• The HR Specialist - Print Newsletter
  • HR Specialist: Employment Law
  • The HR Weekly

Employee Relations

Carefully review sudden claims of disability during discipline

02/02/2012

Some employees, forced to confront poor work habits, workplace mistakes or other disciplinary problems, decide to tell their employers that they have a disability. Don’t take the bait.

Be sure to document the effective date of all new disciplinary policies

02/02/2012
When you change a disciplinary policy, make sure you document exactly when the change went into effect. That way, an employee who is punished more severely can’t point to the earlier disciplinary actions as evidence he was unfairly singled out.

How to make ‘one rule’ discipline work

02/01/2012
If you want to streamline your employee manual and disciplinary process, you may be tempted to create one general misconduct rule. It might state, for example, “Violating company policies can result in discipline, up to and including termination.” But before you adopt such a rule, make sure HR is ready to administer it.

Beware contradictions in performance reviews

02/01/2012
Do you evaluate employees’ overall performance and then conduct a special appraisal to determine extra rewards such as bonuses? If so, make sure both processes paint a true performance picture and don’t contradict each other.

Use objective measures to make firing decisions

02/01/2012
If you terminate subpar workers, it goes without saying that you must be prepared to show they were, in fact, poor performers. Do so by using objective performance measures. Let the facts and figures speak for themselves.

He said, she said: What if they both did? Trust investigation to reveal harassment truth

02/01/2012
If your sexual harassment policy is comprehensive, any complaint may trigger an investigation that uncovers many violations—perhaps even by the complaining employee. When that happens, the best policy is to let the investigation take its course and document everything. Then discipline everyone who violated the policy.

OK to insist on initial retirement request

02/01/2012
When an employer doesn’t have a set policy on whether an employee can change his mind about retiring, refusing to rescind a retirement request isn’t enough to support a discrimination or retaliation lawsuit.

Employee refuses to follow instructions? Courts won’t second-guess disciplinary decisions

02/01/2012
Courts don’t want to second-guess every employment decision. They leave it up to employers to determine, for example, whether one rule violation is more serious than another. As the following case shows, employers are free to terminate employees who won’t listen.

Stay out of court with consistent discipline

02/01/2012
Employers that punish some em­­ployees more leniently than others for breaking the same rule are asking for trouble. That’s especially true when a lesser offense seems to have warranted especially harsh punishment.

Vacations at Maryland firm come with condo–plus cash

01/31/2012
Employees who work for technology/wireless communications firm BTS enjoy a unique vacation benefit: They can use a company-owned condominium in Florida—and $250 in spending money. That’s just one of the generous benefits that CEO Sean Lane says are important for attracting employees long on ideas and energy.