We have long valued the benefits and role Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) can play in onboarding, training, performance management and, by extension, long-term employee retention and success. SOPs represent the perfect complement to good, sound HR and Employment Compliance practices.

Because of the time and labor intensiveness of creating and maintaining a set of comprehensive SOPs, most practices don’t have them. Obviously without them you simply don’t have the opportunity to benefit from them.

Not anymore! Yay! We are pleased to let all of our dental clients know that beginning in the Spring of 2020, with your HR support renewal for your HR Director program, we will be including an integrated SOP module as a standard part of your ongoing support. WooHoo!

This integrated SOPs program is a result of our exclusive partnership with StreamDent, LLC, and Dr. William Moorhead. 

Dr. Moorhead, a practicing dentist with over twenty years experience, organized his own practice with systems, procedures and protocols to make training and patient care high quality and repeatable.

Always pushing the envelope on developing technologies for his own practice, Dr. Moorhead converted to an entirely digital dental office in 2006. As he worked with the software available at the time, he found there was literally nothing that could provide standard operating procedures without using the traditional concept of three ring binders filled with outdated, stained, and torn pages.

Driven to provide a consistent and reproducible patient experience in his own practice, Dr. Moorhead also wanted to help other dentists create their dream offices too; offices with consistent performance and little or no stress. The end result is StreamDent, a cloud-based software system that is easily customized by the end user to offer ease and flexibility for developing and refining SOP systems for dental offices.

StreamDent is the only dental standard operating procedures system of its kind. It helps to decrease stress and increase efficiency in your office with systems and checklists for virtually everything you do in the dental office. What this means is you don’t have to invent or reinvent the wheel. Most importantly, from now on, you won’t have to continue without enjoying the benefits of SOPs.

The SOPs that you will have access to are: 

• The most complete
• The most comprehensive
• The most user-friendly
• The most technologically advanced
• The most easily customizable, and
• The most cost effective because they are just included with your HR Director!

Dr. Moorhead’s SOPs embody processes, procedures, and protocols that he has gained from his own firsthand experiences throughout the years, as well as from working with leading educators, management consultants, and industry continuing education leaders—both from a clinical and business perspective. All of the SOPs can be easily modified to fit your specific protocols, needs, and desires. 

Best of all, these SOPs are already done for you. You don’t have to do a thing except start using them, and customize them as you go. This is not about how one person does his/her procedures or the assumption that you should/must do them the same way. You control them, with the majority of this otherwise overwhelming task done for you.

Now you will have your own online, accessible educational/training resource at your fingertips for growing, training and developing your own “good, quality” people.

Why Are SOPs So Powerful?

You have recruited, you have interviewed and now you have hired someone. Congratulations! Now what?  How can you get the most out of your newest investment—your new employee? Certainly, having a robust onboarding protocol underscores and affirms your commitment to your employees’ success by providing proper training and education regarding the job expectations, as well as the culture of the organization.  

One question begs to be asked and answered in this scenario: “How do you effectively, efficiently, and consistently educate and train for this job description’s tasks and/or duties?”

There is an easy answer to this question. It is a matter of having a precise, easy to understand checklist to follow; in other words, a SOP (standard operating procedure).

Another important question is: How long does it take to have a fully trained, knowledgeable, and competent employee “up-to-speed” in your current scenario without SOPs? With SOPs:

• • Get a new employee to a competent stage much faster
  • Build employee’s self-confidence and expertise
  • Assure that things get done the way you want, consistently, every time
  • Know that you don’t have to remember everything
  • Be confident that important procedural steps won’t be forgotten

From phone etiquette to hygiene procedures; from tray setups to new patient protocols, SOPs support consistency, reduce training time, and increase efficiency with onboarding and training.

In the absence of a standard operating procedure, your onboarding process is crippled, and you will not realize the return on your hiring investment. With SOPs you are investing in your employees’ success and long-term retention, not to mention the peace of mind you will have, and the benefit of building a more cohesive team.

SOPs are ideal for work, tasks or procedures that are repeated often, and performed in a predictable order or manner, which defines the majority of the tasks performed daily in the dental practice.

Think of a SOP as a productivity tool. SOPs can be thought of as checklists that detail necessary steps and procedures. They provide verification and also instill a kind of discipline that contributes to a higher level of performance.

SOPs help simplify training and help avoid mistakes. Additionally, they make delegating specific tasks more effective. They free up mental bandwidth from worry by ensuring quality, standardization, and consistency in the delivery of services.

SOPs are precise, efficient, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. As a practical tool, SOPs provide reminders of the sequence and important steps to ensure that processes happen consistently, correctly and efficiently. 

SOPs or checklists can be utilized from two perspectives: “Follow-Do” or “Do-Verify”

If you’ve ever cooked dinner while following a recipe, you’re familiar with a “Follow-Do” SOP or checklist. It outlines the steps required for accomplishing a specific outcome successfully, like cooking lasagna. With a “Follow-Do” checklist, you systematically work your way down the list, accomplishing each step as you go. Once you complete the list, you’ve successfully completed the task, without necessarily being an expert, and it is accomplished in the way and manner outlined.

You can also use a “Follow-Do” SOP to delegate and/or outsource tasks to other employees who don’t have knowledge or experience with the task. And you can feel confident that it will be accomplished the way you want.

A “Do-Verify” SOP is essentially a condensed or summary version of a “Follow-Do” SOP. Its use is geared for the employee who is experienced. The task is completed primarily from memory, previous training or experience. The “Do-Verify” SOP is then used to verify and ensure that nothing was overlooked or forgotten.

Perhaps you have invested in new equipment and technology. With the appropriate SOPs in place, you will be able to take advantage of your investment with easy training and implementation with your existing employees. Without SOPs your new equipment might just end up in the closet!

The magic of SOPs:

• SOPs can error proof your practice!!
• SOPs can problem proof your practice!!
• SOPs can mistake proof your practice!!
• SOPs can stress proof your practice!!
• SOPs can frustration proof your practice!!
• SOPs can get you from point A to point B easier and faster for both new and existing employees!!
• SOPs make everyone smarter!!
• SOPs make everyone look good!!
• SOPs help avoid embarrassing and preventable problems in the practice!!

Excited? We are too! Please contact us if you’d like to learn more about the rollout of this new integrated SOP module. 

Did You Know?

New Jersey Amended its Medical Marijuana Law?

The law as amended has been renamed the Jake Honig Compassionate Use Medical Cannabis Act, in honor of a seven-year old New Jersey boy who died of brain cancer. It contains several new protections for employees, while also providing two important pieces of good news for employers.

First, the amendments prohibit employers from taking any “adverse employment action” against an employee who is a “registered qualifying patient” based “solely on the employee’s status as a registrant with the commission.” A “registered qualifying patient” is an individual who both (1) has been authorized by a health care provider for the medical use of cannabis, and (2) has registered with the state’s Cannabis Regulatory Commission. 

Second, the amendments provide workers with the right to explain positive drug test results. If an employee or job applicant tests positive for cannabis under an employer’s drug testing policy, the employee or job applicant must be granted an opportunity to present a “legitimate medical explanation” for the test result. The employer must provide the employee or job applicant written notice of this right to explain. 

Within three working days of receiving the written notice, the employee or job applicant may submit information to the employer to explain the positive test result; the explanation may include the presentation of an authorization for medical cannabis issued by a health care practitioner, proof of registration with the Cannabis Regulatory Commission, or both. Alternatively, within the same three-working-day period, the employee or applicant may request a confirmatory retest of the original sample at the employee or job applicant’s own expense.

The amendments provide two important protections to employers. First, the employee protections do not restrict employers from prohibiting, or taking “adverse employment action” for, employee possession or use of intoxicating substances “during work hours or on the premises of the workplace outside of work hours.”

Second, it is well known that federal law continues to restrict the sale and use of cannabis. Therefore, the Compassionate Use Act’s employee protections are not to be deemed to “require an employer to commit any act that would cause the employer to be in violation of federal law, that would result in the loss of a licensing-related benefit pursuant to federal law, or that would result in the loss of a federal contract or federal funding.”

Colorado Passed a Comprehensive Equal Pay Law?

The new law goes into effect on January 1, 2021 and is one of the toughest enhanced state pay equity laws to date. 

The “Equal Pay for Equal Work Act” (SB 19-085) shares similarities with other enhanced state equal pay laws, including provisions on pay equity, pay history, and pay transparency. However, unlike other states, the Colorado law contains unique notice requirements. The two new notice requirements are:

• Employers must make reasonable efforts to announce, post, or make known all opportunities for promotion to all current employees on the same calendar day.
• Employers must disclose in each posting for each job opening the hourly or salary compensation, or a range of the hourly or salary compensation, and a general description of all benefits and other compensation offered.

The new law protects against discrimination because of sex (including gender identity) or sex in combination with another protected status. Employers may not pay an employee of one sex less than an employee of another sex for substantially similar work.

However, an employer can avoid legal liability under the new law if it demonstrates that the entire difference in compensation is based on at least one of the following:

1. A seniority system;
2. A merit system;
3. A system that measures earning by quantity or quality of production;
4. The geographic location where the work is performed;
5. Education, training, or experience to the extent that they are reasonably related to the work in question; or
6. Travel, if a regular and necessary condition of the work performed.

In addition, Colorado joins nine other states with statewide salary history bans applicable to both public and private employers. Once in effect, employers may not:

1. Seek the wage history of a prospective employee;
2. Rely on the wage history of a prospective employee to determine a wage rate; or
3. Discriminate or retaliate against a prospective employee for failing to disclose wage history.

Finally, the new law prohibits employers from preventing their employees from discussing compensation information with others, or requiring any employee to sign a waiver that prohibits his or her ability to do the same.

New York State Banned Discrimination Based on Reproductive Health Decision Making?

The law is focused on “reproductive health decision making,” defined as “including, but not limited to, the decision to use or access a particular drug, device or medical service.” The law prohibits an employer from:

• Accessing an employee’s personal information regarding the employee’s (or the employee’s dependent’s) reproductive health decisions, without the employee’s prior informed affirmative written consent;
• Discriminating or taking any retaliatory personnel action against an employee with respect to compensation, terms, conditions or privileges of employment because of or based on the employee’s (or the employee’s dependent’s) reproductive health decisions; or
• Requiring an employee to sign a waiver or other document that purports to deny employees the right to make their own reproductive health care decisions.

Remedies available for violations of this law exceed those normally available in other discrimination cases. Those remedies include but are not limited to back pay, benefits, and reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs, as well as injunctive relief and/or reinstatement against any employer that “commits or proposes to commit” a violation of this law.  Additionally, a court may award liquidated damages “equal to one-hundred percent of the award for damages…unless the employer proves a good faith basis to believe that its actions…were in compliance with the law.”

California Extended the Claims Period for Employment Discrimination Cases?

As of January 1, 2020, current and former employees have up to 3 years to file complaints alleging employment discrimination. Previously, the statute of limitations was one year. The new law specifies the operative date of the verified complaint is the date that the intake form was filed with the Labor Commissioner.

2019 Survey Reveals Most Popular Employee Benefits

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) conducted their annual benefits survey earlier in 2019. According to the survey, employers are more likely to increase, rather than decrease, their benefits offerings. In fact, no more than 3% of organizations reported benefits decreases in any category. The biggest increases (20%) to benefits were in the health and wellness benefits categories.

A majority of surveyed organizations (70%) reported that they maintained their health care benefits at existing levels this year. Although 85% of employers said they offer Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) insurance plans, 59% said they have at least one High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP) option. Additionally:

• 68% of employers said they offer health care flexible spending accounts; and
• 56% offer health savings accounts (which must be offered along with a HDHP).

The surveyed organizations also reported offering various types of supplemental insurance, including:

• Accidental death and dismemberment insurance (83%);
• Long-term disability (71%);
• Short-term disability (61%); and
• Accident insurance (27%).

Almost all organizations provide paid vacation (98%) and sick leave (95%) to at least some of their employees. However, 62% of employers provide vacation and sick leave through a paid time off (PTO) bank that covers both options.

Only about 20% of employers reported offering paid or unpaid leave to meet the needs of caregiving employees in addition to what is mandated by some federal or state laws.

Paid leave for new parents hasn’t changed much since 2018, according to the survey, with:

• 34% of employers offering paid maternity leave; and
• 30% offering paternity leave.

Flexible working has continued to become more popular, with organizations offering:

• Ad hoc telecommuting (69%), up 13% since 2015;
• Full-time telecommuting (27%); and
• Flextime during core business hours (57%).

Almost all the surveyed employers said they offer some kind of retirement plan, with 93% offering traditional 401(k) plans. Additionally, 74% of the survey participants reported having some type of employer 401(k) match contribution program in place. Many employers also reported offering services designed to help employees with financial decisions, including:

• Retirement investment advice (57%);
• Nonretirement financial advice (36%); and
• Credit counseling services (18%).

Around 58% of organizations offer wellness programs, and examples of the types of services these programs offer include:

• Programs focused on particular health conditions (24%);
• Health screening (31%);
• Quiet rooms (21%);
• Fitness activities (30%); and
• Standing desks (60%).

Other family-friendly benefits employers indicated they offer include:

• Elder care benefits (10%)
• Lactation rooms (51%);
• Lactation support services (13%); and
• On-ramping programs for parents returning to work (12%).

Google Settles Age Discrimination Suit for $11 Million

The initial plaintiff was a software engineer who said Google interviewed her four times, from 2007-2014, beginning when she was 47. She was never hired, according to Forbes. She accused the company of hiring younger workers based on cultural fit.

Google has said she and the other plaintiffs did not demonstrate the required technical attitude, denied it intentionally discriminated against them because of their age and said that it has strong policies against discrimination, Bloomberg News reported. Ultimately, Google agreed to pay $11 million to end a class-action lawsuit that involved 227 people accusing the company of systemically discriminating against job applicants who were over the age of 40. Under the final settlement agreement, plaintiffs will collect an estimated $35,000 each.

Under the settlement, parent company Alphabet Inc. must also train employees and managers about age bias, create a committee on age diversity in recruiting and make sure complaints are adequately investigated. 

Positive Marijuana Drug Test Did Not Prove That Marijuana Caused Accident, Oklahoma Court Holds

Claimant Dillon Rose’s left hand and wrist were crushed in a “guillotine” machine while working as a machine operator for his employer. He was subjected to a post-accident drug test and tested positive for marijuana and morphine. Rose’s workers’ compensation claim initially was denied due to the positive drug test results. At a hearing before an administrative law judge (ALJ), Rose admitted that he smoked marijuana the night before the accident but denied that its use was a factor in the accident the next day. On the day of the accident, Rose worked for a few hours and testified that no supervisors remarked that he was or appeared to be impaired. While he acknowledged that putting his hand inside the machine was unsafe, he testified that he was “thinking clearly” and was not impaired. A manager employed by the employer testified that he had no knowledge of Rose being intoxicated. 

Ultimately, an Oklahoma state court held that a positive post-accident drug test for marijuana did not prove that marijuana use caused the accident, and therefore the claimant was eligible for workers’ compensation benefits. Rose v. Berry Plastics Corp. et al., 2019 OK Civ. App. 55 (Ok. Civ. Ct. App. Oct. 16, 2019).

$5.2 Million Jury Award in ADA Accommodation Case Against Walmart

Paul Reina, who is deaf, also has a developmental disability and is visually impaired. Reina had worked as a cart pusher in the Beloit, Wisconsin, Walmart for 16 years, and performed his job with the assistance of a publicly funded job coach as a reasonable job accommodation.

After a new manager took charge at the store, Reina was suspended and told he had to resubmit medical paperwork in order to keep his reasonable accommodations for his disabilities. While Reina was working with his legal guardian to resubmit the required paperwork, “the store cut off communication and effectively terminated him, though Reina’s ability to do his job with a reasonable accommodation had not changed,” the lawsuit claimed.

The jury determined that Walmart’s refusal to allow Reina to continue to work with a job coach as a reasonable job accommodation violated the ADA and awarded him $200,000 in compensatory damages and an additional $5 million in punitive damages.

Walmart Settles Pregnancy Discrimination Case for $14 Million

The three women who brought the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) case, in the US District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, all sought light-duty accommodations due to pregnancy-related medical restrictions. Supervisors told one of the plaintiffs that rather than provide light duty work, she would have to take an unpaid leave of absence.

Another former employee claimed the company fired her shortly after she requested a copy of Walmart’s childbirth leave policies. The woman claimed that a supervisor had previously ignored her request to avoid heavy lifting during her pregnancy.

In its defense, Walmart had asserted that the lead plaintiffs failed to identify any nonpregnant employees who were treated more favorably. The company also claimed there were no statistics to show that its policy had a disparate impact on pregnant workers. 

While Walmart did not admit any wrongdoing as part of the settlement, they did agree to pay $14 million to resolve the class action lawsuit. 

Oregon Court of Appeals Says Employers Must Pay Wages to Employees Who Fail to Take Full 30-minute Meal Periods 

OAR 839-020-050(2)(a) requires employers to provide hourly nonexempt employees with “a meal period of not less than 30 continuous minutes” for each work period of between six and eight hours in length. OAR 839-020-050(2)(b) further provides that “if an employee is not relieved of all duties for 30 continuous minutes during the meal period, the employer must pay the employee for the entire 30-minute meal period.”

The employer in Maza v. Waterford Operations, LLC, 300 Or. App. 471 (2019) argued that, so long as it provided its hourly employees with an opportunity to take 30-minute meal periods, it had no further duty to enforce employees’ use of the full 30-minute meal period, and as a result, no liability for a shortened meal period unless an employee was forced to return to work early.

The court concluded that OAR 839-020-050(2)’s requirement that an employer provide an employee with a meal period of not less than 30 minutes during which the employee is relieved of all duties means more than making 30 minutes “available” to employees to use for a meal period. It means that a 30-minute meal period is mandatory, and if not taken, the employer must pay the employee’s wages for the full 30 minutes.

The court reasoned that employers, “because of their authority over the workplace, are in a unique position to enforce mandatory meal periods necessary for the preservation of the health of employees” and that “given the requirement for the mandatory meal period, it is not sufficient for employers to merely require in a handbook that employees not work during meal periods.” The court held that “[i]t is the employer’s duty to monitor employees’ work and meal periods to ensure that full meal periods are taken.”

$6 Million Award Against Dollar General for Alleged Racial Bias 

Businesses must ensure that employment screens, including criminal background checks, don’t have a disparate impact on job candidates based on a protected category, such as race or sex. “Disparate impact” means that a seemingly neutral policy is discriminatory in practice. Such practices are unlawful under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 unless the employer can show that the screen is job-related and a business necessity, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

In this case, EEOC alleged that the discount retailer violated Title VII by using a broad criminal background check that led the company to deny jobs to black applicants at a much higher rate than white applicants. Dollar General agreed to the settlement without admitting any wrongdoing.

The $6 million will be paid into a settlement fund for black job applicants who lost an employment opportunity between 2004 and 2019. The company also must hire a criminology consultant if it wants to continue using criminal background checks in its hiring process. The EEOC said the company should consider the following factors when reviewing an applicant’s criminal history:

• Time passed since the conviction.
• Number of offenses.
• Nature and gravity of the offense.
• Risk of recidivism.

Under the settlement agreement, Dollar General may not discourage people with criminal backgrounds from applying and is prohibited from retaliating or otherwise discriminating on the basis of race when conducting background checks.

California Wage Theft Claim Against McDonald’s is Settled for $26 Million 

The lawsuit claimed that McDonald’s underpaid 38,000 workers at its corporate-owned California restaurants by failing to give them adequate meal or rest breaks and structuring shifts to deny workers overtime pay.

The workers said that McDonald’s only allowed breaks at the start and end of their shifts, rather than in the middle of their shifts when the restaurants got busy. They also claimed that the chain required them to clean or replace their uniforms when they were worn out or damaged on the job without compensation.

As part of the settlement, McDonald’s agreed to train employees at its California locations about their rights, including:

• Receiving rest breaks and meal periods;
• Receiving overtime for working more than eight hours in a 24-hour period; and
• Getting new uniforms at no cost if needed.

In a statement, McDonald’s denied any wrongdoing and said it was “deeply committed to the fair treatment of all of our employees.”