ELLN Chair’s Newsletter and Join us at the March ACC Employment & Labor Law Teleconference Meeting Tomorrow!

As readers of this blog know, I have the honor of serving as the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Employment & Labor Law Network (ELLN) for the 2019-20 year.  This post is an open invite to in house counsel who are not already attending our ELLN monthly meetings to join us! My Chair’s newsletter appears after the monthly agenda.

If you are an in-house counsel, and you are not an ACC member or an ELLN member (or even if you are and you haven’t joined us recently), we would love for you to attend our monthly teleconference and join our active community.

Join ACC here: https://www.acc.com/membership/become-a-member

If you haven’t joined our calls recently, or have never heard of ACC or ELLN, now is a great opportunity to check us out. Each month before our meeting, I will post our agenda here and elsewhere in social media as encouragement to join our merry bunch on the first Wednesday (generally) each month. This month’s meeting is at a special time: 3:45 p.m. EST.

Joining the call is as easy as clicking the big red button below and logging in or registering.

ASSOCIATION OF CORPORATE COUNSEL EMPLOYMENT
& LABOR LAW NETWORK (ELLN) MONTHLY
TELECONFERENCE

Wednesday, March 4, 2020
(3:45 – 4:45 pm Eastern Time)

1. Opening Business
2. Welcome – Doug Hass, ELLN Chair; Darryl Uffelmann (Anheuser Busch)
3. Roll – Nikki Odom (3M), Secretary – please report your attendance to ELLC@accglobal.com if you haven’t logged into the webinar.
4. Approval of minutes from the previous monthly meeting on February 5, 2020.
5. Announcements and Staff Report – KJ Forest, ACC
6. Sponsor Report – Jackson Lewis
7. Legal Quick Hit Presented by Jackson Lewis P.C. – Eric Felsberg, Principal, Long Island, New York. Modern employers possess data, that when leveraged properly, can offer powerful insights for managing the workplace and defending claims. Effective use cases include: (1) Identifying the best talent for hire; predicting attrition and who may be likely to file a claim; (2) Setting appropriate pay using predictive pay analytics; (3) Monitoring digital footprint data to assess employee engagement; and (4) Harnessing data to predict litigation outcomes.

During this session, Jackson Lewis’ Eric Felsberg will highlight best practices for using data to confront some of the most pressing workplace challenges, including avoiding common data use pitfalls, harnessing predictive analytics and more.

8. Subcommittee Reports

• Policy
• Absence and Disability Management
• Communications and Forums
• ERISA and Executive Compensation
• International
• Labor, Health & Safety
• Membership
• Programs
• Webcasts

• Task Forces
  • InfoPAKs
  • Library Archives
  • Pro Bono

9. Other Old/New Business – Comments/Items from Leaders

10. Next Teleconference – Wednesday, April 1, 2020, 3:00 p.m. (Eastern Time) – REGULAR TIME!

11. Adjourn

I would also like to share my Chair’s newsletter with you:

Hello ELLN Members!

Baseball is back, the weather is getting warmer here in the U.S., and the calendar says March!  That means another ELLN monthly teleconference is upon us.  We are so grateful for the fabulous participation over the past few months.  Thank you for attending.  We really love having you and welcome your feedback on how we can make ELLN membership an even better value for you.

If you have been getting this message and haven’t yet joined us for our monthly call, Wednesday is a great time to start!  This month only, our call is 45 minutes later than normal: 3:45 EST/12:45 PST.  We are starting a little later to accommodate those of us attending our network sponsor Jackson Lewis’s Corpoate Counsel Conference in Beverly Hills.  If you are here at CCC, please join us in person.  Our Legal Quick Hit this month comes from Eric Felsberg from Jackson Lewis’s Long Island, New York office and the National Director of the firm’s Data Analytics group will highlight best practices for using data to confront some of the most pressing workplace challenges, including avoiding common data use pitfalls, harnessing predictive analytics and more.  It is a great introduction into how the application of data can help inform your daily work.

Here’s the big red button to join us for free:

Just click that button and register for this month’s webcast link and dial-in instructions.

Speaking of analytics my son’s recent fifth birthday and this season of Lent have made me analyze how dramatically the world at large has changed since he was born in February 2015. In many ways, the world has gotten inarguably worse, whether the impact of the current coronavirus outbreak, persistent inequality, the rise of authoritarians, or the Houston Astros cheating their way to a World Series victory by stealing signs and beating on trash cans.  (O.k., that last one is not that important.) These things remind us that we cannot pretend that the world is the way it was or the way we wish it was, even when it comes to personal or professional struggles and not global ones.  Recent studies show that lawyers experience high rates of chronic stress, substance use, and depression. As a group, we can be stereotypically competitive perfectionists.  In house attorneys, in particular, are paid to plan for risk and worst-case outcomes, which is like throwing kerosene on the fire.  How do you find a bright side with all of this going on?

I will give you three words: empathy, perspective, and agency.

Empathy is easy to see in the coronavirus outbreak.  This isn’t 2002 and SARS. While understandably alarming, the coronavirus outbreak has created feelings of empathy and solidarity around the world.  In the U.S., it has led to serious, overdue discussions about the need for paid sick leave laws and expanded many companies’ receptiveness to telecommuting and flexible schedules. Around the world, governments of extremely different ideologies have come together to share information and to start developing vaccines.  We organize ourselves in a default state of empathy, even if we don’t always stay there.  Don’t believe me?  Next time someone is closer to a door than you or in the elevator when you walk up, watch them hold it or open it.  There’s hope in empathy!

Perspective is important, too.  Give yourself license to unapologetically focus on the joyful things in your life, and not just how other people, things, places, thoughts and events make you feel. It could be family, spring sunshine, food, March Madness, charity, or just a quiet moment to be calm in this world. Or, it could be networking with a fantastic network of 6,000+ in-house labor and employment legal experts around the world on Wednesday afternoon! There is joy all around us, at all times.  We can just get disconnected from it when we lose that perspective.

Third, you can focus on your actions and what you can do minute to minute, day to day to give yourself a sense of agency. You can do it by simply helping those who need your help. The basic act of giving your time to help someone else comes with no quid pro quo, no political viewpoint, no judgment of the circumstances.  One person helping another one builds empathy and a healthier perspective in you, too.  Most importantly, acts of service and co-operation are contagious, even in a time of doubt and difficulty.

Finally, remember that charity starts in our own profession. I have no magic answers and sometimes there’s no substitute for a professional, but I do know that lawyers are often more reluctant than others to seek help for their own problems.  Lawyer well-being should not be an oxymoron or a solo pursuit. Creating a healthier legal profession is a team sport.

Wash your hands, hold that door, and rekindle a relationship or just strike up a conversation with someone new today. You might be the bright side someone is trying to find!

Our monthly agenda appears here, and our February minutes will be posted to the discussion forum.  We hope to see you on the call at 3:45 EST on Wednesday and in our discussion forum at https://community.acc.com/