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Employee Relations

Use discipline to enforce your no-Overtime policy

05/01/2007

Q.  We temporarily allowed an hourly employee to come in early and take work home at night. We paid her for overtime on both ends. But now we’ve promoted someone else and told the hourly worker to stop coming in early and taking work home. She said she prefers working early and still does (plus she skips lunch) but reports for just 40 hours. Is she setting us up?—L.B., New York

Civility helps prevent a hostile environment, but you don’t need to sweat the small stuff

05/01/2007

You’ve told your first-line supervisors over and over again that crude language, insults and worse have no place in the workplace. But now an employee has filed a complaint, alleging her supervisor’s “insults” have created a hostile work environment …

Worker doesn’t have to say ‘Harassment’ to make claim

05/01/2007

Don’t wait for employees to use the magic words—“sexual harassment”—to begin investigating a complaint. It’s up to you and your management team to decipher an employee’s protests to determine if they could fall into that legally dangerous harassment-complaint zone …

Suspension or detention for the principal in the leather pants?

05/01/2007

The middle school years are tough on everyone, staff included. Maybe that explains the behavior of an assistant principal at a Parsippany middle school who ransacked a woman’s apartment …

Investigate claims to tackle harassment head-on

05/01/2007

When it comes to co-worker sexual harassment, it’s not enough to “fix” the problem by transferring the harasser. If you don’t also investigate the underlying complaint, expect a lawsuit when the harasser strikes again …

Philadelphia police officer charged with coercing 2003 sex show

05/01/2007

The Philadelphia Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division recently released the results of its investigation into a 2003 incident in which an officer jailed two Philadelphia women, who were never charged with a crime, and then ordered them to undress and perform sex acts on each other …

Do a Passed-Over Worker’s Complaints Against a New Boss Count as Harassment?

05/01/2007

Q. A more senior employee was recently passed over for a promotion because a newer employee is clearly more qualified. Now that this person is the boss, the more senior employee has filed several petty complaints against her. Although we are aware that these complaints are completely invalid, as the HR department, we have to take them seriously. But it is a shame for the new supervisor to have the complaints piling up in her file. Is this considered harassment?

Give documents to terminated employees?

05/01/2007

Q. Must I give employees copies of their reviews, terminations or disciplinary items? They are in their personnel files, but I don’t want them running to an attorney. We are not terminating or disciplining employees with any illegal intent, but these days you can never be too careful. –A.D.

Good-Faith Discrimination Complaints Under the LAD

05/01/2007
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Use job-Related standards to kill discrimination suspicion

05/01/2007

Do you have clear and objective criteria for internal promotions? Prepared to justify those criteria as business-related? If so, you have little to fear from employees who were passed over for a promotion even if that means your management isn’t a perfect reflection of the racial makeup of the local work force …