Happy Days are here again? Not so much for Happy Days Children’s Wear in New York, which recently paid $22,500 to settled a lawsuit brought by an employee who claimed she was fired after revealing her pregnancy.
You can read more about the case here.
Really? A children’s clothing store firing a worker for getting pregnant (and, presumably, creating a brand-new potential customer in the process)? It doesn’t get much worse than that.
Or does it?
The case of Hudgens v. Prosper, recently decided by the Utah Supreme Court, suggests otherwise. Chad Hudgens was unfortunate enough to be assigned to supervisor Joshua Christopherson, whose management practices included:
- Drawing mustaches on underperforming employees with permanent marker,
- Taking away employees’ chairs,
- Striking desks and tabletops with a wooden paddle he carried around explicitly for this purpose (and last, but certainly not least),
- Waterboarding
Yes, waterboarding. Hudgens filed his lawsuit against both Christopherson and their employer after he was forcibly pinned down by his co-workers while Christopherson slowly poured water from a gallon jug over Hudgens’s mouth and nose. At the conclusion of the exercise, Christopherson exhorted his team to “work as hard at making sales as [Hudgens] had worked at trying to breathe.”
(If this strikes you as an effective management tactic, please run — do not walk — to the nearest HR department and turn yourself in. If you yourself are the HR department, it’s high time to consider a career change.)
Things hopefully aren’t so grim at your workplace, but this case sharply highlights the fact that there are good (encouragement, mentoring) and bad (waterboarding) ways to motivate your employees. And even if you don’t have any Christophersons on your staff, it’s likely that there are areas in which you can improve.
I’d like to invite you to join us for a 90-minute webinar next Wednesday, the 12th, on Coaching and Mentoring Employees: How to Unlock Potential, Enhance Loyalty, and Boost Productivity. In this valuable session, you’ll learn:
- Why you must focus on coaching and mentoring employees in today’s environment (even if you feel your workers should be happy just to be employed these days)
- Which coaching methods work best for your top performers, your middle-of-the-road workers, and your stragglers
- Best practices for communicating with and rewarding employees across different age ranges, from the World War II “Radio Babies” to Gen-Yers
- How to offer clear, concise feedback so that your employees know your expectations without any doubt
- The most effective techniques for changing behavior on the job and encouraging employees to take responsibility for their performance
- How to deal with employees who refuse coaching or need ongoing discipline
- What steps you can take in the new year to turn your frontline supervisors into visible, hands-on coaches and mentors for their teams
Can’t make it on the 12th? Order the CD and learn at your leisure. But either way, it’s a session you won’t want to miss — even if your supervisors aren’t engaging in random acts of torture.