An Important Ruling for Employers on Constructive Dismissal and the IDEL

At long last, the impact of Ontario’s Infectious Disease Emergency Leave (IDEL) on employee constructive dismissal claims has been litigated. Employment lawyers have been speculating for a long while about how courts will treat the various employment pivots employers were required to make during the pandemic. We now have our first answer. 

Last week, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice released its decision in Coutinho v. Ocular Health Centre Ltd. and ruled that the IDEL does not take away an employee’s ability to sue for constructive dismissal. 

What’s Constructive Dismissal?

A constructive dismissal occurs when an employer unilaterally and substantially changes an express or implied term of the employee’s contract. The term also needs to have been essential. Changes regarding pay, duties, hours of work etc., can all potentially be constructive dismissals. 

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Results-Only Work Environments

It’s no secret that one of the keys to happiness at work is a sense of control. With most knowledge workers having shifted to working from home, perhaps with more built-in flexibility, and with managers having had to let go of their need to be able to physically supervise, some workplaces may consider revisiting the idea of Results-Only Work Environments (ROWE).

What is a Results-Only Work Environment?

In a results-only work environment, the focus is autonomy and accountability. Employees are not subject to requirements like being at their desk or available via Slack from 9 – 5. How and when they get work done is up to them. What the employer focuses on is results and only results. If a full-time employee takes only 20 hours a week to fulfill their duties, in a ROWE workplace that’s fine! The other 20 hours are their own.   

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Part 2 – Caution to Employers Using Social Media to Vet Potential New Hires

This is Part 2 of our two-part series on social media in hiring. Click here for Part 1!

There is the personal and there is the professional, and never the twain shall meet. At least that was once the prevailing attitude towards work life and private life. In a progressively interconnected world, the personal and the professional are becoming increasingly intertwined. But are there problems, particularly legal problems, that arise from the fusion of these two aspects of one’s life? What sorts of employment-related legal issues, for instance, might employers (and employees, by extension) encounter in the hiring process if they choose to review candidate social media profiles? We’ve covered some issues in Part 1 of our “social media in hiring” series. Below are some further thoughts worth considering.

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Caution to Employers Using Social Media to Vet Potential New Hires

This is Part 1 of our two-part series in social media in hiring. Stay tuned for Part 2 next week! 

Today, there are more users on social media than ever before. Scores of people everywhere in the world are posting personal information online. This information is being consumed by billions of people on a daily basis, some for more personal reasons, others less so. Countless employers have, for instance, rapidly shifted to incorporating the extra step of reviewing potential candidates’ social media activity into the hiring processes. Considering the relative novelty of social media technology, employers should brace themselves for increasing litigation around this in relation to employment issues in the years to come. 

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Overtime Part 2: The Manager Exemption

manager exemption for overtime

Photo by Jonas Leupe on Unsplash

Last week we wrote about ways employers can manage overtime liabilities with Averaging Agreements and Time in Lieu. This week we will tackle a commonly litigated overtime issue – the manager exemption. 

The Manager Exemption 

Not every worker is entitled to overtime pay. Exemptions are set out in section 8 of Ontario Regulation 285.1 under the Employment Standards Act, 2000. Included in the list of the exempt is the manager or, to be exact, “a person whose work is supervisory or managerial in character and who may perform non-supervisory or non-managerial tasks on an irregular or exceptional basis.” Who exactly falls under this exemption can be unclear. 

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