Ohio Employer Law Blog

Training isn't homework. If you require it, it's work.

2026-10-15T06:48:00.000-04:00

Imagine requiring employees to complete two hours of online training every week, giving them no time to do it during their shifts, and then refusing to pay them when they finish it at home.

That's essentially what a former Rivian service technician alleges in a proposed class action in Washington state court. He claims non-exempt employees had to complete mandatory training modules off the clock, sometimes pushing their workweeks past 40 hours without overtime pay.

Those are allegations, not proven facts. But the wage-and-hour lesson is one every employer with an online training platform needs to understand.

Under the DOL's regulations, training generally is unpaid only when all four of these conditions are met:

1. It happens outside regular working hours. Requiring employees to finish training by Friday doesn't magically make it unpaid just because they do it Thursday night on their couch.

2. It's genuinely voluntary. Required isn't voluntary. Neither is "optional" training when employees reasonably believe skipping it could cost them a raise, promotion, or even their job.

3. It isn't directly related to their current job. Teaching employees to do their existing jobs better? That's job-related. Teaching them skills for an entirely different position may be another story.

4. No productive work happens during the training. If employees are performing actual job duties, you can't disguise that work as unpaid training.

Miss even one, the exception doesn't apply, and the time must be paid.

Further, don't assume that because non-exempt employees are completing training at home, you can ignore the time. Under the FLSA's "suffer or permit" standard, employers generally must pay non-exempt employees for work they know or have reason to know is happening. If your training platform shows non-exempt employees completing mandatory modules off-the-clock, and you've given them no time to finish during their shifts, those records will come back to haunt you.

Then there's the overtime math. If an employee works 40 hours and completes two additional hours of mandatory training at home, that's potentially two hours of unpaid overtime, and not just two hours of missed wages.

You can fix this problem simply by providing non-exempt employees paid time to complete required training. If they must finish it outside their scheduled shifts, make sure they record that time and get paid for it. Finally, make sure supervisors aren't sending mixed messages about reporting those hours.

You can't require the training, refuse to make time for it, and then pretend it didn't happen because it was completed at home. Homework is for school. At work, it's just called work.

If you make employees show up early, you might have to pay them to wait

2026-10-14T06:47:00.000-04:00

Your plant's first shift starts at 6:00 a.m. But you tell everyone to be at the door by 5:45, ready to work.

Most mornings, the supervisor unlocks the building on time. About once a week, he doesn't. The time clock is inside. So employees stand in the parking lot for fifteen minutes, unpaid.

Do you owe them for that time?

According to the 2nd Circuit, quite possibly.

In Santos v. Lidl US, a grocery clerk alleged that Lidl required her to report fifteen minutes before her 5:00 a.m. shift. But managers weren't always there to unlock the store. She couldn't clock in until someone let her in. About once a week, she lost fifteen minutes of pay, sometimes at overtime rates.

The district court dismissed her claim under the Portal-to-Portal Act, which generally excludes preliminary activities from compensable working time.

The 2nd Circuit reversed because there's a difference between "waiting to be engaged" and being "engaged to wait."

If an employee voluntarily shows up early, that waiting generally isn't compensable. But if you require an employee to report ready to work, and something beyond their control prevents work from starting, that waiting time is compensable.

Lidl argued that Supreme Court precedent foreclosed that conclusion and that the rule applied only to on-call workers, like firefighters. The court rejected both arguments.

It also refused to dismiss fifteen minutes a week as de minimis. Small doesn't automatically mean insignificant, particularly when the time is recurring and trackable.

Judge Sullivan dissented, reasoning that the waiting wasn't integral to Santos's job and that she could have arrived at her scheduled start time.

This wasn't a final judgment. Santos still must prove her allegations. But her FLSA collective action and New York wage claims are back in play.

So what should employers do?

1. Look at what you require. "Be here fifteen minutes early" isn't a suggestion. If employees must report ready to work but can't start because of something you control, that waiting time may be compensable.

2. Fix the access problem. Install an outside time clock, enable mobile clocking, or ensure someone with a key arrives on time. And pay employees for compensable time even if they can't clock in.

3. Don't dismiss small amounts of time. Fifteen minutes a week sounds trivial. Multiply it across employees, weeks, and overtime rates, and it adds up.

If you don't need employees there fifteen minutes early, don't require it.

You don't get to control when employees show up, keep them waiting, and then pretend their time doesn't count just because the door is locked.

Shane Gillis's SNL joke is a hostile work environment lesson

2026-10-13T06:49:00.000-04:00

"I didn't know women just dress like whores now?"

That was one of the punchlines from Shane Gillis's Saturday Night Live monologue this past weekend. The studio audience groaned. Gillis just kept on going.

Now imagine your regional sales manager saying it in Monday's staff meeting. Same words. Same smirk. Very different exposure.

Gillis isn't your employee, and nobody's filing a lawsuit over a monologue. But it's the premise that's the problem. A woman's clothes are never an invitation for men to judge her body. The men doing the judging are the ones in the wrong.

That attitude doesn't stay on a stage. And a stage that big gives it license to walk into your workplace and sit down in the break room.

Defenders will say it's just a joke. That's how this stuff survives. A joke sets the rules of the room faster than any handbook. Everyone hears what's acceptable, and then tests whether anyone will push back.

The woman who hears it learns two things in about four seconds. What he thinks of her. And that nobody is going to say anything.

One joke usually isn't actionable harassment. Title VII and state law require conduct that's severe or pervasive. But it's never really one joke. It's the first one.

And when the claim finally lands on your desk, the question won't be who told the joke. It will be what you did when you found out.

That's where employer liability lives. Not in the punchline. In the silence after it.

Dan Levy called the joke out on Instagram and argued that men, in particular, need to speak up and speak out against misogyny. That goes double at work.

Supervisors don't get to laugh along, and they don't get to stay quiet. Say something in the moment. Report it afterward. And make sure your training says out loud that "it was just a joke" isn't a defense. It's an admission that someone said it.

The SNL studio audience groaned. In your workplace, someone needs to do way more than that.

"So sensitive" is not a harassment defense

2026-10-12T06:56:00.000-04:00

"So sensitive."

That was a television network owner's reply after a pastor told him, in writing, to stop sending a meme the pastor called racist. It's also a terrible defense to a harassment claim.

Bishop George Bloomer (Black) hosted a show on the Word Network, owned by Kevin Adell (White). Adell showed Bloomer a meme of the network's preachers, drawn as tiny figures, surrounding Adell dressed as a pimp. Bloomer texted back that it was "not funny" and compared it to putting a black face on a white man.

Adell kept going. He sent Bloomer's face from the meme and called him "Tattoo." He sent a photo of himself with a white man whose face was scribbled over in black marker.

Bloomer finally wrote that he was asking "for the last time." Adell answered: "OK!!!!" "Got it." "So sensitive." "WTF."

Bloomer later quit and sued for race discrimination and harassment. The court has already held that Adell's taunting after Bloomer objection is direct evidence of racial animus. A federal court jury is currently hearing the evidence, and it will have the final say as to whether that direct evidence supports a verdict in Bloomer's favor.

Adell's defense at trial is essentially friendship. His lawyer says the two men teased each other for years. Adell testified that Bloomer ribbed him about his clothes and his Jewish heritage, and "I didn't take offense to it." His lawyer's summary: "They both crossed the line."

Notice that framing, and what it asks the jury to ignore.

Harassment has to be unwelcome, and the test is what the plaintiff found unwelcome, not what the defendant can tolerate. Adell's thick skin doesn't set Bloomer's limit. And Bloomer told him where it was, in writing.

Banter may explain showing him the meme. It doesn't explain the texts after he was asked to 'stop.'

Every workplace has a version of this. "That's just how we joke around here." Maybe. But a history of joking doesn't turn an objection into a punchline.

Jokes are "just jokes" until they aren't. Before someone objects, a bad joke is a bad joke. After, it's evidence of intent.

If someone tells you to stop, stop. Especially if you own the place. Adell told Bloomer he "got it." He didn't. And now a jury will decide whether he pays, and how much.

WIRTW #813 (the 'isn't it ironic' edition)

2026-10-09T07:09:00.000-04:00

Somewhere, George Orwell is shaking his head.

This week, a Florida school board voted to remove a graphic-novel adaptation of 1984 from a school library.

Yes, 1984. The dystopian novel about censorship, government control, and the manipulation of information.

And yes, during Banned Books Week.

You can't make this stuff up.

To be fair, the Duval County School Board didn't ban Orwell's original novel. The district's roughly 200 copies remain available. The board removed its sole copy of Fido Nesti's illustrated adaptation because of concerns about its sexual imagery.

That distinction matters. But so does the irony.

Orwell gave us "Big Brother," "thoughtcrime," and "doublethink" to describe a world in which authorities control information and decide which ideas people are permitted to encounter.

Eighty-seven years after the fictional events of 1984, a Florida school board is debating which version of 1984 its students should be permitted to read.

I understand that schools have a responsibility to consider age-appropriate materials. Parents should have a voice in their children's education. And reasonable people can disagree about where to draw those lines.

But there's also a difference between protecting children from inappropriate content and deciding that the best response to uncomfortable ideas or images is to make them disappear.

Orwell understood that distinction. That's part of what makes this story so remarkable.

Perhaps the most important lesson of 1984 isn't what happens when a government controls what people can read.

It's why we should remain skeptical whenever anyone decides that less access to information is the answer.

Here's what I read this week that you should read, too.

Maybe Don't Ask ChatGPT How to Make Emails Disappear During Litigation Eric Meyer's Employer Handbook Blog

Beyond the Prompt: The AI Sandwich and Other Practice Tips for Litigators Privacy & Data Security Insights

McDonald's sued for alleged antitrust violations by using AI tool to determine pricing for franchises The Guardian

Sirius XM beats allegations of AI-fueled racial bias HR Dive

Authenticity Is Still Key — and Lawyers Can Start by Listening Real Lawyers Have Blogs

Your Workforce Isn’t Fighting AI. It’s Drawing the Blueprint for It. Harvard Business Review

The Customer Isn't Always Right. Sometimes Great Managers Tell Them to Leave Improve Your HR by the Evil HR Lady, Suzanne Lucas

EEOC Set To Revoke Guidance On Workers' Criminal History Law360

Stop Treating FMLA Certifications as If They are a Hard Cap on Leave! Jeff Nowak's FMLA Insights

Can DEI Survive Under Another Name? The Chief Organizer Blog

US bars Microsoft, Adobe, and major IT firms from green card program for skilled foreign workers TechCrunch

I can’t fire a terrible employee Ask a Manager

174 Layoffs Expected Next Month Due to Baltimore Guinness Open Gate Brewery Closure Brewbound

A supervisor isn't always a "supervisor" when it comes to sexual harassment

2026-10-08T06:49:00.000-04:00

Consider this workplace hypothetical.

Bob manages Department A. He can hire, fire, discipline, and promote employees in Department A.

Jane works in Department B. Bob isn't in Jane's chain of command. He doesn't supervise her, evaluate her, control her pay, recommend discipline, or otherwise have any meaningful say over her employment.

Bob sexually harasses Jane.

Is the company automatically on the hook because Bob is a supervisor? No.

Under Title VII, the question isn't whether Bob supervises someone. It's whether Bob is a supervisor over Jane.

That's an important distinction because the answer determines the standard for employer liability.

In Vance v. Ball State University, the Supreme Court drew a relatively bright line. An employee is a "supervisor" for Title VII harassment purposes only when the employer has empowered that person to take a tangible employment action against the victim — hiring, firing, promoting, demoting, significantly reassigning, or otherwise materially changing the victim's employment status.

So, back to Bob and Jane.

Bob may be a supervisor organizationally. He may have direct reports. He may even have "Vice President" printed on his business card.

But if he has no such authority over Jane, Title VII generally treats him as Jane's coworker, not her supervisor.

The 6th Circuit made this point crystal clear in EEOC v. AutoZone, Inc. There, the alleged harasser was a store manager who could direct employees' work, initiate discipline, make recommendations, and even hire some hourly employees. Yet he could not take tangible employment actions against the employees he actually harassed.

That wasn't enough. As the court put it, the fact that the manager could hire other employees didn't matter. He "could not and did not hire the employees he harassed, and that's what matters under Vance."

A brand-new California case reaches essentially the same conclusion under that state's harassment law.

In Doe v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., decided just this week, the alleged harasser was a senior employee whom the plaintiff considered influential. She argued that strict employer liability should apply because he supervised other employees. The court rejected that argument: when someone supervises other people but has no supervisory authority over the plaintiff, "as to the plaintiff, the harasser is a coworker."

The court was explicit that strict liability did not apply where the alleged harasser wasn't the plaintiff's supervisor and merely supervised other employees.

This distinction matters because it dramatically changes the liability rules.

If Bob were Jane's supervisor, and his harassment resulted in a tangible employment action against her, the employer would be vicariously liable. If there were no tangible employment action, the employer could avoid liability only through the Faragher/Ellerth affirmative defense.

But because Bob isn't Jane's supervisor, the coworker-harassment negligence standard applies instead. Jane must show that the employer knew or should have known about the harassment and failed to take prompt and appropriate corrective action. Vance expressly preserves that negligence framework for harassers who don't qualify as the victim's supervisors.

There is one important caution.

Org charts aren't everything. An employer can't necessarily avoid supervisor liability by reserving the final signature on hiring, firing, or discipline to somebody higher up. In Kramer v. Wasatch County Sheriff's Office, the 10th Circuit recognized that someone may qualify as a supervisor when the employer has effectively delegated significant employment authority to that person - for example, when evaluations or recommendations actually drive promotion, discipline, reassignment, or termination decisions.

But mere influence isn't enough. AutoZone rejected the idea that the ability to persuade a decisionmaker automatically transforms someone into the victim's supervisor.

In these cases, the right question isn't, "Is the harasser a manager?" It's, "What authority did the harasser have over this employee?"

Who could hire Jane? Who could fire her? Who controlled her promotions, discipline, pay, significant assignments, and benefits? Whose recommendations were effectively rubber-stamped?

Those facts determine whether Title VII treats the harassment as supervisor harassment, triggering vicarious liability rules, or coworker harassment, governed by a negligence standard.

That doesn't mean employers get a pass when a manager harasses someone outside their reporting line. If the employer knew or should have known about the harassment and failed to respond appropriately, liability can still follow.

But when the issue is vicarious liability, titles alone don't decide the case. Bob's business card may say "manager." The more important question is whether, under Title VII, he was Jane's manager.

"4x per month for 1 day" is a lawsuit written in shorthand.

2026-10-07T06:50:00.000-04:00

An employee's FMLA certification says she may need intermittent leave "4x per month for 1 day."

She's never missed more than four days in a month. But sometimes she takes two of those days consecutively.

HR reads the certification as four separate episodes, each lasting one day. The employee reads it as four total days of leave per month.

Who's right? Maybe neither — at least not conclusively.

A certification describing intermittent leave is often giving an estimate, not imposing a hard attendance cap. And when the need for leave is unforeseeable, employers should be especially careful about treating the frequency or duration listed by the doctor as an absolute limit.

The 6th Circuit recently made exactly that point in Jackson v. USPS. A medical certification estimating intermittent FMLA leave does not necessarily create a hard ceiling on the amount of protected leave an employee may take. If the actual leave materially differs from the doctor's estimate, the employer's remedy is generally to investigate through the FMLA certification process — not simply declare the excess absence(s) unprotected.

That doesn't mean employees get unlimited leave. It just means that HR has to use the proper tool.

If "4x per month for 1 day" is genuinely unclear, the employer may seek clarification of what the provider meant. Clarification is just that: understanding the meaning of an existing response. HR, a leave administrator, another management official, or a health care provider may contact the employee's provider; the employee's direct supervisor may not. And the employer cannot use clarification as a backdoor demand for medical information beyond what the FMLA permits.

The other tool is recertification.

Here's the basic framework:

The general rule is 30 days. An employer ordinarily may request recertification no more often than every 30 days, and only in connection with an absence. If the existing certification states that the condition will last longer than 30 days, the employer generally must wait until that minimum period expires.

Six months is the outside checkpoint. Even when the certification covers a long-term or indefinite condition, the employer may request recertification every six months in connection with an absence.

A significant change can justify an earlier recertification. This is where our example gets interesting. The regulation itself says that if a certification predicts one-to-two-day migraine episodes and the employee's last two migraines each cause four-day absences, the increased duration may constitute a significant change permitting recertification before 30 days. Frequency, duration, severity, complications, and even certain absence patterns can matter.

Give the provider the actual attendance pattern. As part of a recertification, the employer may provide the health care provider with a record of the employee's absences and ask whether that pattern is consistent with the employee's serious health condition and need for leave. That's a much better question than HR deciding for itself what the certification means.

Give the employee enough time. The employer generally must allow at least 15 calendar days to provide the recertification, unless it is not practicable despite the employee's diligent, good-faith efforts.

Here's where HR gets itself into trouble. Suppose HR tells the employee: "Your new certification needs to say you may take up to four consecutive days, but no more than four total days per month." That's not clarification. That's HR writing the doctor's answer. Don't do that.

Instead, just give the provider the facts and ask the medical question: Is this employee's actual leave pattern consistent with the condition and the need for intermittent leave? Then let the provider answer it.

Most importantly, don't automatically discipline an employee merely because an unforeseeable absence exceeds the frequency or duration estimated on an existing certification. At least in the 6th Circuit, those estimates are not necessarily hard caps. If the pattern materially changes, use the recertification process the regulations give you.

An FMLA certification is medical information, not an attendance points chart. When the employee's actual leave stops matching the doctor's estimate, ask questions before you start issuing discipline.

Manchester City, one phishing email, and 114 reasons to train your employees

2026-10-06T06:38:55.588-04:00

One email. One click. And, nearly a decade later, 114 guilty verdicts.

The Manchester City financial scandal started with something far less sophisticated than disguised sponsorship agreements, hidden payments, or Premier League financial regulations.

It started with phishing.

In January 2017, a senior Manchester City official received an email that appeared to come from someone at UEFA. It contained a link to what looked like a financial compliance report.

The employee clicked "download."

That was all it took.

The email wasn't from UEFA. It was a phishing attack tied to Rui Pinto, the Portuguese hacker behind Football Leaks. The click gave Pinto access to City's computer systems, from which he obtained thousands of internal emails and documents. Those documents eventually made their way to journalists, helped launch investigations by UEFA and the Premier League, and became part of the story that culminated last month with an independent Premier League commission finding City guilty of 114 of 115 charges. City denies wrongdoing and has appealed.
Think about that for a moment. One employee clicked one bad link. And the rest, as they say, is 114 guilty verdicts.

That happened in 2017. Phishing has gotten a lot more sophisticated since then.

Today's phishing email might perfectly mimic Microsoft, DocuSign, your bank, a customer, your CEO, or one of your vendors. Attackers can scrape LinkedIn and company websites to learn reporting relationships and job responsibilities. Generative AI makes it trivial to write polished, personalized emails without the bad grammar and awkward phrasing that used to give scams away.

And phishing isn't limited to email. It can arrive by text, Teams, Slack, social media, or even a phone call.

So what can an employer do?

Here are eight places to start.

1. Train employees to verify, not just recognize.

"Look for typos" is not a cybersecurity strategy anymore.

Employees need a simple rule: if an email unexpectedly asks you to click a link, download a file, enter credentials, move money, change banking information, or disclose sensitive information, verify the request through another channel.

Call the person. Open the website yourself instead of using the link. Start a new email using an address you already know.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology specifically recommends independently verifying suspicious or urgent requests rather than relying on contact information contained in the message itself.

2. Turn on multifactor authentication everywhere you can.

A stolen password shouldn't equal a stolen account.

Require MFA for email, cloud storage, payroll, HRIS platforms, remote access, financial systems, and especially administrator accounts.

Better still, move toward phishing-resistant MFA such as passkeys or FIDO security keys. Traditional text-message codes and one-time passwords are better than passwords alone, but sophisticated attackers can sometimes steal those, too. CISA and NIST both recommend phishing-resistant authentication for higher-risk accounts.

3. Stop giving everyone access to everything.

If one employee's account gets compromised, the attacker should not inherit the keys to the entire company.

Apply the principle of least privilege. Employees should have access only to the systems and information they actually need to do their jobs. Administrative access should be especially limited.

The smaller the compromised account's footprint, the smaller the potential blast radius.

4. Harden your email system.

Your employees should not be your only line of defense.

Use modern spam and malware filtering, safe-link scanning, attachment screening, and email authentication technologies such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.

DMARC, in particular, can make it harder for attackers to impersonate your company's domain in phishing campaigns.

5. Make reporting suspicious messages ridiculously easy.

Give employees a one-click "Report Phishing" button or an obvious place to forward questionable messages.

And don't punish people for raising false alarms.

I'd rather have IT review 50 legitimate emails than have an employee hesitate for 30 seconds over the one malicious email that matters.

Speed also matters after someone clicks. The sooner IT knows, the sooner it can disable accounts, revoke sessions, reset credentials, isolate devices, and determine what the attacker accessed.

6. Phish your own employees.

Run periodic simulated phishing exercises.

Not as a "gotcha." Not so HR can create a list of employees to discipline.

Use them to identify where your training and systems are failing.

Which kinds of messages fool people? Are executives more vulnerable to fake document-sharing notices? Is accounting susceptible to vendor-payment scams? Are employees entering credentials into fake Microsoft login pages?

Train against the attacks your workforce is actually falling for.

7. Protect the people attackers are most likely to target.

Cybercriminals don't choose victims randomly.

Executives, finance employees, HR, IT administrators, and anyone with access to payroll, employee data, banking information, confidential business information, or wire-transfer authority deserve additional safeguards.

Those safeguards might include stronger authentication, transaction verification procedures, tighter access controls, additional training, and alerts for unusual login behavior.

Your CFO should not be able to change a vendor's bank account based solely on an email. Neither should anyone else.

8. Have a plan for the click that gets through anyway.

Because eventually somebody will click something.

Your cybersecurity plan should assume that prevention will sometimes fail.

Know who gets called. Know how accounts get locked. Know who contacts your cyber insurer. Know how you preserve logs and evidence. Know when outside forensic counsel or cybersecurity professionals get involved. Know whether legal or regulatory notification obligations might be triggered.

And practice the plan before you need it.

Cybersecurity isn't just an IT problem. It's an HR problem, a training problem, a risk-management problem, a legal problem, and ultimately a business problem.

Manchester City reportedly spent years and enormous resources fighting over what Rui Pinto found after one employee clicked one link.

Your company probably doesn't have Manchester City's resources.

Train your employees accordingly.

"Can I bring my dog to work?" Emotional support animals and the ADA

2026-10-05T06:58:00.000-04:00

A firefighter with PTSD asks to bring his dog to work as a reasonable accommodation. The dog helps calm him. His psychologist supports the request.

Does the ADA require the employer to say yes?

Not necessarily.

In Fisher v. City of Lansing, a firefighter claimed that the city violated the ADA when it refused to let him bring his dog, Chet, to the fire station. Fisher had PTSD, and his psychologist recommended an emotional support animal to help manage his symptoms at work.

The court sided with the city.

The problem wasn't whether Fisher had a disability. It was whether the dog was necessary as a reasonable accommodation. To prevail on an ADA failure-to-accommodate claim, an employee must show that the requested accommodation is both reasonable and necessary — that it addresses an obstacle preventing the employee from performing an essential job function.

Fisher couldn't make that showing.

He admitted that he could perform his job without the dog. "Not well," as he put it, but he could perform it. His psychologist likewise couldn't identify any particular job duty Fisher could not perform without the animal. Instead, the doctor testified that the dog had a calming effect on him.

That's where the distinction between a service animal and an emotional support animal becomes important.

Under the ADA regulations governing public entities and public accommodations, a service animal is a dog individually trained to perform work or tasks directly related to someone's disability. Emotional support, comfort, companionship, and a calming presence, standing alone, don't qualify.

But employers need to be careful with that distinction.

Those definitions come from Titles II and III of the ADA. Title I (the part of the ADA governing employment) doesn't contain the same service-animal definition or automatically exclude emotional-support animals from consideration. The Job Accommodation Network therefore recommends that employers treat requests for both service animals and ESAs like other reasonable-accommodation requests: engage in the interactive process and determine whether the animal is needed because of the employee's disability.

In other words: "It's an ESA, not a service dog" should not end the conversation.

For employers, the better approach is:

Start the interactive process. Don't get hung up on labels.
Ask what limitation the animal addresses and how it helps the employee perform the job or access an equal workplace benefit.
Request appropriate medical documentation when the disability or need isn't obvious.
Focus on necessity, not preference. "This helps me" isn't necessarily the same as "I need this because of my disability."
Consider the actual workplace. Safety, sanitation, allergies, disruption, animal control, and essential job duties all matter.
Document the analysis. A categorical "no animals" rule is much harder to defend than an individualized ADA assessment.

The ADA doesn't require employers to turn every workplace into a dog- or peacock-friendly office.

But it does require them to treat "Can I bring my dog to work?" as an accommodation question, not merely a pet-policy question.

WIRTW #812 (the 'shiny and new' edition)

2026-10-02T06:47:00.000-04:00

Nineteen years in, I repainted the walls. Your handbook needs the same.

Your brain is built to notice what's new. That's not a flaw. It's a feature.

Novelty grabs attention and makes people curious. Wharton researchers Hengchen Dai, Katherine Milkman, and Jason Riis describe a "fresh start effect": people are more motivated to act after a clean break, like a new year, a birthday, or a Monday.

The Ohio Employer Law Blog is 19 years old. I built this website in 2007, and it looked like it.

This week, it got a new look. Same content and same opinions, just easier to navigate with better mobile responsiveness.

Your handbook has the same problem. It hasn't been refreshed in years. Nobody notices it anymore. It's faded paint. Your employees walk past it every day without seeing it. And that faded paint has a cost.

1. Employees stop reading it. A policy no one reads is a policy no one follows.

2. Managers stop enforcing it. The handbook says one thing. The practice says another. A policy you don't follow can become evidence of pretext. Plaintiffs' lawyers love that gap. It's their Exhibit A.

3. The law moves on without it. Remote work. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. AI. If your handbook still reads like 2015, it's missing today's rules and today's risks.

4. Patching piles up contradictions. Add-on memos and one-off updates collide with each other. A clean rewrite lets you cut what you don't follow and clarify what you do.

Pick a policy at random.

Can your managers explain it without opening the handbook?
Does your team follow it exactly as written?
Is it current with the law?

If you hesitated on any of them, you have your answer.

A rewrite is a fresh start. Use it. Retrain your workforce. Coach your managers on enforcement. Get new acknowledgments signed. Apply a fresh coat of paint.

If you're ready to repaint your handbook, email me, or contact the Employment & Labor team at Wickens Herzer Panza.

Here's what I read this week that you should read, too.

Wouldn't It Be Nice — via The Norah and Dad Show Podcast

Why Your Employees Override AI — via Harvard Business Review

When Employees Fear AI Losing Control, HR Needs a Better Answer — via EntertainHR

Meta employees ordered 'attorney/client privilege' hats while fighting child safety disclosures — via The Verge

Off the Clock, Beyond the Test: Cannabis Use and Workplace Impairment in New York — via The L•E•Jer

AI, And Experts, And Hallucinations, Oh My! — via Above the Law

The Most Dangerous Thing a New Manager Can Say Is 'I'll Fix This' — via Improve Your HR by Suzanne Lucas, the Evil HR Lady

Ways to remove barriers to hiring people with disabilities — via TLNT

The cup meltdown, the "Lost" finale, and other tantrums you've witnessed at work — via Ask a Manager

NLRB Restores Employer-Friendly Standard for Workplace Outbursts During Protected Activity — via Employment Law Letter

'I felt shame': former BA worker locked in legal battle after losing job of 30 years — via The Guardian

"Not Crazy About White People" Allegedly Appeared in an HR Report. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? — via Eric Meyer's Employer Handbook Blog

A New Era of Health Care Noncompetes: Emerging Models and the Future of Labor Mobility — via Trading Secrets

The doctor's note is vague. What should the employer do next? — via HR Dive

Peter Gabriel Reveals Full Details, Release Date for New Album o/i — via Consequence