Seyfarth Shaw at Work/WorkRight Solutions is a legal compliance and consulting services company. We work with clients to create a powerful "compliance and culture brand" by blending high-impact messages, codes and training programs that collectively simplify and support your policies, business vision and legal defense.
Seyfarth Shaw at Work offers (SSAW) offers a wide range of high-energy, interactive instructor-led training programs that are specifically designed to increase learner buy-in and teach compliance and workplace best practices without legalese. Using props, interactive exercises, role plays, Q&A, and a universal language, SSAW delivers dynamic training programs that result in an entertaining, effective, and memorable learning experience.
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Includes focus on civility promotion and working in the green courses.
This training uses interactive exercises, role plays, and hypotheticals to build learners' grasp of workplace civility, conduct, and responsibilities, all aligned with an organization's specific conduct expectations and policies. It provides the training necessary to help protect and defend against harassment claims and liability while helping companies to promote behavioral change and an environment of mutual respect.
Focused on misconduct targeting race, gender, national origin, disability, age, religion, and veteran status, the course is available in employee and manager versions, and is customized (at no cost) to a company's unique work environment. The core imprinting is achieved through a series of issue-spotting and consensus-building exercises centered on civility.
In terms of responses and collective responsibilities, we apply and practice bystander intervention, using SSAW interactive tools and positive language, so that all in the workplace can master the moment and check others' conduct using business-centric bystander intervention skills and scripts.
The course can be delivered in compliance with applicable state requirements, including statutory California, Connecticut and Maine mandates. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has approved The Road to a Harassment-Free Workplace and identified it by name in the context of specific consent decrees
Organizations often need to focus on one protected category — gender sensitivity, sexual orientation, religious harassment, disability concerns, etc. This course provides an in-depth review of a single identity group and covers related topics such as retaliation, reporting, and confidentiality.
Like our other Civility & Road to a Harassment-Free Workplace courses, the category-specific course is available in employee and manager versions and is customized to unique work environments through an interactive format.
This course addresses the most recent civility promotion and workplace harassment issues through interactive exercises, case studies, and scenarios. It covers the topics presented in the original Road to a Harassment-Free Workplace course, but dives more deeply into one or more of harassment and conduct danger zones, including:
The course provides advanced skill building for employees and managers involved in day-to-day conduct and corresponding responses (including bystander intervention. And it meets all statutory state requirements.
This course covers AB 1825 and AB 2053 for managers in California, and includes a focus on civility promotion/working in the green. Its practical interactive and targeted approach introduces learners to trending topics and uses innovative techniques to develop their understanding about workplace conduct. Topics are aligned with a company's unique policies to address critical questions like:
We are expertly poised to lead California-focused training: Our attorneys in our Los Angles, San Francisco, and Sacramento offices are highly versed in AB 1825 and its regulations, AB 2053, Department of Fair Employment and Housing guidance, and relevant state-specific case law.
David Kadue, a partner in our Los Angeles firm, is a sexual harassment specialist whose writings were cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark sexual harassment case of Faragher vs. City of Boca Raton. He reviews all courses and AB 1825 and 2053 updates to ensure accuracy.
SSAW is launching 2018/19 NYC/NYS harassment training using multiple delivery platforms. Please feel free to email us for a no-cost description.
All too often in dealing with employees, managers and supervisors without proper employment training create problematic situations that can turn into expensive lawsuits, tarnish an employer’s reputation, and waste precious company resources. Managing Within the Law addresses critical employment law areas that your leaders, managers and supervisors confront on a daily basis. The course provides managers with the skills to quickly identify and effectively resolve workplace issues, while minimizing personal and organizational liability. Course modules generally include: “Latest Trends in the Nuts and Bolts of Discrimination,” “Setting Expectations/Interviewing for Hiring and Promotion, Today,” “Civility Promotion & Harassment Prevention Update,” “Bystander Intervention for a Respectful Business Environment,” “Performance Management Trends and Skills” (which includes feedback skills, responding to erratic performers, and absenteeism and tardiness issues), “Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA/ADAAA), Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and Religious Accommodation issues,” and “Latest Trends in Performance Documentation.” A module on wage & hour/the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) - including communicating with newly non-exempt managers, can also be included. Like our harassment prevention modules, this course has also been reviewed, approved and identified by name by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in the context of specific consent decrees, cited by EEOC-designated Monitors in their reports and selected by federal agencies for use in critical enforcement situations. Where applicable, the course can cover state statutory harassment requirements and is often deployed as part of a handbook roll-out.
This practical interactive course helps managers to lead with clarity, consistency, empathy, coupled with a collaborative and supportive mindset. It covers and links topics that include:
Organizations that have an international presence will appreciate Managing within the Law: International Version, a customizable course that invites a thoughtful review and examination of relevant international laws and trends, from European Union directives, to Chinese labor laws, to the interrelation between employment mandates and local customs.
Whether all modules must include country-specific laws or an additional module is needed to review relevant international laws and trends, Managing Within the Law: International Version can be tailored to fit an organization’s particular needs.
This dynamic, practical, and customizable course is designed to accompany the rollout of a new or enhanced employee handbook, a policy and procedure manual, and/ or a conduct code. We work collaboratively with a company's compliance team to identify core expectations presented in the handbook that managers must fully adopt as daily practices. We then logically and progressively work through handbook sections using a series of interactive and customized action-oriented exercises to guide learners in applying relevant requirements in actual workplace situations.
From use of company property, to smoking in the workplace, to social media, and safety and security, we cover the entire scope of an organization's handbook or conduct code.
We can illustrate the handbook’s practical application in various legal jurisdictions and international settings. Consistent best practices in management is aligned with and imprinted across company publications. (Note: We can partner with a company to fully update its handbook in compliance with most state and federal laws.)
Many mergers fail at the people integration phase, so imprinting a global vision and setting standards that take into account all key populations must be accomplished quickly.
To achieve these linked imperatives, Managing to One Standard provides a critical platform so that every manager or supervisor from both legacy entities have a voice and immediately appreciate what it means to manage a single standard. It emphasizes how a new single-company vision serves as the core and spine of the course, which will be fully customized at no cost.
Managing to One Standard helps achieve the essential buy-in behind compliant, consistent management across units and divisions. All areas of potential risks/inconsistency that were identified in pre-merger audits and processes are now converted into practical and positive skill-building opportunities and exercises (from interviewing and performance management, to workplace conduct and safety, to documentation and recordkeeping).
All training messages and tools are strategically calibrated and positioned to promote a post-merger communications stream, which we can also help craft.
Owning the Green focuses on problematic issues that do not necessarily violate EEO/harassment law. Myriad employee-related problems and situations arise in organizations that require management follow-up and response. When those issues do not potentially run afoul of an organization’s harassment and Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) policies, managers rather than human resources often resolve the problems.
Utilizing the topics found in core EEO compliance courses, this program reinforces earlier training to help learners better understand and determine which issues are appropriate for direct management. It provides tools and techniques for managers to properly and proficiently addresses problematic challenges.
This practical, skills-based course provides a comprehensive update and tracks the sequence of topics presented in Managing within the Law in alignment with an organization's needs. Framed within an approved template (in the context of specific federal agency consent decrees), the course more deeply focuses on and helps participants master a select number of subtle, often overlooked supervisory and managerial potholes as they relate to fairness and countering bias relevant to a company's specific challenges in these areas.
Advanced Managing within the Law/Refresher - Round II provides a number of critical opportunities for managers and supervisors to revisit and practice advanced interviewing, documentation, and performance management skills. An optional coaching section guides managers in breaking down long-term employee objectives into achievable short-term tasks.
We process map with learners, enabling them to collaboratively identify internal or team bottlenecks and apply a Lean/Six Sigma approach to ensuring efficient and enhanced team performance
This course enables human resource (HR) professionals to successfully develop the advanced skills necessary to guide other leaders and, where necessary, directly manage employee issues. HR professionals learn the specific role they play as a key business partner as well as the critical importance of the "reasonable care defense" that they must facilitate.
The course explores HR skills and latest trends in relation to, for example:
A variety of highly interactive exercises facilitates understanding and provides practical experience for HR professionals of all experience levels to help them better balance interconnected business and legal imperatives.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has issued guidance to addresses how employers conduct effective and thorough investigations. SSAW has developed a training program that will help an organization meet the EEOC’s (and other agencies') mandates and provide key defenses in litigation. Skills strengthened in this course include:
Role plays, hypotheticals, step-by-step group activities, and other customized interactive exercises reinforce key concepts and skills.
Includes the areas of code of conduct for compliance, ethics, and safety.
This version of The Doorway to Successful Workplace Investigations zones in on building a foundation of critical investigation skills for addressing potential code or corporate compliance topics, such as:
Navigating Leaves of Absence teaches human resources or benefits professionals — of all experience levels — how to effectively negotiate employee leave issues. Drawing on an organization’s unique policies and procedures, the course explains different federal and state leave of absence laws. Through highly interactive exercises, professionals learn and practice a systematic approach to addressing a leave of absence. These skills help ensure to ensure that employees properly handle concurrent leave, availability of paid time off, and certification requirements. The course includes a brief module on the interactive process approach for negotiating American Disability Act Amendments Act requests. (A California-specific version of the course is available.)
This course provides an in-depth review of the reasonable accommodation (American Disability Act (ADA) Amendments Act (ADAAA) and state disability) interactive process. Participants learn when and how to engage in this necessary. Learners benefit from interactive tools and techniques that guide the safe implementation of required steps and interactions. They use a comprehensive process roadmap that leads them to making decisions based on appropriate and sound reasoning.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has reported significant increases in bias charges partly due to changed economic conditions. External upheaval stresses the internal work environment and can lead to an increase in conflict, complaints, and charges. The simple fact is that economic stresses put an added burden on your in-house legal, HR and top management teams to effectively navigate through fluid and sometimes uncharted territory.
From the legal ramifications of layoffs and RIF’s and WARN act compliance, to mergers and acquisitions, to the increase in employee absences, moonlighting activities and requests for leave, the interactive course focuses on ways to maintain employee morale, loyalty, and commitment throughout these changing times. It helps learners to understand how economic unpredictability affects a company's diversity and compliance efforts, and gives managers practical strategies to effectively confront the myriad negotiate supervisory engagement and leave issues currently on the rise.
With the passage of the American Disability Act (ADA) Amendments Act (ADAAA), organizations must now strategically approach ADA compliance at a more intensive level. The ADAAA has greatly expanded the definition of who is a person with a disability, which means that millions of additional workers now have rights and protections under the act.
In light of the ADA's expanded scope, employers need to refocus to determine the essential functions of jobs, qualification standards, and how the reasonable accommodation process is viewed and managed.
This practical interactive course helps organizations maneuver: the complexities of the expanded ADA; managers’ roles in responding to disability-related issues and requests; and the interactive process.
Manager level and HR-focused versions are available.
Our customized manager and HR-specific wages and hours modules address specific organizational issues and concerns related to timekeeping, travel time, exempt and non-exempt status (and the importance of respecting this status), overtime, accurate recording of all hours, and working off the clock. We can also highlight state payday laws, as appropriate.
Seyfarth Shaw at Work' suite of interactive business and technical writing and communications courses engages organizations' employees in best practices that improve their writing and verbal communication skills.
The customizable Business and Technical Writing and Communication Success course, described as top notch by a global F-10 organization, provides engaging tools and methods to help employees properly craft written messages through three writing stages — planning, composing, and reviewing. Learners practice these skills using their company's varied documents. And, they benefit from a skills checklist to ensure the writing they do on the job is clear, cohesive, and concise.
Depending on an organization’s specific needs, myriad writing or verbal communication topics can be emphasized or explored, including:
Open and candid communication among employees in the workplace is key to preventing disputes, complaints, and lawsuits as well as to strengthening employee unity and morale.
This course provides organizations and its personnel the skills to recognize the cause of interpersonal conflicts, and resolve disputes at different levels. Learners analyze strategies such as mediation, team meetings, implementing group goals, and searching for common solutions to address workplace disagreements. Also emphasized are approaches to keeping the workplace environment comfortable and respectful.
In this course, managers and employees benefit from tools and tactics used to identify, respond to, and prevent violent behavior and threats in the workplace. Reporting procedures related to safety and security threats and risks are also discussed, along with off-premises behavior, American Disability Act Amendments Act (ADAAA) direct threat, homeland security, evacuation procedures, all among additional often overlooked issues.
A global, mobile, and rotating workforce demands successful interaction among and management of diverse cultures in a legal and inclusive manner. This course helps organizations to effectively do this work while avoiding glass-ceiling liability and other Equal Employment Opportunity issues in the process.
In this course, learners explore how to recruit, hire, manage, retain, and promote employees — with a close look at filters, stereotypes, and bias — to create a diverse and inclusive workplace.
Valuing Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace: Multicultural Realities Today also describes the business reasons behind diversity and inclusion initiatives and the risk of not seeking a more diverse workforce. A series of interactive and real-world exercises enable participants to successfully adapt to and master the nuances of today’s global workforce and marketplace.
This course incorporates an organization’s code of conduct into a high-energy interactive experience in which participants become aware of relevant legal responsibilities, ethical expectations, and values. Course content may include:
The course can be customized to address federal government regulations requiring business ethics and compliance awareness federal contractor programs.
The Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and other governmental enforcement actions have increased compliance requirements, putting employers and individuals at risk for significant penalties, fines, and/or imprisonment. It's critical for company leadership and employees to protect themselves from unnecessary litigation and liability.
Using Seyfarth Shaw at Work/WorkRight Solutions' hallmark imprinting mantras, visuals, and scripts,Reading the Signs of Compliance connects the dots between all areas of compliance for your managers and supervisors (and, as necessary, employees), and helps to develop practical, consistent compliance strategies and organization-wide responses to compliance challenges. This interactive session illustrates how a company code or policies can and should be applied to serve as roadmap to effective and compliant decision-making, as well as how its rules affect leaders' and employees' daily lives.
Customized at no cost,Reading the Signs of Compliance can focus on areas of compliance or codes of conduct provisions that matter most to a company. Our design team links selected topics around our proprietary thematic elements, which enable learners to adopt a big-picture and best-practice approach. Simple, practical issue spotting and relevant examples enable managers and supervisors to come to agreement on best (and readily applicable) workplace practices in transaction and sales situations or in off-premises interactions that may affect the workplace.
Linked modules can include:
This high-energy interactive training session comprehensively covers the risks and best practices associated with the use of e-mail and electronic systems within the “business system,” as well as related employee expectations and responsibilities in utilizing a company’s electronic communications systems. Throughout this training, participants refer to a company’s unique electronic communications policy, as well as any related harassment policies and code of conduct sections.
Participants achieve a fuller understanding of their responsibilities and the risks associated with accessing inappropriate sites via the Internet or sending or forwarding emails referencing gender, race, religion, disability or other protected categories. Participants also dive into the three greatest "danger zones” related to e-mails, blogs, and social networking overall, including the enormous risks associated with defamation.
Other covered topics include confidentiality, proprietary information, unfair competition, e-mail and record retention, data security, intellectual property and financial reporting, and National Labor Relations Act ramifications.
Includes Sarbanes-Oxley for private employers.
The Supreme Court has created a new set of liabilities for private employers. For the first time, private companies that contract with or provide services to public companies can be sued under Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) whistleblower provisions if they retaliate against employees for reporting fraud at the public company.
Federal legislation over the last decade steadily increased the risks of federal lawsuits based on employee complaints of retaliation for reporting unlawful or unethical conduct. Recent cases give employees an incentive to run directly to governmental agencies, especially if a complaint is mishandled. Private employers who serve public companies must ensure that effective, broad-based and credible policies and complaint-response training are in place, even when the complaint is not about their operations or actions.
Managers (as well as key employees) must now be fully trained and knowledgeable regarding what to say (and how to say it) in addition to how best to safely escalate and follow-up when someone complains about a customer or client.
Enhancing Our Responses/Reducing Our Risks is a high-impact training that ensures organizational policies will work on the ground and that will imprint the following critical, linked skills to negotiate this emerging SOX paradox:
This course provides essential training to non-supervisory employees about an organization’s code of conduct. Learners explore ways to identify workplace issues and how to respond to and report risky or prohibited conduct. In the harassment and Equal Employment Opportunity contexts, the course can serve as a refresher, covering all protected categories, including race, religion, national origin, age, gender, disability, and sexual orientation. For organizations with a global presence,Working Within the Code can be customized to address relevant international laws and country-specific policies.
Confidentiality and the Code utilizes an organization’s pertinent policies — from non-disclosure agreements, to non-compete clauses, to HIPAA and personally identifiable information (PII) policies, to general confidentiality agreements — to emphasize the importance of keeping critical information safe, as well as educating employees about the information to protect.
The course highlights how certain electronic communications, including e-mails, may conflict with an organization’s confidentiality and privacy rules. It lays out the types of information that can and can't be discussed with third parties, such as customers, vendors, and government officials.
From a HIPAA perspective, we can cover:
We can integrate key messages from the company's HIPAA and Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health policies and any manuals.
From a PII perspective, we can cover:
We can integrate key messages from the company's HIPAA and Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health policies and any manuals.
This interactive course focuses on policies and federal and state laws related to health care fraud, conflict of interest, and abuse claims. Tailored to an organization’s specific issues, it covers such topics such as coding, billing, gifts, outside employment, reimbursement, financial reporting, and political contributions.
The course is customizable: For example, past versions have HIPAA, Medicare/Medicaid billing, working with health management organizations, false cost reports, and activities and interactions of physician liaisons, all of which were selected to address a company's specific needs and interests.
Teaching tools include role plays, hypotheticals, and other interactive techniques emphasizing real-life examples.
This course gives managers the opportunity to focus their attention on the crucial practice of properly setting expectations at the beginning of an employment relationship. Role plays reflect hiring and promotion settings, inviting managers to practice asking appropriate interview questions, following up on interviewees' questions, and avoiding protected characteristic discussions. An optional module dealing with hiring and promoting a diverse workforce is often incorporated.
In this course, managers practice how to pose safe and legal job-focused interview questions and obtain required information from job applicants. They also learn how to hire for attitude, and properly communicate to rejected applicants. During the course, learners draft job descriptions, prepare for and conduct mock interviews, and document interview questions and interviewee responses.
In this course, participants recognize how employees’ perceptions become a managers’ reality and thus develop the skills and strategies to coach for success. Participants engage in a series of realistic coaching role-playing scenarios and other participatory exercises.
This course reinforces the “why” of written documentation. Learners develop skills to help streamline the documentation process, examine the mechanics of progressive discipline, and identify how and what to document in writing. They engage in a series of realistic, exercises, and debriefing opportunities that allow them to review individual written documentation processes and products.
Under extraordinary scrutiny, the federal government, plaintiff's lawyers, media entities, and universities and colleges are at extreme risk if their assault investigators are not adequately trained and prepared to meet the challenges of multifaceted investigations. Proper assault investigations require a high degree of skill and sensitivity as well as appropriate application of federal and state statues.
Sexual Assault Prevention Investigations offers companies a dynamic team of former assistant district attorneys, seasoned Title IX experts, and advocacy group leaders who deliver this fully interactive investigations course that delves into the legal and practical issues arising in collegiate investigations and hearings.
The course (based on a workplace investigations course approved in the context of EEOC consent decrees,) addresses:
The course utilizes realistic role plays and team exercises (with the integration of actual case stories and real-world scenarios) allowing participants to confront and evaluate a range of relevant situations and challenges. Participants apply the required skills that they have achieved throughout the session. A 14-point investigation and hearing skills checklist
Learners acquire practical investigational tools — including a 14-point investigation and hearing skills checklist — to successfully conduct intakes and interviews, find facts, assess, and document. The course delivery and training techniques are, customizable.
We have extensive consulting and training experience in myriad colleges, universities, national fraternities, NCAA divisions and conferences, etc. others.
