their employees are actually doing while ‘at work’ elsewhere. This has led to an increasing amount of discussion about monitoring employees who are working … Continue Reading
In the first part of our mini blog series we discussed the training plan you are required to introduce for your employees in Belgium before 31 March. In this second blog, we will zoom in on the biking allowance which was introduced recently. Although we are not quite at the level of the Dutch (the … Continue Reading
From Labor & Employment Partner Katharine Liao and our Data Privacy & Cybersecurity colleague Kristin Bryan, below is a post from Squire Patton Boggs’ Consumer Privacy World blog covering recent legal developments involving electronic monitoring of employees in New York State. Beginning on May 7, 2022, employers in New York State who engage in electronic … Continue Reading
One of the traditional shortcomings of conventional international employment law resources is that they are very good at what was and not bad on what is, but quite hopeless on what will be. So it takes a pretty special product to give you not just news of international employment law developments in the pipeline but … Continue Reading
The pandemic has given an enormous boost to working from home, in particular (to state the obvious) when it was mandatory. Where roles permitted it, even those employers and employees most vigorously opposed to it simply had no choice but to accept it. When quizzed about the reasons why they oppose WFH, most employers’ main … Continue Reading
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) public health emergency has changed life as we know it, including by severely disrupting business on a nationwide scale. In some cases, employers have been forced to temporarily close their doors and cease operations, while others have had to make radical changes to the workplace in order to maintain operations. … Continue Reading
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) issued two groundbreaking decisions on December 14, which will give both union and non-union employers significantly more flexibility to manage their operations. Earlier this week, the Board also signaled that it will revise the “quickie” election rules implemented in 2015 in the near future. These developments will … Continue Reading
Illinois enacted its Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”) in 2008 to regulate, among other things, employer collection and use of employee biometric information. Biometrics is defined as the measurement and analysis of physical and behavioral characteristics. This analysis produces biometric identifiers that include things like fingerprints, iris or face scans, and voiceprints, all of which … Continue Reading
I first became interested in employee privacy and monitoring many many years ago. A client received a complaint from an employee who had just discovered that his brief interlude having sex with a colleague in the stockroom had been caught on the camera placed there to cut down on theft. I forget the precise gist … Continue Reading