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HIV/AIDS and the Multinational Organization
It wasn’t long ago that an AIDS diagnosis was a death sentence, and the ethical choices for HR departments revolved around palliative care and death benefits. Thankfully, those days are gone, at least for most. Now the ethical choice is about the standards of care and support organizations want to provide, for which employees worldwide, and for how long. “There has been an uptick with those employed that have HIV/AIDS” as the disease has become more chronic than fatal, said Randy Vogenberg of the Institute for Integrated Healthcare. However, whether someone can continue working still depends upon drug therapy, workplace accommodations, and employee education. In most countries, standards are not specifically mandated, leaving employers to choose the level of support to offer. “It’s not a question of whether a business is going to be confronted with this,” labor law attorney Peter Petesch says. “It’s a question of how soon.”
By current estimates, more than 1.18 million people in the United States and 34 million people globally live with HIV. Two-thirds of HIV infections are in sub-Saharan Africa, and more than 95 percent of infected individuals live in developing countries. Worldwide, there is little consistency in the approach to the problem. Few U.S. companies have specific HIV/AIDS policies, for example, and although benefit plans cover the illness, employees’ out of-pocket costs for the expensive drug therapy can range significantly. HIV/AIDS treatment is available in Europe through the national health care system. Some larger African companies run clinics where national health care or insurance is insufficient, but not all companies offer insurance. In India and China, insurers do not cover HIV/AICS, so companies need to consider separate employee reimbursement to match their intentions for coverage.
When it comes to HIV/AIDS, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, or more literally, dramatic corporate savings. Recent research found that the investment companies spent on preventing the disease from spreading and on treating infected employees saved money and lives. HR initiatives like providing peer educators to teach employees about prevention and accommodation, free counseling services, free Voluntary testing, and well-being monitoring have been effective worldwide.
“Nobody needs to die of this disease anymore,” said jenni Gillies, head of business development for beer brewer SABMiller, which has 70,000 employees in 75 countries and is committed to helping to eradicate HIV/AIDS through employee education and support. But there are costs and responsibilities associated with each decision about the level of care to support or supply, and how fan other employee needs will be a constant question. Some organizations may conclude that governments and other systems are responsible for the care of citizens. It’s a tough call. Meanwhile, individual managers can assist in preventing discrimination and encouraging education.
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Sources: J. Mooney, “People with HIV and AIDS: Living and Working Longer”, HR Magazine (June 2012), pp. 41-44; SABMiller corporate website, “Inside View” page, www.insideview.com/directory/sabmiller-plc, www.who.int/immunization/topics/hiv/en/index1.html, accessed 18, 2013.
Organizational culture. Policies differ from benefits in that they provide the guidelines for behavior, not just the working conditions, In our example of working mothers with infant children, a company might provide a benefit of a special break room for mothers of young children, but a policy is needed to outline the expectation for conduct. May mothers elect to feed their babies in other places in the facility, or only in the break room? What timing is acceptable? Where can collected breast mike be stored? Establishing policies to address potential questions can help minimize confusion and awkwardness for all employee.
The lactation case is an example of a potential benefit and policy combination that will ensure employees recognize the benefit as an employer’s aid to their well-being while understanding how and where to use it. However, any policy must have enforcement to be effective. Human resource managers are responsible for setting the organizational consequences of infractions and often for enforcing policies as well.
Sometimes, human resource managers will need to take action even when the employee’s direct manager may not agree, especially if compliance with the
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Law is at issue. For example, many companies in the entertainment, nonprofit, Publishing, and marketing industries use unpaid post-college interns, who are Supposed to receive on-the-job experience as compensation. The Labor Department stipulates that interns who are unpaid must be provided a vocational education experience and that their work cannot profit the employer. Interns report getting stuck doing menial tasks an employer would need to pay someone else to do. If these companies want to continue using unpaid interns, human resource managers need to set policies that clarify the assignments supervisors can give and then ensure the policies are followed. Otherwise, their organizations will face lawsuits like the one from Eric Glatt, an intern on the movie Black Swan, who is suing for minimum wage violations. A judge in the U.S. District Court recently ruled that he was improperly catalogued as an intern.