Susan Hornsby-Geluk is managing partner at employment law firm Dundas Street and a regular opinion contributor.
OPINION: This may be an unfashionable perspective, but my view is that this working-from-home gig has gone too far in some instances.
I have recently been surprised to learn that the human resources teams of several large organisations work almost entirely from home, and attend all meetings by Zoom.
This seems bizarre to me, given that the human resources function inherently requires direct engagement with other humans. It also reduces the availability and accessibility of people in these roles and gives rise to other potential employment issues.
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For example, in a recruitment context, many employers are now dealing with “Covid recruitment legacy” issues. This situation has arisen due to employers being forced to run interview and selection processes by Zoom and other remote means, rather than in-person interviews, during the lockdowns and Covid restrictions.
The result is a greater than usual number of bad hires, reflecting the difficulty in really connecting with, and being able to read, an interviewee over a virtual medium.
Issues also arise in a performance management context where managers and human resources would previously have raised...
A dog surrendered to Whiteside County Animal Control last month has become the center of a bitter community dispute that has now triggered a defamation lawsuit investigation and reports of death t...