Lawyers like to talk about picky legal points, says attorney Jeffrey Wortman, but the real bottom line for most legal cases is fairness. Juries—and sometimes judges—are more likely to make a decision based on fair treatment than on legal treatment.
It isn’t only in court that you reap the benefits of fairness, Wortman notes. It’s even before that, because employees who believe they have been treated fairly—even if the treatment was negative—are not likely to sue or bring charges in the first place.
Wortman’s comments were part of a well-received presentation at BLR’s Second Annual National Employment Law Update, held last week in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Next year’s Employment Law Update will be held October 21-23, 2009, in Las Vegas. Find out more.)
Wortman is a partner in the Los Angeles office of national employment law firm Seyfarth Shaw, LLP. Gregg Fisch, who joined him in the presentation, is an associate with the firm.
How to Treat Employees Fairly
Wortman offers the following tenets of fair treatment:
1. Adequate notice. Make sure people know in advance what your expectations are and what the consequences of not meeting expectations are.
2. Opportunity to achieve. When there are problems, be sure people know what they need to do to improve. Tell them what resources are available to give them the help they need, and tell them how you can help.
3. Consistency. Treat similar situations in the same manner. With each action you take, think back. When this situation has come up in the past, how did we handle it? Be scrupulous about avoiding favoritism of any sort.
4. Document as you go. Produce documentation—at each step—that makes it clear to employees what the problem is, what they need to do to correct it, and what the consequence will be if they do not correct it. Write clearly, so that any reader—your replacement, your boss, members of a jury—will be able to understand the situation.
Demo BLR’s unique new Employee Training Center. There’s no cost or obligation.
Documentation Stops Suits at the Earliest Possible Point
Wortman continued his presentation with a careful note about the importance of documentation. At the very beginning of a case, he says, the employee’s attorney has only heard the employee’s side of the story, and is proceeding against you on that basis. If you can show the attorney documentation that refutes what the employee has claimed, you’ll often convince the attorney to drop the case.
For example, the employee will say that the termination came out of nowhere—no notice, didn’t expect it at all. You say to the attorney, “Here’s the documentation of the series of disciplinary steps that were taken. Here’s the last-chance agreement the employee signed.”
Plaintiff attorneys may not be your friends, says Wortman, but they aren’t stupid. They don’t want to take on cases where there’s substantial documentation against them before they even begin.
How about your managers? Are they like Wortman’s managers? Encouraging lawsuits because they haven’t been properly trained? Failing to take necessary steps because they don’t know what to do?
Training is surely the key, but it’s such a hassle—authorizing, planning, delivering, tracking—it’s hard to get handle on it.
To take that hassle off your plate, BLR has created a unique and helpful solution called the Employee Training Center.
This turnkey service requires no set up, no course development time, no software installation, and no new hardware. Your employees can self-register, and training can be taken anytime, anywhere (24/7) with nothing but a PC and an Internet connection. Courses take only about 30 minutes to complete.
Just as important, the Employee Training Center automatically documents training. As trainees sign on, their identifications are automatically registered. When the program is completed, the trainee’s score is entered. So, when you want to see who has or hasn’t yet trained on any subject, or look at the across-the-board activity of any one employee, it’s all there, instantly available to you, your boss, an inspector—even a plaintiff’s attorney.
These are all motivational, actionable programs—for both employees and supervisors—in such key areas as Sexual harassment, FMLA, diversity, communication, USERRA, recruiting, and many more. The courses are kept up to date to reflect national and state regulatory changes and, what’s more, we add new programs continually.
Unlimited employee HR (and safety) training—one low cost. Get a demonstration of BLR’s remarkable new Employee Training Center. There’s no cost or obligation. Learn More.
Course certificates can be automatically generated, and they are retained for recordkeeping purposes.
The Employee Training Center also includes a similar selection of safety courses—you decide whether you want just the HR courses, the safety courses, or both.
And from the standpoint of your CFO (a truly important standpoint in these tight times), you always know exactly what training will cost, no matter how many programs you use or how many times you use them. There’s just one low annual fee—for unlimited training—calculated by the size of your workforce. Budget once and you’re done!
If it sounds like we’re excited about this new service, well, we are—and we think you will be, too. We urge you to sign up for a no-obligation demo by visiting the new Employee Training Center. Or, feel free to call our customer service representatives at 866-696-4827.