Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER DECEMBER 2018 30 INSIGHT NEW LOWS IN CHINA GUIZHO, CHINA — After staff suff ered various forms of abuse at a home renovation company in China, three of their managers have been jailed for fi ve to 10 days, according to the BBC. Managers at the fi rm are said to have made staff drink urine or eat cockroaches if they didn't reach their sales targets. Videos of workers at the home renovation company being whipped by a belt also circulated online. Other forms of punishment included drinking toilet water or having their heads shaved, according to media reports. e company is also alleged to have failed to pay employees' salaries for two-and-a-half months. ere have been reports of other employers in China following similar methods, with employees forced to crawl on a public road or kiss garbage cans as punishment. EENSY-WEENSY OTTAWA — A tiny intruder caused a big scare recently at a gov- ernment building in Ottawa, lead- ing to the evacuation of 50 federal employees — twice. In June, em- ployees at 2300 St. Laurent Blvd. were sent home for two days after someone spotted a spider in the offi ce, according to the CBC. e building was then fumigated, but in October, another spider was spot- ted — and caught — so employees were again sent home. e fear? e spider might be the venom- ous brown recluse spider. An ento- mologist, however, said the spider was a yellow sac spider, which is also purported to have a necrotic venom, but is not especially harm- ful to humans. Catherine Scott, an arachnologist and PhD student at the University of Toronto, said the evacuations were an overreaction. " is is totally absurd and a giant waste of money," she said. "Fumi- gating the offi ce with chemicals is probably more dangerous to the people working in that offi ce than a spider would have been, even if it had been a brown recluse spider." Fewer than fi ve of these spiders have ever been recorded in Canada in the last century, she said, and the chance of a being bitten are low. SLUMBER IN THE SKIES KANSAS CITY — Talk about falling asleep on the job. A bag- gage handler in Kansas City man- aged to "inadvertently fall asleep" in the forward cargo hold of a plane, according to the Huffi ng- ton Post. e Piedmont Airlines worker was working an Ameri- can Airlines flight on Oct. 27 when he fell into a slumber on a Boeing 737-800 fl ying to Chica- go. " e fl ight subsequently took off with the team member in the cargo hold, which was heated and pressurized," said American Airlines in a statement. e fl ight landed and the employee was dis- covered upon arrival to the gate. "Our top priority is ensuring the well-being of the Piedmont em- ployee," said the airline. "He did not request any medical attention upon arrival in Chicago, and we are grateful that he did not sus- tain any injuries." e 27-year-old man reportedly admitted he had consumed "several alcoholic bev- erages," according to the Chicago Police Department. SKILLS GAP IN JAPAN TOKYO — When Yoshitaka Sakurada was selected as minis- ter in charge of cybersecurity in Japan in October, the 68-year-old politician certainly had plenty of experience in government, hav- ing fi rst been elected to parlia- ment in 1996. But his most recent appointment might be a bit of a stretch, judging by comments he made to parliament. Sakurada, who is also in charge of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, admitted he has never used a computer, according to the Associated Press. "I give instructions to my aide and so I don't punch into a computer my- self," he said. "But I am confi dent our work is fl awless." Although he's not expected to have much hands-on responsibility in his role, Sakurada's comments are said to be an embarrassment for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. PRICEY PERKS IN INDIA NEW DELHI — Employees at a diamond merchant in India re- ceived some impressive rewards recently when they were each pre- sented with a car by their employ- er. Six hundred workers at Hari Krishna Exporters were given au- tomobiles by Indian manufacturer Maruti Suzuki, with help from India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Another 1,000 employees were off ered gifts of cash deposits and apartments at a ceremony in November, according to Reuters. It is common for Indians to give each other gifts in the run-up to the Hindu festival Diwali, which was held on Nov. 7 this year. e gifts were part of a program tar- geting loyal staff to the fi rm, run by Savji Dholakia. " e aim of this program was to reward employ- ees' loyalty and dedication," he said in a Facebook post. Vol. 31 No. 12 – December 2018 PUBLISHED BY Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd. One Corporate Plaza 2075 Kennedy Rd. Toronto, ON M1T 3V4 ©Copyright 2018 by Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd. All rights reserved. CANADIAN HR REPORTER is published 12 times a year. Publications Mail – Agreement # 40065782 Registration # 9496 – ISSN 0838-228X Director, Media Solutions, Canada: Karen Lorimer - (416) 649-9411 karen.lorimer@thomsonreuters.com EDITORIAL Publisher/Editor in Chief: Todd Humber - (416) 298-5196 todd.humber@thomsonreuters.com Editor/Supervisor: Sarah Dobson - (416) 649-7896 sarah.dobson@thomsonreuters.com News Editor Marcel Vander Wier - (416) 649-7837 marcel.vanderwier@thomsonreuters.com Employment Law Editor: Jeffrey R. 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Address changes and returns: Send changes and undeliverable Canadian addresses to: SUBSCRIBER SERVICES Canadian HR Reporter One Corporate Plaza 2075 Kennedy Rd. Toronto, ON M1T 3V4 CUSTOMER SERVICE Call: (416) 609-3800 (Toronto) (800) 387-5164 (outside Toronto) Fax: (416) 298-5082 (Toronto) (877) 750-9041 (outside Toronto) Email: customersupport. legaltaxcanada@tr.com LETTERS TO THE EDITOR todd.humber@thomsonreuters.com CHRR reserves the right to edit for length and clarity. Todd Humber EDITOR'S NOTES A friend, a van and mental health R ecently, I had a phone call from one of my oldest friends that started some- what cryptically. "I have 11 pages," he said, piqu- ing my curiosity. Your mind runs the gamut when presented with that kind of random information, but the tone in his voice wasn't celebratory. "I have 11 pages in my hand," he continued. "It's a list of every medication they have given me in the last few years." I'll call him Matt. at's not his real name, and he suff ers from mental health issues. He has been diagnosed with a range of disor- ders — bipolar, depression, para- noia. You would, of course, guess none of this if you met him for the fi rst time. He's as average and ex- traordinary as anyone. A hard worker, he has bounced around a few diff erent industries in his career. With a mostly blue- collar resumé, and university and college credentials, he has fallen victim to plant closures and lay- off s far beyond his control. Com- pound those job losses with a recent divorce, and life has been more diffi cult for him of late. Doctors have prescribed him cocktail after cocktail of anti-de- pressants, but nothing has proven eff ective. He's frustrated, and recently went on short-term disability. It didn't take long for a van with tinted windows to show up on his street. It's a tell-tale sign of a pri- vate investigator, possibly hired by his employer or its insurance carrier, to monitor his activities. My fi rst reaction was anger — Matt is a stand-up guy who would never fake illness or scam any sys- tem. But I get it — his employer or insurance company can't work on those assumptions. My second reaction was frustration in general at the attitudes towards mental health. Too often, the talk is full of sound and fury, signifying noth- ing. I can preach the benefi ts of low-cost, stress-reducing perks like fl extime and working from home or fi nding new and innova- tive programs. But if I raise an eye- brow at an employee who dares to take advantage of it? en I'm better off to have never broached the topic. Employers can invest in their workforces, with expensive train- ing programs — such as mental health fi rst aid — and invite em- ployees to wear mood stickers as part of the popular and eff ective Not Myself Today campaign. But if your fi rst reaction to an employee who seeks help, who presents a doctor's note and a re- quest for leave because of mental health issues, is to roll your eyes or start searching for cause for dismissal, then you're wasting your time and money. at's what I suspected Matt's employer was doing. I wanted to know what a PI could possibly hope to observe, so I phoned a buddy, an investiga- tor at a law fi rm in Windsor, Ont., with a long history of catching malingerers — and cementing the case for legitimately disabled workers — to get his take. He was stumped, at fi rst, hav- ing never, to his knowledge, been hired to tail someone because of a mental health claim. But some- times the employee, or the doctor, doesn't provide enough informa- tion and the employer or insurer wants to see the worker's routines. " ey want to see if you're go- ing to other employment, to see if you misrepresented yourself," he said. "If I start following Todd Humber, and he's not going to work but seems to be stopping at a psychiatrist's offi ce every other day for an hour, or a doctor's of- fice, it's seeing the day-to-day activities." My friend Matt told me that, right now, he can't even stand the sound of other people's voices. A stranger said hello when he was at the grocery store, and he became gripped with fear and abandoned his cart and went home. He's liv- ing a nightmare. An investigator could, in the- ory, follow someone into a pub- lic space like a grocery store and observe how she interacts with members of the public or listen to the dialogue that happens be- tween the worker and the cashier. at could confi rm a severe case of social anxiety, for example. at all makes sense. While it is impossible to confi rm a men- tal health diagnosis with surveil- lance, it can rule out obvious scams — such as double-dipping or outright lying. You will be hard-pressed to fi nd an HR professional or em- ployer that won't nod and say all the right things, confi rming the importance of taking it seriously and spouting all the clichés about how it's so easy to spot a broken arm but not a wounded mind. To that, I say, yawn. A very loud and fi rm yawn. Mental health's lip service bill has been paid in full, and then some. Employers need to embrace programs and practices that may not be comfortable and hold managers accountable who stray from the script. Some employers are getting this right and reaping the benefi ts of a psychologically safe workplace in the process. But too many are just going through the motions, saying the right words while or- chestrating a long, corporate eye roll. I know which organization I'd rather work for — and I bet you do, too. Credit: watchara panyajun (Shutterstock) W EIRD ORKPLACE THE After staff suff ered various forms of abuse at a home renovation company in China, three of their managers have been jailed for fi ve to 10 days, according to the BBC. Managers at the fi rm are said to have made staff drink urine or eat cockroaches if they didn't reach their sales targets. Videos of workers at the home renovation company being whipped by a belt also circulated online. Other forms of punishment included drinking toilet water or having their heads shaved, according to media reports. e company is also alleged to have failed to pay employees' salaries for two-and-a-half months. ere have been reports of other employers in China following similar methods, with employees forced to crawl on a public road or kiss garbage cans as punishment. — When Yoshitaka PRICEY PERKS IN INDIA NEW DELHI

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