The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic is for­cing organ­iz­a­tions around the world to adapt their com­pan­ies and its cul­ture to new ways of work­ing.  This includes, of course, first and fore­most, health and safety con­cerns for the work­force, cus­tom­ers and part­ners, as well as using and enabling tech­no­logy to allow people to work effi­ciently togeth­er from dif­fer­ent phys­ic­al loc­a­tions.  The chal­lenges are not to be under­es­tim­ated as each jur­is­dic­tion has its own labor and employ­ment reg­u­la­tions with respect to employ­er respons­ib­il­ity for the health and safety of its people and the abil­ity to require its work­force to change its work­ing loc­a­tions.

Anoth­er chal­lenge is the mana­geri­al aspect of this shift in the ways we work.   Man­agers need to cre­at­ively find new ways to stay con­nec­ted and motiv­ate work­ers by keep­ing in touch with them remotely.  Employ­ers must also con­sider the need of many busi­nesses to reduce their HR costs and per­haps, sig­ni­fic­antly trans­form their busi­nesses to adapt to the eco­nom­ic impact of this pan­dem­ic.  Here again, loc­al laws will dif­fer on the rules and options for employ­ers to reduce head­count and/or modi­fy an employee’s terms and con­di­tions of employ­ment.

In this news­let­ter, we focus on the labor and employ­ment law chal­lenges for com­pan­ies in Return­ing to Work (or Not) in our COVID-19 world.  You will find insights from 39 jur­is­dic­tions around the world.