Cannabis at the office holiday party

The season of the office holiday party is upon us! In addition to merriment, this time of year can bring a lot of risk for employers. A new risk this year comes in the form of Prime Minister Trudeau’s legal recreational cannabis and Premier Ford’s relaxed consumption laws. In addition to monitoring intoxication levels from alcohol consumption, employers will now be tasked with monitoring for the added risk of impairment created by cannabis. Employees can now legally step out of the party to enjoy something a little stronger than a post-dinner cigarette!

Social host liability, always a hot blog topic this time of year, now has this added element. Employers, who can be held liable for accidents that happen as a result of overly intoxicated party goers, now need to educate themselves on how to monitor for cannabis impairment or combined alcohol/cannabis impairment.

If this sounds like enough to make you want to institute a dry brunch party, we don’t blame you. The fact is, however, that many employees look forward to the holiday party. It’s also a nice time to meet employees’ families and to say thank you for their hard work and their families support.

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Update on the Police Record Checks Reform Act

Pre-employment police record checks have become common in our information-obsessed society. This is where the employer requires a job candidate to pass a police record check as a condition of being hired. The Police Record Checks Reform Act  (the “Act”) was designed to standardize why and when these record checks can be obtained, as opposed to leaving it up to individual police forces to figure out.

As of November 1, 2018 new requirements regarding pre-employment police record checks are in force.  

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Goodbye Personal Emergency Leave

Bill 47, the Ford government’s Making Ontario Open for Business Act has passed. One big change the bill makes is to the much discussed (and much used) Bill 148 amendment regarding Personal Emergency Leave. This amendment will come into force on January 1, 2019.

For historical purposes, you can read all about the Bill 148 version of Personal Emergency Leave on our blog here.

Under the Bill 47 version of the Employment Standards Act, we will soon have Sick Leave, Family Responsibility Leave and Bereavement Leave instead of Personal Emergency Leave.

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Bill 47 has passed: the Employment Standards Rollercoaster

Who thought employment standards weren’t exciting?! Yesterday, the Ontario government passed Bill 47, Making Ontario Open for Business Act, 2018, reversing most of Bill 148.  2018 has seen a slew of changes to the Ontario Employment Standards Act, most of which are now all undone.

See our recent blog post on Bill 47 for a summary of the changes.  Here is a link to the full Bill 47 on the government website.

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Can an employee take back their intention to retire?

This was the question asked in English v. Manulife Financial Corporation, 2018 ONSC 5135 (English). In this case, English, a 66-year-old employee decided to retired when her employer, Manulife Financial Corporation, announced in 2015 that they would be converting their technology and employees would be required to learn a new system. She made this decision on her own and voluntarily. English presented her resignation letter to her boss on September 22, 2016, which stated that she would retire, effective December 31, 2016.

The Employer’s Response

When presented with her resignation letter, English’s boss asked her if she was sure about resigning. He also told her that if she changed her mind she could take back her resignation. English left the meeting with the impression that she could change her mind about her decision.

On October 11, 2016, Manulife announced that it was suspending the technology conversion. This announcement did change English’s mind about retirement. She verbally told her boss that she wished to rescind her notice of retirement. Her boss said nothing in response.

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Even Robots are a Little Bit Racist: AI Bias in Recruitment

That’s right! Even robots. How would you like to perform only the most high-level and uniquely human elements of your job?  Are your skills really best utilized on data entry, rote memorization and pushing paper? Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises to delegate all the drudgery of your job to machines while freeing you up to mingle with clients on the golf course and answer phone calls from your private yacht in the Adriatic Sea.

It almost sounds too good to be true.  But are machines really up to the task?

One industry that has highly leveraged AI is recruitment.  As we have previously written about here, the task of sifting through hundreds or thousands of resumes is uniquely suited to machines.  An important feature of the application of AI to recruitment is reducing human bias in the selection of candidates.  But as we warned, an AI system is only as good as the data inputted into it – a critical point recently confronted by Amazon.

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