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Alabama

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.

After employee has complained, be prepared to defend even minor work changes

01/21/2011

Employers can defend against alleged retaliation by showing they had a good reason for the adverse action. For example, if a supervisor moves an employee to another position for a legitimate management reason, that’s not retaliation. Consider the following case.

When deciding on employee discipline, you don’t have to be absolutely right–just fair

01/21/2011

Supervisors have to make decisions on how to run the workplace every day. They can’t spend hours deliberating every move. Imagine how little actual work would get done if supervisors had to double-check every decision to make absolutely sure it was correct. Fortunately, courts don’t require perfection from employers—just assurance that they acted fairly and in good faith.

When religion is crux of workplace problems, base discipline on behavior–not belief

01/11/2011

Warn managers and supervisors: They must not refer to an employee’s religious beliefs when taking any adverse employment action. That’s true even if the decision being discussed involves a dispute over a religious accommodation.

Courts crack down on lawsuits against entities not named in EEOC complaints

12/13/2010

Eventually, your organization will be blindsided by a discrimination lawsuit that seems to come out of nowhere. In fact, it may hit years after the alleged bias occurred. That means you may long ago have discarded the documents that could clear the company. But courts are growing impatient with employees who launch such sneak attacks, as this recent 11th Circuit decision shows.

Whistle-blowing test: Did employer break law?

12/13/2010

Employees who report concerns that co-workers are breaking the law may view themselves as whistle-blowers—and may believe that makes them untouchable if they themselves have done something wrong. Not true!

Bulletproof anti-harassment policy by ensuring employees know how to lodge their complaints

11/29/2010

It’s been over a decade since the U.S. Supreme Court laid down the law on what employers need to do to prevent and cure sexual harassment. That’s long enough for complacency to have set in. By now, some employers may have started taking sexual harassment less seriously than they did when the court first ruled. That’s a potentially costly mistake.

When manager slides from difficult to impossible, good documentation supports reason for firing

11/09/2010

There comes a time when you might be forced to conclude that the problem with a department isn’t all those lousy employees, but the person who manages them. If that’s the case, it may be time to terminate the manager.

Post job openings, application deadlines to cut down on suits challenging promotions

11/08/2010

Employers that use formal promotion processes probably won’t lose a failure-to-promote lawsuit if the employee in question didn’t even bother applying. But employers that use informal methods may be blindsided by lawsuits alleging discriminatory promotion practices without even having had a chance to review the employee’s qualifications.

Use hotline to receive employee complaints, prove when litigation clock started ticking