Discrimination in Your Company? Audit Before the Feds Do

We expect discrimination these days to be a little less blatant than the EEOC thinks it found at Mavis. You don’t really need an internal audit to tell you that if 1,300 people were hired and not one was a woman, you’re going to get sued eventually. And if only 1 of your 800 employees is female, that’s another strike.

But for most organizations, doing an audit is the best way to find out what’s happening in the trenches. The audit makes sure you cover all the bases. We’ve taken the audit checklist below from BLR’s popular HR Audit Checklists.

Discrimination Prevention Checklist

The more questions to which you answer “Yes,” the more you are doing to prevent discrimination based on race, age, religion, national origin, gender, or other protected classes in your workplace in terms of hiring, promotion, and dismissal.

To avoid discrimination in supervisory tasks, do you:	Yes     No
Keep employment decisions focused on job-related abilities and skills?	Yes      No
Identify “essential functions” of each job and describe them in objective language?	Yes      No
Focus on an individual’s performance of essential duties when making any employment decisions?	Yes      No
Know and follow federal, state, and local discrimination laws?	Yes      No
Know and follow your organization’s policies against discrimination?	Yes      No
Proceed with special caution when making an employment decision affecting a member of a protected class?	Yes      No
Make sure that any performance problems have been well documented?	Yes      No
Ensure that you can prove that a layoff or transfer was based on a “business necessity”?	Yes      No
Not make placement decisions based on appearance or other characteristics unrelated to job performance, such as being overweight or bald or for personal habits such as smoking?	Yes      No
Treat older workers in a nondiscriminatory way?	Yes      No
Ensure that there is no retaliation against employees who exercise their rights under the law, take authorized leave, request accommodations, or complain of discrimination?	Yes      No
To prevent discrimination in the workplace, do you:
Take all complaints of discrimination or harassment seriously?	Yes      No
Appoint a special person to handle and investigate all complaints of discrimination?	Yes      No
Use exit interviews to ask former employees if any problems existed?	Yes      No
Monitor the workplace for discriminatory posters, cartoons, joking, references, e-mails, banter, or other inappropriate conduct?	Yes      No
Ask employees for any suggestions they may have about preventing discrimination?	Yes      No
Emphasize to all employees that discrimination is everyone’s concern?	Yes      No
To ensure compliance, do you:
Treat pregnancy like any other temporary disability in terms of job rights and benefits?	Yes      No
Accommodate religious beliefs by allowing arrangement for coverage of jobs, if necessary, during religious holidays?	Yes      No
Use English-only policies when required by a specific business necessity?	Yes      No
Clearly communicate your English-only policy so employees know when they are required to speak English and the consequences of violating the policy?	Yes      No
Engage in the interactive process when an employee requests a reasonable accommodation for a disability?	Yes      No
Document the reasons for decisions that affect wages, benefits, or other forms of compensation?	Yes      No

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HR Audit Checklists ensures that you have a chance to fix problems before government agents or employees’ attorneys get a chance. For a limited time, try HR Audit Checklists as also receive the FREE REPORT: HR Training to Avoid Lawsuits, Audits, and Fines. Get it Now.

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Finding violations before the feds do—a critical task for 2013. Are all of your managers and supervisors acting according to your policies and applicable laws? How can you tell what’s really going on in your organization? There’s only one way to find out—regular audits.

The rub is that for most HR managers, it’s hard to get started auditing—where do you begin?

BLR’s editors recommend a unique product called HR Audit Checklists. Why are checklists so great? Because they’re completely impersonal, forcing you to jump through all the necessary hoops one by one. They also ensure consistency in how operations are conducted. That’s vital in HR, where it’s all too easy to land in court if you discriminate in how you treat one employee over another.

HR Audit Checklists compels thoroughness. For example, it contains checklists both on Preventing Sexual Harassment and on Handling Sexual Harassment Complaints. You’d likely never think of all the possible trouble areas without a checklist; but with it, just scan down the list, and instantly see where you might get tripped up.

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Using the "hope" system to avoid lawsuits? (We "hope" we’re doing it right.) Be sure! Download the FREE REPORT, HR Training to Avoid Lawsuits, Audits, and Fines, and also try HR Audit Checklists on us for 30 days. Learn More.

In fact, housed in the HR Audit Checklists binder are dozens of extensive lists, organized into reproducible packets, for easy distribution to line managers and supervisors. There’s a separate packet for each of the following areas:

• Staffing and training (incorporating Equal Employment Opportunity in recruiting and hiring, including immigration issues)
• HR administration (including communications, handbook content, and recordkeeping)
• Health and safety (including OSHA responsibilities)
• Benefits and leave (including health cost containment, COBRA, FMLA, workers’ compensation, and several areas of leave)
• Compensation (payroll and the Fair Labor Standards Act)
• Performance and termination (appraisals, discipline, and separation)

HR Audit Checklists is available to HR Daily Advisor readers for a no-cost, no-risk evaluation in your office for up to 30 days. Visit HR Audit Checklists, and we’ll be happy to arrange it.