January 12, 2023

New Study of Employees With Long COVID Demonstrates Need for More Workplace Accommodations

Since the beginning of the pandemic “long COVID” remains a new and poorly understood condition both for medical experts and people suffering from the condition. For workers, this has had a significant impact on their ability to remain productive at work. One in five people reporting a positive COVID diagnosis report experiencing symptoms of long COVID, according to the CDC. And, in a new study focused on long-COVID sufferers, 99% of participants reported that the condition had adversely affected their work. Participants reported having to take time off work, depression, anxiety, and even switching jobs.

The study also revealed that these problems are not merely personal, as employers have not done enough to create clear ways to communicate the availability for accommodations, which are required under the ADA, broadened in summer of 2021 to recognize “long COVID” as a disability. Respondents reported lack of workplace flexibility, poor communication, and a more general fear of broaching the subject with employers., all of which were more acutely felt among  respondents of color.

However, there is much that employers can do to help employees who are dealing with long COVID. The first is simply to talk more openly about the condition. Many people are not even aware they are suffering from long COVID because of the lack of diagnostic tools to point to the condition coupled with its similarities with other common mental health conditions. However, many of those conditions already allow for accommodations, so employers should not be fearful of widening the discussion to include long COVID. Additionally, many of those accommodations cost little, are easy to implement and have been used for other conditions for years, making it an easy target for employers.

Childcare and Paid Leave Funding Part of $1.8tn “American Families Plan” 

April 29, 2021
Paid Family Leave
In a speech to a joint session of Congress, President Biden unveiled the “The American Families Plan,” the third part of the president’s push to power a post-pandemic recovery. Along with the $1.9 trillion fiscal stimulus and a proposal for an infrastructure plan that would earmark $2.3 trillion to upgrade roads, bridges, railroads, and the country’s aging power grid, the American Families Plan seeks to fund a wide range of initiatives to address deep-lying problems on the job market that the pandemic exposed, and hopefully help the more than 2 million women who left the workforce in 2020 to return.

CLE Webinar Discusses the Vaccination Pros and Cons for Workplaces

April 16, 2021
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A recent Association of Corporate Counsel CLE webinar provided an important look at what employers should be thinking about as vaccination efforts here in the US speed up.

New Study Finds No Negative Effects in NYS Paid Family Leave 

April 16, 2021
Paid Family Leave
The results of a three-year study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research indicated that paid family leave policies do not have a negative effect for employers.

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