What areas of employment law are least understood by managers? 04-16-2008

Why is it important for managers to have a good understanding of employment law?

What aspects of employment law do you think are the least understood (and hence the most likely to be inadvertently violated) by managers?

Why do you believe this is the case?

Rita Risser replies:

Managers need to have a good understanding of employment law so that they don't inadvertently violate the law and cause costly lawsuits. Beyond that defensive reason, proactive managers need to understand the legal climate they operate in, so they can be strategic thinkers and planners. It is difficult to generalize the aspects of employment law least understood. Looking at recent big settlements, most of them are for failure to pay overtime due to misclassifying employees as exempt. Not a very sexy issue, but hundreds of millions of dollars have been won in the past few years by both the government and private attorneys.

Interestingly, it is very rare to find a large harassment settlement. This may be because the cases are being resolved long before trial. I find that most people have a pretty good understanding of what is illegal harassment. The problems come after someone complains about harassment and then is retaliated against.

Retaliation claims are very common, and often employees win those cases. Often the retaliation claim is based on a termination that might have been legal if it had been handled correctly. So the third area of problems is in documenting poor performance or other legitimate business reasons for termination.

Thanks for asking!

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.