Canadian HR Reporter

www.hrreporter.com 11 accommodation for other reasons, says Mathieu. "It's generally not a good idea to have to judge different people's reasons for working from home; this leads to uncomfortable territory — don't make people explain why they need the accommodation. "Maybe someone's really struggling with insomnia and maybe what really helps them is to catch up on their sleep debt in the morning. They're still going to work hard, [but] they might not show up at nine. Why not have that flexibility without making people explain the reason why? You could just say: 'We're going to institute a flexible schedule: You have to put in the hours, but we're going to have a wider range [of options],'" says Mathieu. Compassion goes a long way Exercising a strong sense of compassion by accommodating employees is not only morally right, says Hyde, it makes good business sense. "If your employees are having a tough time, they're not going to be as "One of the challenges is figuring out the logistics and working together with the employee to make sure that they're feeling like their needs are being met without it putting too much pressure on other co-workers or revenue-driving initiatives." It's important for employers to acknowledge that there could be an imbalance and to understand that, from a childless employee's perspective, it may not be fair, she says. "The way to solve that is to look for ways to make it more fair by offering similar flexibility or perks and to make sure that everyone knows their work is appreciated," says Bevacqua. Privacy considerations While an accommodated employee legally requires their privacy to be respected, employers and HR departments must "deal with it in a transparent manner, deal with the issues up front and articulate a clear policy," says Hyde. Maintaining privacy is also a good idea for those employees who don't have children at home but still require productive. If they're not as productive, then you're not going to stay in business very long. It's about reaching out to employees, asking them what kind of problems they're facing and attempt to find ways to assist them." Empathetic guidance is needed from the top, says Mathieu, in order to successfully manage the workforce accommodation. And there's an ROI to compassionate leadership. "We know that the objections we often get is people will say [accommodation] will be exploited or people are going to take advantage of it, and that's not what the data has shown. In general, what we see is that compassionate leadership leads to more trust and more dedication and loyalty." How this compassion and empathy is manifested will affect employers well into the future, says Mathieu. "I'd love to look 24 months from now, 48 months from now, because I think that employees will vote with their feet. They will shift to workplaces that navigated the pandemic by demonstrating compassion toward their "The Human Rights Code provides protections with respect to family status where an employee needs accommodation to look after children." John-Edward Hyde, Hyde HR Law staff. The workplaces that managed to demonstrate compassion toward [their] staff will have incredible loyalty. People will remember." CHRR

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