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Discipline / Investigations

5 tricky issues in accommodating mental disabilities

09/01/2006

A top-performing employee is diagnosed with depression and now says her medication makes it impossible for her to make it to work on time. Must an employer change her work schedule? A job applicant volunteers that he is intellectually disabled but says he can perform his job with a job coach. Is that a reasonable accommodation? Are you prepared to answer those questions … and more?

Don’t push an employee toward disability leave

09/01/2006

Q. We have an employee (an officer at the bank) who was out six months with a heart condition. He has had performance problems on and off since then. He was hospitalized again with pneumonia and returned looking very bad, but his doctor says he’s fine to return to work.  We approached him about taking disability and SSI benefits, but he refuses. Now we face a morale issue because he constantly talks about his illness and his co-workers feel he isn’t performing. If we terminate him, what is the best approach? —C.T., N.J.

Rein in Rogue ‘Early-Clockers’

09/01/2006

Q. We’ve repeatedly warned a part-time employee about clocking in earlier than he’s supposed to, sometimes more than an hour early. We know that we have to pay him for any hours worked, but what can we legally do to get him to work only the hours set for his position? —L.K., Missouri

When punishing employees’ use of slurs, equality counts

08/01/2006

The mantra in real estate is "location, location, location." But the mantra in employee discipline must always be "consistency, consistency, consistency" …

Subjective fear of discipline no reason to quit

08/01/2006

To make a "constructive discharge" claim, employees must show that their working conditions were so intolerable that they had no choice but to quit and that those conditions amounted to discrimination based on age, race, sex or some other protected characteristic. But, as a new ruling shows, an employee’s subjective "fear of future discipline" isn’t grounds for a lawsuit under this constructive-discharge theory …

Drug-Test Policy Should Include Off-Duty Prohibition

08/01/2006

Pennsylvania employers that want to make sure their employees don’t come to work under the influence of alcohol or illegal drugs should establish a random drug-testing program. State law makes employees ineligible for unemployment compensation anytime an organization bases its firing on employees’ "failure to submit [to] and/or pass a drug test conducted pursuant to an employer’s established substance abuse policy" …

Head-Office decision won’t insulate company from liability

08/01/2006

Don’t think that leaving the final firing decision to someone in company headquarters will shield your organization from a discrimination lawsuit. Even if the ultimate decision-maker doesn’t know the race, sex or age of the employee in question, the fired employee can still file a discrimination claim if he or she can point to lower-level bias that tainted the decision …

What does broad new definition of ‘Retaliation’ mean to you?

08/01/2006

Expect this summer’s blockbuster U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Burlington Northern v. White, to swell the number of retaliation complaints and legal claims …

Performance-Based Pay Cuts: Legal, not advisable

08/01/2006

Q. We do yearly performance evaluations, during which we review whether employees have met the expectations we laid out during the previous review. If these expectations were not met, can we legally decrease the employee’s salary as punishment? —A.L., Iowa

Overly specific discipline policy can spark liability

08/01/2006

Q. I’m the HR director, and our discipline policy is very complicated and has several different categories of offenses. It says that if employees commit offenses that may result in suspensions of more than three days, employees are allowed a pre-disciplinary counseling conference. Now, my manager thinks that conference should be skipped if the employee has already been counseled for a prior offense in the past 12 months. I’m concerned that this deviates from our policy. Can we do this? —S.D., Illinois