Are You Keeping Your Employees Safe? These Workplace Policies Can Help

Whether you have gone back to your office or other physical location, permanently transformed to a virtual service, or produced some hybrid solution, it’s vital you keep your employees safe– and I don’t suggest from the coronavirus. Many small companies do not take note of HR and ignore creating company policies that are vital to safeguarding their personnel.

Creating business policies may look like busywork, but if you don’t codify your expectations of particular habits, it might cost you a lot– even your company. Here are three workplace concerns you should seriously think about creating official company policies around.

1. Sexual harassment

While sexual harassment is not a new concern, with the arrival of the #MeToo motion, it ought to be leading of mind for organisation of all sizes. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made it illegal to discriminate based on sex. In the late 1980s, the Supreme Court broadened the meaning to include unwanted sexual advances in the office.

As the business owner, you are accountable for doing everything in your power to dissuade undesirable sexual innuendos, unwelcome physical contact, and more. Currently, it’s a requirement in seven states for services to routinely supply mandatory sexual harassment training to all workers, and a lot of other states need training for public employees.

Unwanted sexual advances can manifest in a variety of forms, according to the U.S. Equal Work Opportunity Commission ( EEOC), such as:

• The victim, along with the harasser, maybe a woman or a man, and the victim does not need to be of the opposite sex from the harasser.
• The harasser might be the victim’s supervisor, a representative of the company, a manager in another area, a coworker, or a non-employee, such as a vendor or a customer.
• The victim does not have to be the individual harassed however might be anyone affected by the offensive conduct.
• Unlawful sexual harassment might occur without financial injury to or discharge of the victim.
• Harassment does not have to be of a sexual nature. It can consist of offensive remarks about a person’s sex. For example, states the EEOC, it is illegal to harass a lady by making offending remarks about ladies in basic

Even if training is not required in your state, as a company you are responsible for harassment suits brought by employees or suppliers of your business.

What should you do if somebody submits an unwanted sexual advances claim? Contact your lawyer instantly. There are some suggestions here also.

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1. Cybercrime

This may surprise you but according to research by Ponemon Institute, 76% of SMBs in the United States experienced a cyberattack last year. And for a small company, the expense of an information breach can be devastating. The typical cyberattack costs smaller sized companies a typical $ 3,533 per staff member. It takes an average of 206 days to recognize a threat and another 73 days to contain it, making the life process of an information breach 279 days.

An essential element to keeping your service safe from hackers is to produce a cybersecurity program to inform staff members what to watch out for. Unsure where to start? Require workers to protect personal and business gadgets with passwords and anti-viruses software application programs. Educate them about safe e-mail practices, such as not opening suspicious attachments and clickbait subject lines. Passwords ought to be complicated and changed at least every 3 months.

Remote workers need to especially follow cybersecurity policies and not share their devices with family members. Have your IT specialist inspect virtual worker systems and security measures to ensure sensitive details is safe from attack.

The FCC provides a complimentary cyber coordinator wizard to produce a customized guide for your organization and provides expert guidance to address your organization’s concerns.

1. Remote working

Increasingly more services are making the long-term switch to running essentially. Whether you prepare to go virtual full-time or offer it as an in some cases choice, you require to establish constant work-from-home policies.

First, make it clear whether the switch to run practically is long-term or momentary. Make sure you comply with any appropriate state laws. And tell your staff what your expectations of them are, from work hours to compulsory conferences.

Ron Culler, Senior Director of Technology and Solutions at ADT Cybersecurity, uses some suggestions for making a work-from-home transition as smooth as possible:

• Put clever home security systems to work. According to the FBI, theft occurs every 22.6 seconds in the United States. And 88% of those robberies happen in domestic locations very typically throughout the day. If your workers currently have house security systems, they must treat their home security just as they would if working from the workplace. This includes arming the security system, leveraging clever house system devices like outside and doorbell electronic cameras and movement detectors to see approaching visitors, and monitoring their surroundings so they can remain safe and concentrated on work.
• Keep corporate devices with staff members. Working from another location may lure workers to default to their individual devices instead of utilizing corporate-owned computer systems. This positions a danger because individual laptops likely do not have the exact same anti-virus software application and monitoring systems in a location like work computer systems do to keep info safe and secure. When at all possible, workers ought to use their work laptop computers for work and abide by corporate-approved protocols, hardware and software– from firewall programs to VPNs– to help avoid cyber headaches, especially if work-from-home policies last for extended periods of time.
• Set up more video conferences. Not only do virtual calls help keep social interaction, but also they help keep interaction streaming straight and in a controlled, private environment.
• Keep information on corporate systems. Many businesses utilizing cloud innovation might not have this issue, but it is essential to advise staff members that all files need to remain on corporate-owned channels, whether that’s over email or on the cloud. The cyber defenses that employees were utilized to having in a location in the office may not bring over to an at-home work environment.

All these policies, and any others you produce, ought to be codified in your employee handbook and on your business intranet (if you have one.) Make it clear any offenses of the policy will have serious repercussions, as a security breach arising from worker non-compliance might lead to claims and even the loss of your business.