Live from Workplace Horizons 2025: Financial Services Roundtable

Transcript

INTRO

You're listening to a special edition of We get work®, recorded live from Workplace Horizons 2025 in New York City, Jackson Lewis's annual Labor and Employment Law Conference. Over 500 representatives from 260 companies gathered together to share valuable insights and best practices on workplace law issues impacting their business today. Here's your personal invitation to get the insights from the conference delivered directly to you. We'll see you in 2026.

CONTENT

Alitia Faccone
Senior Director of Business Development

Welcome to Live from Workplace Horizons, and our We get work® podcast studio. Thank you, after a long conference, for joining us behind the mic this morning. You both hosted the Financial Services Roundtable, so what I'm going to do is just ask you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your practice. We have Timothy Domanick, principal in the Long Island Office of Jackson Lewis. 

Tim, can you share a little bit about yourself and your practice?

Timothy Domanick
Principal, Long Island

I've been with Jackson Lewis for over 13 years now. I am part of the Litigation Group. In addition to doing litigation from single plaintiff cases to complex class action litigation, I also do advice and counsel work, whether it be wage and hour, or disability management. I do a fair amount of workplace training as well.

Faccone

Terrific. Tyler, you're in the Jacksonville office, also a principal. What's your practice like these days and what are employers calling you to ask questions about?

Tyler White
Principal and Office Litigation Manager, Jacksonville

I'm the litigation manager for the Jacksonville office, so I see every case that comes through. My practice is primarily wage and hour class and collective actions, as well as single plaintiff discrimination cases, mostly involving race discrimination and disability discrimination.

Faccone 

As I said, you hosted the Financial Services Roundtable this morning. What did you spend the most time talking about this morning in the hour that you had? What were the issues that came up for the folks in the room?

White

It was really threefold. The first thing that we spent a good bit of time talking about was workplace accommodations for disabilities. One of the things that came from that was really that there are two things that are happening. A lot of times, people will, once they're being written up, claim in response that they need some accommodation, like maybe that their stress or anxiety is through the roof because of those things. That very well may be true, but the point is that the employer is then obligated, in spite of the discipline, to continue to engage in the interactive process with the employee to determine if there are any accommodations that can be made. 

The second thing we talked about was workplace investigations related to complaints. In the financial services industry, they really have a lot of compliance issues. They always have to be sure that they're fully investigating any type of complaint. It can't just be a cursory investigation. It has to be a full thing that they do, so a lot of people talked about the challenges associated with that.    

Then, the third thing we talked about was wage and hour, particularly the use of independent contractors and a thing called contingent workers, which are frequently used in financial services and probably other industries.

Faccone 

Terrific. Tim, as a roundtable, we asked for participation from our audience members. What issues really resonated, and what did they share about what's going on in their businesses?

Domanick

One of the topics that was addressed was actually brought up directly by the attendees as opposed to us directly. Tyler mentioned accommodation issues, but it quickly spun out to how do we accommodate when it comes to mental health issues in the workplace? That's an ever-emerging topic that a lot of employers are dealing with more and more often now. 

The interesting thing and the thing I love about the roundtable is that it's an opportunity for the clients to start talking to each other. Hey, how are you handling this? How am I handling this, and what would you do in this situation? It was a really good discussion as far as how a number of employers in the financial services industry are addressing those issues. Hey, we need to accommodate mental health issues. Is this something where we need to consider working from home? Are there other options? What else are we looking at here? That was something that resonated a lot with the attendees, 

Faccone  

It is a really stressful industry, so that was a great exploratory conversation, I can imagine.

Tyler, we come to Workplace Horizons every year, and we sit across from each other at the table. What would you say are some of the most significant differences you've seen in the industry, and how employers are dealing with industry issues since we were together last year?

White

There is a significant change in financial services, and it's affecting a lot of industries – the executive orders related to DEI. We didn't really touch on that in our discussion because prior to the conference, we had a pulse survey. The number one thing that they wanted to talk about was accommodation. So, we made sure to make time for that and to really push that in there. Ever since COVID, accommodations, mental health and workplace disabilities have been at the forefront of employers' minds and how they deal with them. That also ties into requests for remote work associated with that.

Faccone

So, employees are stressed, and employers are probably stressed. 

Tim, how is Jackson Lewis helping employers in the financial services industry deal with all of these issues?

Domanick 

We're stressed right along with them. In all seriousness, we're helping them on a day-in, day-out basis when it comes to these issues. Whether it be they're calling us up and having an in-the-moment crisis, and need advice and counsel. This is the emergency that just came across my desk. What do we do, and what do you think? We deal with those on a day-in, day-out basis.

Then, it's also the proactive measures. It's educating the employers, hey, this is what's coming down the pike. This just came out, or this new executive order was passed, and these are our initial thoughts. Let's talk about this further and help them develop strategies, policies and practices so they can navigate an ever-changing workplace, which is probably different from the time that this podcast is being recorded.

Faccone 

Tyler, just one more quick question. There are a lot of different industries and sub-industries in the financial services sector, and they all have some similar issues, but also some very different issues. 

How do you make sure that our lawyers at Jackson Lewis are up to date on all of the issues so they can best serve our clients' very unique needs?

White 

It's important that the firm spends a lot of time and resources dedicated to really bringing out the best in our attorneys by educating them. One of the ways we do that is we have a lot of internal webinars and internal articles about all of the latest updates. It’s unbelievable to see behind the scenes in that way, so that we can get out in front of these issues as soon as possible for clients, because timeliness is the key to everything with these.

Faccone

Tim and Tyler, thank you so much. It was a pleasure having you behind the podcast mic this morning in our studio. I will see you at Workplace Horizons 2026.

OUTRO

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