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Discrimination / Harassment

Disturbing trend: Workers as their own lawyers

02/21/2011

If your former employees decide to sue, they’ll find themselves competing for lawyers to represent them. Increasingly, former employees are filing their own lawsuits. And judges give such pro se plaintiffs every possible break since they aren’t expected to know the tricks of the legal trade.

Setting sound policies, following processes to a ‘T’ increase odds of winning in court

02/18/2011

Employers that follow their own disciplinary process—even in cases involving difficult employees—benefit if those employees sue. When courts see a reasonable disciplinary policy that is applied evenhandedly, they rarely second-guess an employer’s decision to fire an employee.

Disneyland goes out of way to accommodate Muslim dress

02/18/2011

It took a complaint to the EEOC, but Disneyland will allow a Muslim woman employed as an intern there to wear an Islamic head scarf. Disney worked with CAIR to come up with a clothing option that met the woman’s religious requirements and still satisfied the Walt Disney Company’s uniform guidelines.

Make it easy for courts to see your side–investigate thoroughly before disciplining

02/15/2011
Courts don’t expect employers to set up the equivalent of a judicial system for disciplining employees. They just want to see a reasonable effort to ferret out the truth.

Make training for managers an essential part of your sexual harassment policy

02/15/2011
It does no good to have a sexual har­assment policy if managers don’t know how to enforce it. Without regular manager training on how to respond to complaints, you might as well not have a policy.

Office romance: Don’t ban it; manage it

02/15/2011

Valentine’s Day may have come and gone, but love might still linger in the air at your workplace. If so, watch out! When office romances sour, scorned lovers often turn to the courts to allege that a former lover was a sexual harasser. Here are three tips to help make sure Cupid’s arrow doesn’t harm your organization.

The key is consistency: Make sure similar infractions are subject to similar punishment

02/15/2011

Employees who break rules usually expect to be punished. But they also expect to be treated fairly. Most understand that employers shouldn’t punish one employee more harshly than someone else who committed the same infraction. And if that other employee belongs to a different protected class, savvy employees know that attorneys will be lining up for a chance to file a discrimination lawsuit.

Develop, implement and publicize policies that encourage employees to report harassment

02/14/2011

Here’s a big benefit to having a strong anti-harassment policy: The policy’s very existence helps protect employers against false claims. That’s because employees won’t be able to say they endured years of harassment and didn’t know how or to whom to report it. The key is making sure employees know about your policy.

Post all job openings to head off bias suits

02/14/2011

Save yourself lots of trouble by posting all open positions and telling employees exactly how to apply. When jobs aren’t posted and a member of a protected class misses out on a job opportunity, he or she can argue that the employer purposely hid the opening in order to exclude some individuals.

Want to ‘fire’ your way out of problems with troublesome employees? Think again

02/11/2011

You’ve been dealing with a particularly difficult employee. He’s constantly claiming he’s being discriminated against in one way or another. But then he breaks a rule, and you spot your chance to fire him—of course, following all your internal procedures to the letter. Finally! Now you can rest easy, believing the employee can’t possibly come back and successfully sue you. Guess again.