What was your first career? You’ll NEVER guess Joanmarie’s. We were blown away and you will be too. Tune in as we talk about things going on in the employment law landscape, as well as what Joanmarie has experienced with her businesses (related to the HR community). Yes, we’re old pals who’ve seen a lot together, but we promise you’ll enjoy the stories we’re about to get into.

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About Joanmarie

Joanmarie quickly learned that the most interesting legal work of all is employment law - and she’s never looked back. In starting her own practice in 2010, Joanmarie combined her passion for employment law with her enthusiasm for technology, efficiency, and collaboration. Dowling Law is (nearly) a paperless office.

Joanmarie advises and represents for-profit and not-for-profit employers of all sizes in a variety of labor and employment matters, including screening and hiring, discrimination and harassment, reasonable accommodations, leave management, unionization and labor relations, wage and hour, and discipline and discharge. 

Dowling Law focuses on being preventative: creating solid handbooks, policies, and procedures, training managers and supervisors, and strategizing on employee relations in a way to reduce the risk of legal liability.   

Joanmarie’s goal - whether presenting before an audience or speaking with a client - is to make employment law accessible. Not to brag, but she was once described as “making wage/hour presentations as tolerable as possible.” (Pretty high praise, right?)  She is a frequent presenter and writer on a variety of employment issues.  

In addition to proactive counseling, Joanmarie also conducts workplace investigations on a wide array of legal or policy violation allegations, including workplace discrimination and harassment, code of conduct or ethical violations, bullying, or other alleged misconduct. Joanmarie is a trained investigator and member of the Association of Workplace Investigators.

From the Podcast

Shari Harley is a great start for HR professionals looking to coach supervisors on providing just-in-time feedback. We're huge Shari Harley fans, so we recommend you visit her YouTube channel where she has videos that anyone can use to get started on better feedback discussions. 

And, we can't not include a Ted Lasso clip. In this scene, Ted is working with his assistant coach when Nate, the kit man, comes into the office to take out the trash. While this scene is accessible to anyone, you have to watch the series to really understand the complexities of the relationship between Ted and Nate! 

Joanmarie M. Dowling, Esq.

Managing Member, Dowling Law, PLLC 

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Dowling Law, PLLC website  

Clarity HR Solutions LLC website

Sign up for legal updates from Dowling Law  

Sign up for "Moment of Clarity," Clarity HR Solutions' HR update 

Voiceover: Welcome to HR in the Car with Miriam Dushane and Tom Schin of Alaant Workforce Solutions, where exciting HR professionals and business leaders share laughter, insider stories, and maybe even a few tears about HR in today's world. Buckle up for the best half hour of your week.

Tom Schin: I think our next guest is the first employment attorney I ever met when getting into this field.

Miriam Dushane: First of all, she's a dear friend of mine. I love her immensely, and she gives great support for our office at Alaant. For that, I'm always eternally grateful. The thing I've always loved about her is her dry wit, sarcasm, and sense of humor. It just cracks me up. I'm so excited to have her join us today.

Tom Schin: You never see it coming.

Miriam Dushane: Nope, you don't.

Tom Schin: Let's listen into Joanmarie Dowling joining us on HR in the Car.

Miriam Dushane: Joanmarie, welcome.

Joanmarie Dowling: Thank you.

Miriam Dushane: I'm so glad that you have joined us today. You, of course, are one of my favorite people.

Tom Schin: Mine too.

Joanmarie Dowling: Thank you, back at ya.

Miriam Dushane: We've known each other, hell, 15 plus years.

Joanmarie Dowling: It's probably almost 20.

Miriam Dushane: I think so too, not that we're aging ourselves at all.

Joanmarie Dowling: No.

Miriam Dushane: No, not at all.

Joanmarie Dowling: We were infants when we were-

Miriam Dushane: Definitely.

Tom Schin: 13.

Miriam Dushane: Somebody said to me the other day, something about, "Oh, so you started when you were four?" I'm like, "That's right. I was gifted."

Tom Schin: The Mozart of recruiting.

Miriam Dushane: Exactly.

Joanmarie Dowling: There you go.

Miriam Dushane: Joanmarie, tell us what you do. If you're at a cocktail party, what you can tell the obvious, "I'm a labor attorney." But do you have any fun with it? When you're at a social event, when people ask, "It's nice to meet you. What do you do?"

Joanmarie Dowling: It's really funny because you said a cocktail party, so I'm assuming this is not in a professional event.

Miriam Dushane: No.

Joanmarie Dowling: But I'm actually known in our office for picking up business in the weirdest places. One of the weirdest places where I picked up a client was at a funeral.

Miriam Dushane: Tell us more please.

Joanmarie Dowling: I was-

Tom Schin: I want to laugh, I really do.

Miriam Dushane: I know. It's terrible, and it's wonderful.

Joanmarie Dowling: To be fair, it wasn't just me. But I was talking with someone in the line, actually. It was right before the funeral. They had the wake beforehand, and we were standing and talking about how we knew the deceased. I mentioned I was an attorney and the decedent was as well. We just got to chatting, and I got a business card. Actually I got two, but one was a professional contact of a different type.

Miriam Dushane: It's not like you were passing out business cards at a car crash funeral or anything like that.

Joanmarie Dowling: No, no, no. I don't want my face on a bus. I'm not doing anything along those lines.

Tom Schin: I'm just wondering about the guilt that's going back and forth during this conversation, "Should I, shouldn't I?"

Joanmarie Dowling: Here's the thing though, and I'll be delicate, but the decedent was very much a networker, and I think that they would've been very touched by the fact that-

Miriam Dushane: Networking was going on.

Joanmarie Dowling: It was continuing to happen. It's the cycle of life. If you wind up being- Hopefully, this is a long time off, and maybe you'll be retired by then, but if you're at my funeral or wake and a business opportunity presents itself, I'm just telling you, "You're all good."

Tom Schin: We have the green light?

Joanmarie Dowling: Absolutely.

Tom Schin: Bring some business cards.

Joanmarie Dowling: I can imagine I'm probably the first guest that's given you that kind of express permission.

Tom Schin: This is a new networking tips.

Miriam Dushane: I've not ever gotten a ways to network a professional event, an association, a chamber event, funeral.

Joanmarie Dowling: There is always opportunity out there. That's one of the reasons why I really became an entrepreneur. I started Dowling Law 11 years ago. It's a boutique firm. 11 years, I know, it's hard to imagine. Then really during the pandemic, we launched Clarity HR Solutions, which is an HR consulting group. I really think of myself as an entrepreneur. That's really who I am at my core, and I just happen to do that as an employment law and HR strategist. That's really what we do. We help our clients to develop policies and processes, employee relations strategies throughout the employee life cycle from recruiting, screening, and hiring all the way through determination of employment. We represent entities that get sued or who have administrative complaints like the EEOC, New York State, or US Department of Labor. But that's really what we do.

Miriam Dushane: Or protect people from having those complaints and those lawsuits brought up against them. If the employer is smart, aka Alaant calls Joan Marie often just to say, "All right, we might have a situation coming. Please advise us now so that we don't do it wrong, then have to be calling you going, 'We F'ed up, help.'"

Joanmarie Dowling: Sure. That's really where we love to be, if I'm being honest. We really like to work with organizations from the very beginning to help. No organization can avoid a claim altogether just through preventative work, I don't think. But we are, I think, able to really reduce those, and now also to help organizations get in and out more quickly. When you have good processes, policies, procedures, you can show the agencies that you're really a good actor. It really does help a lot.

Miriam Dushane: Absolutely.

Joanmarie Dowling: For sure.

Tom Schin: Talk to us a little bit more about the clarity piece. You said you started that around the pandemic, and how that's going for you, what sort of things you're seeing on that front, most challenging or interesting things? Wink, wink, nod, nod. Give us a story.

Joanmarie Dowling: Oh, goodness. One of the reasons why I really wanted to start Clarity is because of our focus, Dowling on being really proactive. We found a lot of clients were coming to us, they were looking for that preventative support. I think a lot of organizations really struggle in HR. It's a really sophisticated thing. It touches a lot of different areas. A lot of organizations don't really understand what it can bring. We really wanted to bring a strategic element to that. In our hiring, we look for folks who have a little bit more experience who can really help bring that to the table. Really, ultimately the challenge is making sure that you have the kind of strategic assistance that you need even if you only have an HR party of one. I have to say, with Clarity being as new as it is, we don't have any salacious stories so much. We've been developing a lot of policies and procedures and-

Miriam Dushane: To avoid them.

Joanmarie Dowling: All of those things. Right, maybe to avoid some of those things. A lot of training as well. But we're really excited about it because having the law firm and the HR consulting business allows the lawyers to be lawyers and the HR consultants to be HR consultants. I think there's so much pressure on HR consultants to be essentially legal compliance officers. They don't get to do some of the things that they really need and want to do. I think that's one of the reasons why we're seeing employee relations issues just front page all the time in these stories with unionization, Me Too, remote work challenges, and all of these different things. I think part of it is because HR has had to be so focused on legal compliance, it hasn't had an opportunity really to think about as much of some of the HR strategies of investing in people, understanding your culture, and developing the kind of culture that you're looking for. We're excited to have both together. Although, I will say some of our legal clients work with different HR consulting businesses, and some of our HR consultant clients work with other law firms. We like that as well. It keeps everything fresh.

Miriam Dushane: I had no freaking clue when I was in high school what the hell I wanted to be when I grew up. I had no path. It's not for being flighty or just whatever, I hadn't been exposed to things that excited me at that point in my life. Did you always want to be an attorney, or how did you get into this field?

Joanmarie Dowling: It's funny, I always joke, and I think you'll all appreciate this, that a lot of people pick their careers using the Sesame Street model, "Who are the people in your neighborhood?"

Miriam Dushane: Oh my God, yes.

Tom Schin: Now the song's stuck in my head.

Miriam Dushane: I say that all the time.

Joanmarie Dowling: Right. Who are the people in my neighborhood? I have an aunt whose name is Joanmarie, and she's an attorney. I have other family members, some who are in the military service, folks who are doing varieties of different things. We have a lot of folks who are priests and religious in our family. Naturally, I decided to become a nun. I got as far as-

Miriam Dushane: Are you serious?

Joanmarie Dowling: I am dead serious.

Miriam Dushane: I thought you were joking. You were serious, you were going to be a nun?

Joanmarie Dowling: I was actually-

Miriam Dushane: Shut up.

Joanmarie Dowling: I was actually just a step before a pre- postulant. There's pre- postulant, postulant, novice, and then-

Miriam Dushane: Oh, good Lord.

Joanmarie Dowling: I was signed up for a year. Then I wound up moving to Albany to work with this Catholic outreach group, and things went downhill from there.

Miriam Dushane: Was it because of Albany?

Tom Schin: Now I'm picturing Joanmarie in The Sound of Music with the habit.

Miriam Dushane: "The hills are alive." Oh my God.

Joanmarie Dowling: I know, Julie Andrews rocks it.

Miriam Dushane: Oh my God, Joanmarie, I never knew that about you.

Joanmarie Dowling: Not a lot of people do.

Miriam Dushane: I'm so happy.

Joanmarie Dowling: I actually was like, "I know I'm going to get a question. I'm going to tell the story," so here it is. I'm out. You heard it here first.

Miriam Dushane: How did Albany, this terrible Albany influence your decision to walk away from being a nun?

Joanmarie Dowling: It wasn't quite that, and it certainly wasn't Albany. I was working with a group that works with the homeless, doing amazing work in this area, actually. But it was really tough for me to adjust. I came from Alabama. That's where I went to undergrad.

Tom Schin: We forgive you.

Joanmarie Dowling: Roll tide. Even despite their recent performance, roll tide. You got to be true to your school. I came to Albany. I didn't know a lot of people, and I found it really a difficult transition. I was like, "I'm going to go back to school," which meant that I wasn't then moving forward because there's a whole process that you go through in nun school. It's not really nun school, but you know what I mean.

Miriam Dushane: I was like, "Is it called that?"

Joanmarie Dowling: That's not what they call it. But yes, I actually had a conversation. I said, " It just doesn't feel like it's the right time." Then I was trying to decide what I wanted to do, and I was like, "I don't want to go to med school. I don't deal well with blood." I was just trying to figure out what to do. I could go get an advanced social work degree because that was my undergrad. I decided to go law school because I was like, "A lot of people think that they can be social workers without a social work degree," which I still think is a travesty to those who really are passionate and educated in social work and related fields. But I was like, "Most people do not think that they can be their own lawyer." Now, I guess actually, a lot of people do think they can be their own lawyer.

Tom Schin: That's what YouTube's for, right?

Joanmarie Dowling: Right, exactly. You can go online and download something. But at the time, the internet wasn't quite at least as much of a thing as it is now. I decided to go to law school really out of default. It turned out years later, I heard this radio report. They said that's how most lawyers become lawyers, they decide that they want to do something professionally, and they rule out engineering, medicine, and all sorts of other things. But it's been great. I love being a lawyer, I really do. It's been a tremendous opportunity for me. I love the people that we work with. I love our clients. We have great clients.

Miriam Dushane: Thank you, if I do say so myself.

Tom Schin: Did you always want to be in employment?

Joanmarie Dowling: No, I didn't actually. I thought about being an estate's attorney. Now I'm just like, "Oh my gosh, what a lack of insight that was because do you know what estate's attorneys do? I don't know, but it involves a lot of paperwork and tax." That sounds like death to me. God bless the people who are doing it.

Miriam Dushane:

Joanmarie Dowling: It actually makes good sense, right? There you go. For me, it would be maybe a figurative death. I wound up becoming an employment lawyer because I went to a firm, and they had a listing of everything that they did. They were like, "You need to rate the things that you're really interested in." They gave me a printout, and I was like, "Oh, all of this is employment and NCAA work." But I didn't wind up getting that. I never wound up going to that office.

Tom Schin: I wanted to be a litigator. I had entertained going to law school. One of the things was, "Oh, I could soup, I could be..." LA Law was popular at the time, I'm dating myself. Be Harry Hamlin and Jimmy Smits.

Joanmarie Dowling: That's actually really very accurate.

Miriam Dushane: You went with Harry Hamlin, did you?

Tom Schin: I did.

Joanmarie Dowling: That's like a documentary when it comes to being a litigator. Just watch that show.

Tom Schin: You have the big coif of hair.

Joanmarie Dowling: Right.

Miriam Dushane: That makes more sense now.

Tom Schin: Shush. I put that on myself.

Joanmarie Dowling: It's getting uncomfortable.

Miriam Dushane: What are you doing a lot of these days? Is there a trend, is there something, "Employer beware," that you're seeing more of this inquiry into your office or this thing happening that employers maybe want to be careful of?

Joanmarie Dowling: I wouldn't say necessarily be careful of this, but I will say we are doing a lot of workplace investigations, a lot.

Miriam Dushane: Really?

Joanmarie Dowling: I think it's actually a good thing because I think a lot of organizations are appropriately communicating that they're really interested in hearing about these things. I always, when I'm giving presentations, I'll talk about we want to address things when they're little monsters, not when they're big monsters. I think people are coming forward more with the workplace concerns. I think a lot of organizations are either looking for supportive help because they have in- house investigators, and they're looking for additional support, or they don't have that expertise in- house. We're doing a lot of them. I actually have three going on right now.

Miriam Dushane: Oh my goodness.

Joanmarie Dowling: It's a huge part actually of the work that we've been doing, I would say since the Me Too movement really started.

Tom Schin: I hear that as a good thing though from what you're saying in that employers are recognizing, "I might have something really wrong here, and I want to fix it. I want to make sure that I address it, nip it in the bud, take care of it," versus, "Somebody did something. Can you make it go away?"

Joanmarie Dowling: Right. It's a lot about information gathering, not making any kind of assumption as you walk in what might be the issue, spending some time with people really to try to help assess what's going on, and then to craft a solution to that. If a kid can't ride a bike, you need to know why. You can say, "Go practice more," but if the tire's flat, practicing more is not going to work. A lot of times, what we find is employees know that there's a problem. They don't necessarily have the vocabulary or all of the information to help them diagnose what's going on. But they need some help. I'm really appreciative of the opportunity and the trust that people have in us to come in to understand better what's going on and to help them formulate some solutions to that. We're seeing a lot of that work. We're also seeing an uptick in legal claims externally, fortunately, mostly with newer clients than those we've been working with for a long time. But I do think that people are more quick to file. I think more plaintiff's attorneys are picking up cases. We're seeing more represented parties. If the economy does go into a recession, I think we're going to continue to see that tends to be the trend.

Miriam Dushane: Interesting.

Joanmarie Dowling: It's a good time then to double down, make sure that you have good processes in place, that people have places to go if they have concerns, quite honestly, that you're addressing any supervisory issues.

Tom Schin: I was just going to say making sure that messaging goes all the way down to the front line so that everybody knows what's at stake, what their responsibility is, what could happen if something doesn't follow the plan when somebody goes rogue.

Joanmarie Dowling: I think a lot of it is about a root cause analysis. It's funny that a lot of people come to us and say, "This employee is acting out in particular ways," and they want to address that issue. We're happy to help work them through that. But it is not uncommon that we'll say, "What's going on with the supervisor?" They'll find that there's an issue there as well. They're trying to deal with one at a time, and sometimes you have to. But going to the root, going to the source of what is it that's causing us to have this issue, especially if you're having repeated cultural issues, those don't happen in a vacuum. When you look at the root causes, you can start to see, what are those factors that are encouraging these behaviors that we're not looking for? How do we change that to get the result that we are looking for?

Tom Schin: So many things come to mind. I'm wondering about more when you get the call and your initial response or Maggie's initial response are, "Are you kidding me?"

Joanmarie Dowling: Oh, no comment.

Tom Schin: I can tell there's a story whipping around your head, "I can't share this."

Joanmarie Dowling: I think there are probably so many stories that are going through my head that it's hard even to have all of them come out at once. I did have a situation where someone was suing one of our clients. Then I was talking to another client and found out that the client had hired that same person, and they were just working their way through.

Miriam Dushane: That's right.

Joanmarie Dowling: We have had that kind of situation happen before.

Tom Schin: The serial employee.

Joanmarie Dowling: Right. From an ethics perspective, we can't share that kind of information, except we can say, "It's really important for you to do a quality background check and assessment of any candidates." Don't rush that process.

Miriam Dushane: Definitely don't rush that, absolutely.

Joanmarie Dowling: Check to make sure that all the dates match up, so look at those LinkedIn profiles.

Tom Schin: That's one of the big red flags. We see it in our reference, and we use Alliance for our purposes. It's interesting to see when you actually know who's at play, or you can follow the timeline, and things just don't align. You start asking questions, and then the candidate gets all squirrely. Missing a year off from 10 years ago, I get it to some degree. I'm not good with numbers, so I don't give as much latitude. But people get real squirrely, and there's the telling features. Then all of a sudden, poof, they disappear. You never hear from them again.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Tom Schin: you mentioned the entrepreneurship side of you. I'm curious, is there a third business venture here coming down the pike or in your dream state?

Joanmarie Dowling: There are. We're hoping to have an announcement for 2023.

Miriam Dushane: Oh really?

Joanmarie Dowling: And maybe even 2024. We actually have two business lines that we're developing now.

Tom Schin: You heard it here first on HR in the Car.

Joanmarie Dowling: That's right. I'll come back and talk about it.

Miriam Dushane: Our serial entrepreneur, ex- nun, employment attorney. I love it.

Joanmarie Dowling: When you get through all the people who match those characteristics, you can come back to me because I'm sure that there are just a ton of us in the market.

Miriam Dushane: Exactly, absolutely.

Tom Schin: I think the nun piece would probably rule out 90% of them, but you never know.

Miriam Dushane: I'm still laughing inside because I was like, "We've known each other how long, and I never knew that at all." That's amazing.

Tom Schin: Have you ever dressed up as a nun for Halloween?

Joanmarie Dowling: No, I have not actually.

Tom Schin: There's a little hesitation there.

Joanmarie Dowling: No.

Miriam Dushane: She was thinking, she was making sure.

Joanmarie Dowling: No, I was going to say, in full disclosure, I did dress up as a priest one year. But that might get me into trouble in some circles. That was a long, long time ago.

Miriam Dushane: A very long time ago, and there's no proof because we are of the generation where there wasn't social media and there wasn't cell phones with video and pictures. Thank God.

Joanmarie Dowling: Plausible deniability on that one. Don't tell the pope.

Miriam Dushane: As we wrap up today, HR in the Car always wants to know, what is in your roadside assistance kit?

Joanmarie Dowling: It's funny, I would say that it's actually a philosophy.

Miriam Dushane: Hit me.

Joanmarie Dowling: That is from one of my favorite recent shows, Ted Lasso.

Miriam Dushane: Hit me, baby. Please tell me.

Joanmarie Dowling: I'm just such a huge Lasso fan.

Miriam Dushane: Oh my God, I know.

Joanmarie Dowling: Huge. What I would say is the thing that I really appreciate about Ted is that he understands that he's not in the football business, he's in the people business. I really appreciate his desire to develop people and his ability to really be genuine in that and have that come across. I won't ruin it for those who haven't seen it, but you really need to start binging that right now.

Miriam Dushane: If you have not seen Ted Lasso, please, for the love of God and all things that are good in this world, you must watch this show.

Joanmarie Dowling: Email me. You can come to the office, and we'll just watch it.

Miriam Dushane: Let's do it. Let's have a Ted Lasso watching party. I'm there.

Tom Schin: We could have Lasso lunches.

Joanmarie Dowling: We could have Lasso lunches.

Tom Schin: I just trademarked something.

Miriam Dushane: I think you might have-

Tom Schin: It's in recording.

Miriam Dushane: Yes, absolutely.

Joanmarie Dowling: Oh my gosh, that's amazing.

Miriam Dushane: It's so funny. For me, I was like, "This is going to be the dumbest show ever."

Joanmarie Dowling: Yeah.

Miriam Dushane: Then my husband's like, "Let's give it a chance." Then I was like, "Oh my God, this is my favorite show. I love it so much."

Joanmarie Dowling: I really do.

Tom Schin: Back to the question, what are you bringing in your kit?

Joanmarie Dowling: It's this Lasso mentality. It's this spirit of Ted. The reason why I think is because you never know if we're going to take this metaphor out for a drive. You never know what's going to hit you when you're out there. What you need to have more than anything is the willingness to pick up those tools and do what needs to get done. I think part of that is really making sure that you come in with a positive attitude, that you're working to try to support people.
I think so many of the things that we're seeing, the stress around remote work, the Me Too movement, I think unionization, so many of these different things that are coming out, concerns about toxic work environment, all of that really stems from employees feeling like their supervisors do not have their best interests at heart. I think that is a tool we try to bring every day so that regardless of what happens, we hope that people are going to know that our employees, for us are going to know, and that for our clients, that they're going to know that we're really working to their best interests. You can have many tools working on different things. But ultimately, for me, that's the key.

Tom Schin: I love it. I think to that point, at least now, these last couple of years, the employees now feel they can vocalize it, either through action or words, and actually make some change.

Joanmarie Dowling: Right. But I think part of it is responding with the right intention, to be listening, to try to figure out how to address the underlying need, and really to be able to speak to that. A lot of the times when we're hearing things like, "Toxic work environment," it's such a big, broad concern.

Tom Schin: It could really just be one person.

Joanmarie Dowling: It could be anything. It really takes a willingness to listen. Quite honestly, it sounds weird for an employment lawyer to be saying this, but an open heart to be able to-

Tom Schin: You're saying lawyers don't have hearts?

Joanmarie Dowling: We don't have open hearts. You have to turn that in the first week of law school. They take-

Tom Schin: Put it in the box.

Joanmarie Dowling: Exactly right. I had to get mine back. But no, we're not known for being particularly supportive, warm, empathetic people.

Tom Schin: Especially coming out of the nunnery.

Joanmarie Dowling: Right.

Miriam Dushane: Exactly.

Joanmarie Dowling: I'm never going to live this down.

Tom Schin: Never.

Miriam Dushane: I'm so excited. This is the best.

Tom Schin: Joanmarie, thank you so much for being part of our show. We're so thrilled to have you here. This new story tops the cake.

Miriam Dushane: Absolutely, thank you.

Joanmarie Dowling: Awesome, thank you.

Miriam Dushane: Thank you.

Tom Schin: Holy cow, the reaction on both of our faces at her origin story are priceless. If this was on video, you would've been laughing hysterically.

Miriam Dushane: I couldn't even take it, I was dying about how she started as a nun. I have known her, we figured it out, it's 20 years, and this has never come up before in my life, talking with her about this. We talk about everything. It was so amazing and fascinating for me. Again, when we were talking about work stuff, we were talking about things that employers need to hear about, workplace investigations are increasing, people are becoming more vocal. Employers need to take notice that the tides are changing, and employees need to be taken care of.

Tom Schin: Right. She's a great person to talk to about having that first line of defense, which is being prepared for things. You may not catch everything, but knowing what could happen and what you've covered already will put you in a better position to respond to anything that comes up. It just shows your employees that you're trying to do things right, not just to protect yourself, but to protect them as the organization.

Miriam Dushane: Definitely. To learn more about Joanmarie, you can go to our show notes on our website Alaant. com. We'll have Joanmarie's information, a link to her website for her businesses. Thanks again for listening to HR in the Car.