Employers, employees have a duty of care: Security consultant

SAN FRANCISCO — While employers slowly emerge from the pandemic, the pre-COVID-19 issues they were concerned about, including global warming and mental health issues, still exist and have evolved, according to a security consultant.

COVID-19 “really deflected our attention,” said Tyler Hosford, a Los Angeles-based regional supervisor for International SOS, a health and security services company.

He spoke on the duty of care employers and employees have to one another during a session Tuesday at the 2022 Risk & Insurance Management Society Inc.’s annual conference in San Francisco.

While the trend of working from home was growing before the pandemic, it has since accelerated, with many companies working fully remote, Mr. Hosford said.

“There probably could have been better preparation by some parties,” he said, noting how during Thanksgiving 2019 he saw a report on a “mysterious disease” stemming from a food market in China and wondered how serious it was.

There are expectations on both the company and employee side as to the duty of care as workers stay at home, with risks associated with the move, whether legal, ethical or moral.  Employers’ responsibility toward their workers is increasingly broadening to include their families as well, Mr. Hosford said.

There may also be legal and financial repercussions for the organization if the employee cannot do his or her job.

Mr. Hosford related how, as a federal employee requesting to work from home one day out of the week, he first had to fill out a four-page checklist that included issues such as lighting and desks. “These are real things that we don’t always think about,” he said.

He noted there is also a mental aspect to working from home. “I go stir crazy if I don’t see someone” besides the family for a long period of time, he said.

Mr. Hosford said one company in Washington D.C. with about 15 employees that closed its office during the pandemic gave each worker a couple of thousand dollars to furnish their home office, then used some of the funds saved from paying rent to give employees a seven- to 10-day annual trip, where they could bring a spouse or “plus-one,” with plans to go to the Caribbean this year.

He also discussed how the employers who best handled situations where they have workers in Ukraine were those that kept in close, even daily, touch with their workers, seeking to do what they could to help. This included in some cases paying them three months’ salary in cash in advance.