Author Archive - Lisa Stam, Spring Law

Lisa Stam is founder of Spring Law, a virtual law firm advising exclusively on workplace legal issues for employers and executives. She practices all aspects of employment, labour, privacy, and human rights law, with a particular interest in legal issues arising from technology in the workplace. Lisa’s practice includes a wide range of entrepreneurs in the tech space, as well as global companies with smaller operations in Canada. In addition to the day to day workplace issues from hiring to firing, Lisa frequently blogs and speaks on both the impact, risks and opportunities of social media and technology issues in (and out of) the workplace, as well as the novel ways in which changing expectations of privacy continues to evolve employment law. Read more here.

Ministry of Labour inspections

October 9, 2019 Lisa Stam, Spring Law Employee Relations, Employment/Labour Standards, Health and Safety, Human Resources, Payroll, Penalties and Fines, Pensions and Benefits, Wages and Compensation, 0

The Ministry of Labour has been busy implementing its Healthy and Safe Ontario Workplaces Strategy. Introduced by the previous Wynne government, the initiative has focused on small Ontario industrial businesses. A small business is one with fewer than 50 workers.

employment law, employment standards violations, Ministry of Labour, occupational health and safety act, Payment of wages, termination pay

All about overtime

September 11, 2019 Lisa Stam, Spring Law Employee Relations, Employment/Labour Standards, Human Resources, Payroll, Wages and Compensation, 2

Despite many workplaces that are trying hard to keep work hours reasonable and limit them to 40 hours per week, in busy workplaces, overtime is very often inevitable – at least once in awhile.

employment law, lieu time, overtime exemption, overtime hours, overtime pay

Workplace data theft – Protect your company with best practices

August 8, 2019 Lisa Stam, Spring Law Employee Relations, HR Policies and Procedures, Human Resources, Privacy and Security, 0

The Capital One Data Breach has been big news lately, and for good reason. It’s a big deal. This breach compromised the data of over 100 million Capital One customers. Instead of a shadowy overseas hacker or a creepy crawler from the dark web, the hacker was a former employee of the cloud hosting company through which Capital One stored their data.

Capital One data breach, data governance, data theft, employment law, Personal Health Information Protection Act, personal information, Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, PHIPA, privacy compliance practices, private data storage

Accommodating addictions

July 10, 2019 Lisa Stam, Spring Law Employee Relations, Health and Safety, HR Policies and Procedures, Human Resources, Human Rights, 0

A labour arbitration decision out of Nova Scotia has got us thinking about what will qualify as addiction and justify accommodation in the work setting.

disability accommodation, duty to accommodate, employment law

Requiring agility – How much can an employer change job duties?

June 5, 2019 Lisa Stam, Spring Law Employee Relations, Human Resources, Notice, Damages and Settlements, Payroll, Recruiting and Hiring, Training and Development, 0

How flexible can employers expect their employees to be when it comes to having their roles and duties changed? And how important are these promises of agility in the employment contract?

constructive dismissal, employment law, job description, job duties, job flexibility

Fired by a robot!

May 8, 2019 Lisa Stam, Spring Law Employee Relations, Employment/Labour Standards, HR and Technology, Human Resources, Human Rights, 0

We have truly reached an age where people and robots are working together and where robots are effectively performing an HR function. HR, unlike a self-checkout or an assembly line robot, is something we normally think of as a soft, people only skill!

accommodation to the point of undue hardship, efficient and effective workforce, employment law, production or efficiency, robots, termination

Let’s talk ergonomics!

April 3, 2019 Lisa Stam, Spring Law Employee Relations, Health and Safety, Human Resources, 0

You may be scratching your head at our title. What’s ergonomics got to do with law? Maybe even asking, what the heck is ergonomics? Well in this post we will answer both of those questions and tell you why workplace ergonomics should be on the radar of employees and employers alike.

employment law, ergonomics, Occupational Health and Safety Acts, working conditions

Whose device is it anyway?

March 6, 2019 Lisa Stam, Spring Law Employee Relations, HR and Technology, HR Policies and Procedures, Human Resources, 0

Many workplaces have adapted to the fluid use of technology and encourage their employees to use their own technology at work through bring your own device (BYOD) policies.

bring your own device, BYOD policies, employment law, remote work arrangements, technology

Rise of the machines in the workplace

February 6, 2019 Lisa Stam, Spring Law Employee Relations, HR and Technology, Human Resources, Notice, Damages and Settlements, Payroll, Recruiting and Hiring, Training and Development, 0

Is your workplace about to be automated? A recent study by McKinsey & Company suggests that about half of the activities (not jobs) carried out by workers could be automated right now with currently available technologies.

AI, artificial intelligence, automated, automation, employment law, machines in the workplace, technology

Costs and legal tech

January 9, 2019 Lisa Stam, Spring Law HR and Technology, Human Resources, Notice, Damages and Settlements, Payroll, 0

At SpringLaw we love legal tech and consequently a few recent cost decisions have caught our eye. In both Cass v. 1410088 Ontario Inc. (“Cass”) and Drummond v. The Cadillac Fairview Corp. Ltd. (“Drummond”) justices of the Ontario Superior Court made comments about artificial intelligence and legal research.

artificial intelligence, employment law, legal research, legal tech

Cannabis at the office holiday party

December 11, 2018 Lisa Stam, Spring Law Employee Relations, Health and Safety, HR Policies and Procedures, Human Resources, 1

The season of the office holiday party is upon us! In addition to merriment, this time of year can bring a lot of risk for employers. And there’s a new risk this year.

alcohol and cannabis impairment, alcohol and drug use in the workplace, cannabis, employer-sponsored events, employer-sponsored social event, employment law, holiday office party, holiday party, office party

Even robots are a little bit racist: Al bias in recruitment

November 14, 2018 Lisa Stam, Spring Law Employee Relations, HR and Technology, HR Policies and Procedures, Human Resources, Human Rights, Recruiting and Hiring, 0

How would you like to perform only the most high-level and uniquely human elements of your job? Are your skills really best utilized on data entry, rote memorization and pushing paper? Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises to delegate all the drudgery of your job to machines while freeing you up to mingle with clients on the golf course and answer phone calls from your private yacht in the Adriatic Sea.

Al bias, employment law, hiring, recruitment

To google or not to google? Candidate background checks

October 10, 2018 Lisa Stam, Spring Law Human Resources, Human Rights, Recruiting and Hiring

In the information age it’s usually relatively easy to find out all about someone by doing a simple Google search. The burning question of online daters, “do I google my date before the date?” applies equally to employers. Can, and should, an employer background check a candidate? If so when? And how deep can and should they go?

background checks, employment law, human rights code, protected grounds of discrimination

Legislating the right to disconnect

September 12, 2018 Lisa Stam, Spring Law Employee Relations, Employment/Labour Standards, Health and Safety, HR Policies and Procedures, Human Resources, Payroll, Wages and Compensation

In France, the right to disconnect was enshrined in law in 2017. French workers in companies of more than 50 people have the right to turn off their work devices outside of working hours. Will Canada follow that path?

Canada labour Code, employee burnout, employment law, flexible schedules, flexible work hours, flexible working conditions, Ontario Bill 148, overtime pay claims, right to disconnect

When key employees leave

August 8, 2018 Lisa Stam, Spring Law Employee Relations, HR Policies and Procedures, Human Resources, Payroll

The departure of a key employee can create uncertainty and destabilize the rest of the office, let alone impact the value of the company if the key employee is particularly high profile. Employers should have a plan in place to provide the right messaging to employees.

employment law, Exit Interviews, key employees, non-competition agreements, non-solicitation agreements, reasonable notice, termination