Your Legal "To Do" List 01-02-2008
- By Rita Risser, attorney at law

Looking back over the past year, we've seen a few trends in employment law. What action steps can you take now to prevent costly lawsuits?

Mandate (good) training for all your reports

The courts are clear: employers who fail to train employees are negligent and can be sued for harassment. But the courts don't uphold just any training - it has to be good and effective training.

In one case, the U.S. government ordered a company to stop computer-based training (CBT) because it didn't give real-life skills. The board found that CBT effectively provided factual information, but did not give employees an understanding of processes or the ability to ask questions about abnormal situations. What was lacking was "training that goes beyond fact memorization and answers the question 'Why?'"

The board told the company to replace computer tutorials with "face-to-face training conducted by personnel with process-specific knowledge and experience who can assess trainee competency."

Of course, when you do live training, make sure it is supported by everyone in the company from the top down. One company lost a case in 2007, in part because the Chairman walked into a harassment prevention training and made an inappropriate "joke."

Follow proper procedure in harassment claims

One good trend for employers - the courts will protect you from suit if you have a proper procedure and follow it. In one 2007 case, a federal Court of Appeals ruled against a victim of harassment who was fired for refusing to work with the accused harasser. The court found the company promptly and fairly investigated her claim, properly warned the accused, and offered the victim reasonable options which she refused.

In contrast, if you don't follow procedure, you lose. In another 2007 case, the harasser properly was given a final written warning, and then after harassing again, given a second written warning instead of being terminated. When he harassed a third time, the victim quit and sued. The court said because he was not terminated the company emboldened him to continue harassing. The victim was allowed to take her case to jury trial.

What you should do: If you are in a position to require people to attend training, make it one of their objectives for the coming year. All employees need harassment prevention and all managers should take Managing within the Law to learn about following proper procedure. Remember that cheaper and easier training is not better. Not only will it make you look bad when you get sued, it makes you more likely to get sued in the first place, because people don't learn in cheap and easy training.

Training - good training - is the only way to prevent mistakes and stop costly lawsuits.

 

Information here is correct at the time it is posted. Case decisions cited here may be reversed. Please do not rely on this information without consulting an attorney first.