Question of the Week: Babies and Guns in the Workplace?
To help me stay on top of the latest employment law developments, I subscribe to approximately 28,000 different news services. Scanning the dizzying array of headlines from the past week, two topics stood out above all the others: babies and guns.
On the baby front, it appears that more and more employers are allowing employees to bring infants into the workplace. According to the Parenting in the Workplace Institute, doing so is “a viable, inexpensive tool for helping employees return to work sooner, lowering turnover, improving morale, increasing overall productivity, enhancing teamwork and collaboration, recruiting new employees, attracting new customers, and making existing customers more loyal.”
One business owner told Time Magazine: “I don’t think a baby is more distracting than talk about Dancing with the Stars or your weekend.” Indeed, proponents point to studies purporting to show an overall productivity increase when parents are allowed to bring their babies to work under certain well-defined guidelines.
On the gun front, most of the debate centers around a recently enacted Florida statute that will make it unlawful for employers to prohibit employees from bringing guns to work. Effective July 1 — absent some last-minute political or legal wrangling — Florida employees will be allowed to keep guns locked in their vehicles on company property.
We wanted to find out what you — America’s foremost workplace experts — think about these hot issues. So, here’s this week’s question:
