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Leading up to 2025, major companies like Amazon and JPMorgan did away with remote work altogether, requiring employees to return to the office five days a weeka departure from the more flexible policies that had been popularized after the pandemic. Even as they contend with a lack of workspace and complaints from workers, employers have pushed forward with the return to office. Many employees treated it as a suggestion, Chris Moran, an employment lawyer at Troutman Pepper Locke, says of early RTO policies. That was something I dont know that employers saw comingthat a significant percentage of employees felt so strongly that they preferred to work remotely and were willing to sort of ignore [mandates]. Some employers seemingly responded by upping the ante, making office attendance a factor in performance reviews or tying it to eligibility for promotions. Others have moved ahead with more stringent policies, eliminating their hybrid work policy altogether and forcing employees to return to the office five days a week. As Trumps administration imposes strict RTO mandates for the federal workforce, however, its possible the private sector will feel even more emboldened to embrace punitive measures to ensure employees comply with their in-office requirements. Now, with whats going on in the federal government, theres perhaps a little more cover for an employer to take the approach that they really mean it this time, Moran says. At the same time, however, enforcing RTO mandates can present a minefield for employersand not just when it comes to morale or worker discontent. The shift back into the office brings with it the risk of renewed employment litigation, or at least a return to the type of legal action that might have been more common prior to the pandemic. Workplace harassment During the pandemic, there were many reports that workplace harassment and other misconduct had not disappeared in the era of remote work but had simply migrated online. As virtual communication became the norm, this kind of inappropriate behavior cropped up not just in video interactions or phone calls, but also via Slack and across other digital platforms. Still, the number of harassment complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission did drop at the height of the pandemic, in both 2020 and 2021 (though those figures dont account for state-level complaints). As employees return to the office in full force, however, it could open the door for more incidents of traditional harassment and sex discrimination, according to Lisa Koblin, an employment lawyer at Saul Ewing. The more people are interacting togetherespecially if there is work-related travel or work-related functions that are offsite or involve alcoholthe more likely we are to see those claims pop up, she says. Employers should, of course, already have clear policies in place around workplace harassment and misconduct, especially given many of them have been back in the office in some capacity for years at this point. But Koblin says its important for companies to revise their policies and training sessions year after year, even if it might seem basic. Disability accommodations Since companies started calling employees back to the office, experts have noted that the RTO push could disproportionately hurt workers who benefited most from remote work, particularly those who are disabled or neurodiverse. While employers will likely continue to provide accommodations to workers with disabilities, the bar might be higher in workplaces that are requiring all employees to return to the office. In fact, disabled workers at Amazon have said their exemptions to work from home were denied, and according to a Bloomberg report, the company has implemented a more stringent process for approving disability accommodations. (In a statement to Bloomberg, Amazon said the changes were part of its “broader return-to-office philosophy.” A spokesperson for the company added, “When in-person accommodations are needed, well provide them, and in some cases, offer an exception to working from the office.) Vincent White, an employment lawyer who represents plaintiffs in discrimination and harassment cases, says his firm is currently working on about 50 different cases that are related to accommodations that have been dialed back amid the return to office. Moran believes its likely that private sector employers will continue to see a spike in disability discrimination claimssomething he observed when academic institutions started asking teachers to return to the classroom in the aftermath of the pandemic. There was a spike in the number of people who said, I have a disability, and a reasonable accommodation is working from home, and good luck proving that it’s not a reasonable accommodation because we just did it for two years, he says. I would expect that will happen again in other private settings, as well. Other employment discrimination But its not just disability-based employment claims that might be on the rise. What we’re hearing a lot of right now is: We want everybody back, Moran says. That has the ease of saying, well, unless you have a disability, we don’t have to deal with making exceptions, one way or the other. The reality, however, is that there are always exceptions to these policiesas was the case prior to the pandemic, when certain workers were allowed to work from home occasionally or even secured permanent remote arrangements. Even as companies lean into RTO, it is becoming clear that the strictest of policies can be sidestepped by top performers and star employees who have more leverage to negotiate. Depending on how companies enforce these mandates, granting exemptions to certain workers and not others could invite more legal claims from employees whose requests are denied, a group that could include caregivers who are seeking flexibility to manage elder care or young children. Koblin has said that in her experience, employers tend to allow these arrangements for certain types of workers. I find that most of the time when there is a shift to return to work but there’s exceptions for some remote work, it’s usuallytied to a disability-related accommodation, she says. Or there are certain cases where someone has moved across the country, and their position is so critical that they’re willing to make an exception for that person. Still, employers who base performance reviews or promotions on office attendance can run the risk of punishing disabled workers or others who have successfully secured exemptions. The implication of not carefully evaluating that type of policy would be that you could inadvertently discriminate against certain people who are not physically able to come to the office, or who need to stay home to take care of a sick family member, or something of that nature, Koblin says. Some employers seem to have opted for a blanket policy that leaves little room for flexibility or exemptionsperhaps in part to steer clear of the legal issues that might arise over inconsistent enforcement. But Koblin argues that its in many employers best interest to offer some flexibility. I think the key is clarity and consistency in terms of: What is your culture, and what are you really expecting from your employees? she says. Everybody has something going on, in some way, shape, or form, and people are going to talk and understand how their coworkers are being treated and what exceptions have been made for them. Generally, unless policies are being abused, I counsel clients to think about how they can strike that balance between appropriate flexibility while ensuring that work gets done.
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Compassion comes easily to me. As the granddaughter of immigrants from Lithuania and Poland who spoke little English, I understand what its like to be treated as a stranger in America. As a journalist, I covered stories of war and trauma in the 1990s, including the crushing of Chinese protests in Tiananmen Square and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, followed by the Soviet Unions collapse two years later. I covered the war between Iraq and Iran. I witnessed ethnic strife in South Africa and the toll poverty takes in Mexico. As a professor of cultural engagement and public diplomacy, I have watched and studied how compassion can help build and strengthen civil society. And having worked in senior levels of the U.S. government for Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama on international conflict resolution, I have learned that compassion is a key ingredient of peacemaking. Especially now, as President Donald Trump seeks to deport millions of immigrants living in the U.S. without authorization and to stop funding the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has long spent billions of dollars a year helping the worlds poorest people, compassion seems lacking among U.S. leaders. Perhaps that all explains my curiosity about a new study on the state of compassion in Americapart of the glue that holds communities together. Defining compassion Sociologists define compassion as the human regard for the suffering of others, and the notion of using action to alleviate this pain. The report that caught my eye was issued in January 2025 by the Muhammad Ali Center, which the late boxer cofounded 20 years ago in Louisville, Kentucky, to advance social justice. As the Ali Center explains, compassion starts with the individualself-care and personal wellness. It then radiates out to the wider community in the form of action and engagement. You can see compassion at work in the actions of a Pasadena, California, girl, who started a donation hub for teens affected by fires that ripped through the Los Angeles region in early 2025. She began collecting sports bras, hair ties, and fashionable sweaters, helping hundreds of her peers begin to recover from their losses in material and emotional ways. Its also visible in the estimated 6.8 million people in the U.S. who donate blood each year, according to the American Red Cross. Were grateful to blood donors across the country who generously give to help patients in need.Severe winter weather and wildfires have impacted our blood supply since the new year, and we appreciate everyone who has made, kept and rescheduled their blood donation appointments pic.twitter.com/TperMufpjq— American Red Cross (@RedCross) January 24, 2025 Resilience in America While Ali is best known for his battles in the ring and his outspoken political views, he also helped those in need in the U.S. and other countries through large charitable donations and his participation in United Nations missions to countries like Afghanistan, where he helped deliver millions of meals to hungry people. The researchers who worked on the Ali Center report interviewed more than 5,000 U.S. adults living in 12 cities in 2024 in order to learn more about the prevalence of compassionate behaviors such as charitable giving, volunteering and assisting others in their recovery from disasters. They found that the desire to help others still animates many Americans despite the nations current polarization and divisive politics. The center has created an index it calls the net compassion score. It approximates the degree to which Americans give their time and money to programs and activities that nurture and strengthen their communities. Cities with high compassion scores have more community engagement and civic participation than those with low scores. A higher-scoring community performs better when it comes to things like public housing and mental health resources, for example. Its residents report more career opportunities, better communications between local government and citizens, more community programs, and more optimism around economic development where they live. The report provides some clues as to what drives compassionate behavior in a city: a sense of spirituality, good education, decent healthcare, resources for activities like sports, and opportunities to engage in local politics. All told, Americans rate their country as a 9 on a scale that runs from minus 100 to 100. The report also identified some troubling obstacles that stand in the way of what it calls self-compassionmeaning how volunteers and donors treat their own mental and physical health. Frequent struggles with self-care can lead to rising levels of isolation and loneliness. From left: Jeni Stepanek, chair of the Muhammad Ali Index; Lonnie Ali, cofounder and vice chair of the Muhammad Ali Center; and DeVone Holt, the centers president and CEO, at the launch of the Muhammad Ali Index on January 16, 2025 [Photo: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Muhammad Ali Center] Doubting their own capacity The 2025 Compassion Reports findings show that many Americans still want to live in a compassionate country but also that Americans view the country as less compassionate today than four years ago. The report delves into gaps in compassion. About one-third of those interviewed acknowledged that there are groups toward whom they feel less compassionate toward, such as people who have been convicted of crimes, immigrants living in the U.S. without authorization, and the rich. Only 29% said they feel compassion toward everyone. The report also identifies gender gaps. Despite expressing greater awareness of systemic challenges, the women surveyed reported less self-compassion than men. Its not the first compassion study ever done. But I believe that this one is unique due to its focus on specific cities, and how it assessed limits on the compassion some people feel toward certain groups. Helping health and humanity The Compassion Institute, another nonprofit, seeks to weave compassion training into healthcare education to create a more caring and humanitarian world. It cites the benefits of compassion for human beings, with everything from reducing stress to alleviating the effects of disease on the mind and body. Academic institutions, including Stanford University, have conducted many studies on how teaching compassion can guide healthcare professionals to both treat patients better and achieve better outcomes. A team of Emory University researchers examined how training people to express more compassion can reduce stress hormones levels, triggering positive brain responses that improve immune responses. Offering an advantage Although there are plenty of adorable videos of dogs and cats behaving kindly with each other or their human companions, historically compassion has differentiated humans from animals. Human beings possess powers of emotional reasoning that give us an edge. Scholars are still working to discover how much of human compassion is rooted in emotional reasoning. Another factor theyve identified is the aftermath of trauma. Studies have found evidence that it can increase empathy later on. You might imagine that in a world of hurt, theres a deficit of compassion for others. But the Ali Centers report keeps alive the notion that Americans remain compassionate people who want to help others. My experiences around the world and within the U.S. have taught me that human beings both have the power to be violent and destructive. But despite it all, there is, within all of us, the innate ability and desire to be compassionate. That is a net positive for our country. Tara Sonenshine is an Edward R. Murrow professor of practice in public diplomacy at Tufts University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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James Chappel is an associate professor of history at Duke University and a senior fellow at the Duke Aging Center. He is the author of Catholic Modern, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, and The New Republic. Whats the big idea? Aging in America is becoming one of our countrys most important policy arenas. With more old citizens than young ones, the relevance of elder members in society has never been greater. Despite great progress in the quality of old age over the past century, there is much need for growth in terms of practical policy and cultural perceptions. Below, Chappel shares five key insights from his new book, Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age. Listen to the audio versionread by Chappel himselfin the Next Big Idea App. 1. Population aging is one of the biggest historical transformations of our time. We think about population aging as an issue for medicine and finance, but we dont usually think about it historically. From the broadest perspective, population aging is one of the biggest changes that has happened to American society in the past century. Many people think of politics, iPhones, or AI when considering dramatic societal change, but those things matter less than major demographic changes. Human life is not what it was a century agoits twice as long!and that deserves much more attention. 2. Weve only been seriously contemplating population aging for a century. Most of the major things we deal with as a society (education, politics, health, war, gender) are topics we have publicly debated for centuries. We have reflected long and hard on many subjects, but no one really paid attention to population aging until about the 1930s. Even people thinking very hard about social reform and progress, like Karl Marx, werent thinking about aging at all. So, aging is an issue that has a pretty short history. What to do with old age and how to pay for old age are areas of reflection with a lot of space open for creativity. Its an exciting, vibrant, fresh avenue for collective contemplation. 3. There have been many different approaches to aging. We often think of aging as something nonideological. Education is ideological, and the military is ideological, so we have robust public debate about the meaning of these things. But old age is kind of like, well, you get Social Security and Medicare, and we dont want to think about it too much beyond that. Old age is in a moment of ideological stasis. But for most of the past century, theres been much debate about what it means to age well: socially, politically, and justly. There has been socialist aging, conservative aging, green or eco-conscious aging, etc. One tradition I look at is critical race theory. From that perspective, the history of aging looks quite different. There actually was a robust tradition of Black thought about aging. A lot of inspiring Black leaders said, essentially, that racism and prejudice follow Americans through the whole course of life. Older Black Americans have all kinds of negative outcomes, and Black activists suggested specific reforms to bring the insights of the Civil Rights Movement into old age politics and policy. We need to reinvigorate and repoliticize old age. We should remember how political and divisive it was (and therefore, how exciting it was) to debate old age just a few decades ago. 4. 20th-century solutions to old age are very good. Historians are often quite down on American history. They tend to focus on the persistence of inequality, violence, or disenfranchisement. But when it comes to old age, the situation is much better than it was a century ago. A century ago, older people often lived in squalor, in one-room shacks with dirt floors. There were only a few elders because public health was so bad. Now, older people are quite economically privileged, and they have access to the best poverty reduction program in the country, which is social security. Theyre the only age bracket with something like socialized medicine through Medicare. Theres a lot to be grateful for as aging Americans, but theres also a lot left to be done. There are failures in old-age policy, especially for people over 80, the old old. Issues of frailty, nursing home care, and things like that. Many American middle-aged couples, especially women, are financially or emotionally devastated by caring for older relatives. This is a result of a policy decision that could have been approached differently. There were approaches on the table that would have lessened the burden on unpaid caretakers, and it is not too late. When we think historically about old age, its important that we tell an optimistic story. Im excited to get old. There will be way more social programs for me when Im 65 than I have available to me now. But theres also room for growth, especially in dealing with policy for the old old. Nursing homes and extended care will be the most important policy arenas in the near future. 5. Getting old is an adventure. Old age in America can be very good. It can be very fun. You have access to so much when it comes to opportunities for leisure and health. But what I mean by the adventure of old age is a bit different. As Americans, we tend to believe that we make our biggest contributions as citizens when were young, that politics is a young persons game: green energy, Black Lives Matter, and other movements are for younger people, and old people can step back. I think that is absolutely not true. That is a completely outdated way to think about American politics. I think the age of youth has eclipsed. There are more older people in America than younger ones. The decisions we make about how to age and think about old age policy will matter now more than ever. Being provocative, I might even say that decisions about aging are going to matter more than decisions about youth because I think the age of the youth is over. Theres been a major demographic transition in this country and many others. As we age, we should not think of ourselves as becoming less relevant. We should think of ourselves as becoming more relevant. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
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