As an employer, understanding the legal framework surrounding employee leaves is crucial to mitigating legal risks and ensuring compliance with employment laws.
Employers may face challenges when making business decisions that impact employees on leave, including questions about whether termination is permissible during a leave of absence.Continue Reading Out of Sight, Out of Work? Important Considerations for Terminating on Leave
Most employers know they have a legal duty to accommodate an employee with a disability. But what exactly is the scope of that duty and what does the accommodation include?
This post will set out the basics.Continue Reading Employment Law 101: Accommodating a Disability
Are employers required to accommodate an employee at Christmas?
If an employee requests December 25 off for “family time” or religious events, are those protected grounds under Canadian human rights law? This arises in industries that stay open 365 days a year, such as hospitals, public transit, variety stores, movie theatres and some restaurants.
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If you’ve ever explored SpringLaw’s Teams’ Bios, it’s no secret that we are huge pet lovers over here! And, being a virtual law firm, we are lucky enough to work with our furry friends daily. For workplaces that are in-office or hybrid, we have seen various workplaces try to replicate this joy by introducing pet-friendly policies to allow employees to bring their pets to work. For animal lovers, the benefits of bringing your pet to work days may be obvious including improved morale, reduced stress, and even increased productivity. However, it’s not all rainbows and butterflies for all employees and if you’re thinking about rolling out a Pet Policy at your workplace, there are some very important legal factors to consider before doing so. Continue Reading Bring your Pet-to-Work Policies – The Do’s, the Don’ts, and the Cautionary Notes
In the context of the increasing prevalence of vaccine mandates, employee requests for accommodation on religious grounds are becoming common. Religious beliefs and practices and the resulting accommodation requests can be varied and tricky. Today we will take a look at what employers should know and do about requests for accommodation based on religion.
What Do Employers Need to Accommodate?
Human rights legislation across Canada provides employees with protections from discrimination on the basis of creed or religious beliefs or practices. Employers must accommodate up to the point of undue hardship.
Continue Reading Religious Accommodation & Vaccination – What’s the deal?
More than 13 million people in Canada are now fully vaccinated against COVID-19, yet we’re finding employers are more and more worried about those who still aren’t and don’t plan to be.
Below, we answer some of the questions we are hearing from employers and set out what we think they should be considering.
1. Can I implement a mandatory vaccination policy in my workplace?
The question is really would it be reasonable to do so? This will depend on the context of the workplace and what other safety measures can be appropriately taken. If there isn’t a high risk of infection in the workplace, it won’t be reasonable. If the work is performed without exposure to risk, for instance by working remotely, then the answer is easier—it’s absolutely unreasonable.
Continue Reading COVID-19 Vaccine FAQs for Employers
In these challenging times, in the midst of the pandemic, as workplaces re-open, pivot and change, we see the importance and immense value of having strategic employment and workplace law advice. Just a small allocation of thought space and time to being proactive could have changed the outcome of so many situations. We see it now in our firm in many ways.
Having run a small business for over a decade, I can appreciate that employers are often triaging the urgent demand of finding solutions to client’s needs. Rarely did I have the time or opportunity to “smell the roses” let alone try to proactively anticipate the workplace law needs of my growing organization. However, I now see the critical importance of taking a proactive approach.
Continue Reading Workplace Law: It Pays To Be Proactive