Seminar: The Rise of Harassment, Accommodations, and Retaliation Concerns...

Description

North Star SHRM will be hosting a seminar titled: The Rise of Harassment, Accommodations, and Retaliation Concerns and How to Mitigate Risks in the #metoo Era.  It will be held at Great River Energy (17845 East Highway 10, Elk River) on Wednesday, June 12, 2019 from 8 am to 9:30 am. All North Star SHRM members are invited to attend.  In addition, all Elk River, Monticello, and I-94 West Chamber members are invited to attend.  There is no cost to attend.
The target audience for this seminar is HR professionals and any small business owners.  The impact of the #metoo era has been felt throughout our society, perhaps nowhere more legally importantly than in the labor and employment realm.  The class will describe the current labor and employment law landscape with the rise of EEOC charges of harassment and retaliation and the increase of reasonable accommodation requests and how these topics can sometimes be interconnected.  We will explore the trends in these areas and the direction the law is moving.
The class will provide best practices to mitigate the risks of claims against your organization and provide tools to address these claims and requests when they arise within your organization.  You will learn about your obligations to engage in the interactive process and what that means in a practical every day sense.  We will go through several hypotheticals wherein the audience will be asked to participate and engage.
Objectives are:

• Identify potential legal issues related to harassment and retaliation, with a focus on sexual harassment in the #metoo era.
• Adopt techniques to mitigate risks related to harassment and retaliation.
• Learn how to engage in the interactive process and provide reasonable accommodations.

This seminar will be presented by Matt Tews, a Partner at Stinson LLP. 
Matt Tews, first and foremost is a business partner who focuses on labor and employment law.  For many businesses, the best employment litigation is the employment litigation that never happens.  Litigation, while sometimes unavoidable, is time consuming and stressful.  As a business partner, Matt advises clients on the full range of employment issues to help stop problems that can lead to litigation before they start.  As an employment counselor, Matt advises on hiring and firing, leaves, discipline, investigations, reductions-in-force, mom-competition and non-solicitation agreements, and other complex employment issues under constantly evolving federal and state labor laws.
 
Matt is a traditional labor law practitioner, helping both unionized and nonunionized employers navigate the National Labor Relations Act.  Matt is an experienced and aggressive litigator.  He helps businesses prepare for and handle complex employment litigation.  He has handled the full range of employment litigation matters for clients, including FLSA wage and hour collective actions, whistleblower, retaliation, discrimination, and wrongful termination claims.
 
Matt is frequent speaker on labor and employment topics; former law clerk to Lori Gildea, Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court; graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School and the University of St. Thomas, where he was a pitcher on the baseball team.