The radio industry loves conferences. For decades radio conferences have been the best way to get a few days of relief from the stress of hitting budgets. They’re a great way to improve your skills, network and meet up with old colleagues. When will the time be right to send an employee out the door, onto a plane and into another city?
Everyone appears to be settling into the reality of attending virtual conferences during this COVID crisis. But what if you decided to send an employee to an actual conference, with attendees from all over the world, and that person became sick. Are you liable? The law firm of Lawlor, White & Murphey answers that question for us.
(By the law firm of Lawlor, White & Murphey )
Since the dawn of the COVID-19 era almost six months ago, the way we work as a nation and as a planet have been turned upside down. While many businesses no longer have employees gather together to work in the same physical office, in some ways, our inter-connectedness has improved as we refine our technology skills and allow the virtual world to help connect our business networks and professional relationships.
Yet this fall will mark a return to in-person conferences for some employees. While COVID-19 has brought on a wave of virtual conferences, in-person conferences are in themselves a massive industry and one that refuses to disappear.
While the many free or low-cost virtual conferences of the past months have shown great business inclusiveness, in-person conferences are all about exclusivity. Along with that exclusivity comes the significantly higher conference fees that businesses on the whole have been more than willing to pay for many years.
A return this fall to more in-person conferences brings with it a compelling legal issue – that of liability if something happens to an employee when the company sends them to a conference. Yes, there have always been basic legal and insurance liability issues surrounding conference attendance, almost all of which would have been fairly standard where an employee was attending a conference as part of their work responsibilities.
While many believe that common sense dictates that companies avoid sending their employees to in-person conferences for at least the remainder of 2020, this wise counsel is already turning out to be something that fewer companies than we would imagine are adhering to.
But since March, the liability issues have become much more complicated. There is a legal argument to be made by employees that sending them on business travel today, especially to an in-person conference, is sending them into a potentially hazardous situation. The threshold question becomes whether the employer is being negligent or reckless by requesting that an employee attend an in-person conference as part of their work responsibilities.
As is so often the case in the legal world, the best answer is “it depends.”
First, there is a cogent legal argument to be made that where an employer tells an employee to attend an in-person conference, that company is assuming significantly more risk now than in the past should something happen to the employee in the line of work (and an employee could later make the argument that the company knowingly assumed said risk).
Much would depend upon where the conference is being held. Is it a location where there have been very few COVID-19 cases over the past few months or a global hotspot already beginning to experience a second wave of the virus? Much would also depend upon the nature of the conference itself. Is it in a socially-distanced outdoor setting with few people or inside a traditional indoor conference hall with many people, little social distancing, and predictably poor air flow?
There is also the issue of the employee’s willingness to attend the conference, which is destined to be a legal and practical nightmare. If something happens to that employee while at the conference or as a result as having been there, is their willingness to have attended a factor the employer can use to absolve themselves of legal liability? What about the current grey area that is willingness? In COVID-19 times, with so many people having lost their jobs and many other positions so tenuous, will an employee risk being seen as anything but enthusiastic if told to attend an in-person conference?
Specifically, what about the legal rights of employees who refuse to attend an in-person? What if they do speak up and make a case for not being able to travel due to their physical condition or that of people in their household, and is such an argument even legally necessary? What recourse would that employee have if they could link their termination with refusal to attend?
There are certain safeguards afforded by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Where an employee is told to attend a conference and feels that so doing would be unsafe, they can lodge an OSHA complaint. What the end result would be of that complaint and how it would in practical terms affect that employee’s tenure with the organization remains to be seen. Again, the willingness of employees to file an OSHA complaint for anything will today be a fraction of what it was before March.
For the businesses considering sending employees to not only in-person conferences, but on any kind of business travel, there has never been a better time to look internally at your risk management function. For many companies, risk management is like optional building maintenance – you wait to invest in it until you have a real problem on your hands.
For companies that have been meaning to look at how and how well they do risk management, the time may have already passed. As companies hit the ground running with their fall restart, many of their business practices that were once deemed comparatively low-risk (such as conference attendance) are now something deserving of a pause, internal reflection, and often experienced legal advice.
Learn more about the law firm of About Lawlor, White & Murphey HERE
