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ADA

Train interviewers to disregard apparent disability

06/02/2010
Employers aren’t supposed to ask about disabilities unless applicants bring them up. That’s to protect disabled applicants from preconceived notions about disability. But ignoring disabilities serves another function: Interviewers can later testify that company policy requires them to consider only qualifications.

Employment law by the numbers: Know which laws you can ignore

06/01/2010

Employers must stay abreast of an alphabet soup of federal laws—ADA, ADEA, FMLA and so forth—each with its own requirements. To comply, you first must know which laws apply to your business, based on the number of people you employ. Here’s how to tell which laws affect your workplace … and which ones you can safely ignore.

Can you fire an employee for threatening suicide?

06/01/2010
Suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the United States. What should you do if you learn one of your employees brandished a gun and threatened suicide, but a doctor released him back to work? Shouldn’t you be concerned about safety? What other kinds of liability might you face?

Pre-Employment Testing

06/01/2010

HR Law 101: Many organizations use pre-employment tests to screen applicants. But be aware of the risks involved. Unless you can demonstrate that a test measures job-related qualities and fulfills a business necessity, you could be exposing your organization to charges of discrimination …

Bizarre, nonsensical lawsuit? Vigorous response still required

05/28/2010

It doesn’t take much to get a lawsuit started. Sometimes a former employee—or perhaps even a total stranger—will walk into the nearest state or federal courthouse and ask to fill out a complaint form. The court is required to accept it and send it on. Regardless of its apparent merit, respond aggressively to it. If you don’t act, you risk a default judgment.

Waste elimination problems may be ADA disability

05/26/2010
Employees may be disabled under the ADA if surgery or another medical condition forces them to use the bathroom frequently. The condition affects a major life activity—elimination of wastes.

How to write effective and legal job descriptions

05/25/2010
Job descriptions are the cornerstone of communication between managers and their employees. After all, it’s hard for supervisors to measure job effectiveness during performance reviews unless they and the employee both know what’s expected. Here’s how to do job descriptions right.

No way to accommodate an employee’s disability? Then you don’t have to

05/24/2010

Employers are obligated to engage in an interactive accommodations process when disabled employees request an accommodation and one is possible. But if you’re confident it’s not possible to accommodate the disabled worker—that he would never be able to perform the job’s essential functions—then you don’t have to go through the motions.

You don’t have to create employee’s ‘perfect’ job when accommodating disability

05/17/2010

Some disabled employees go to great lengths to hide their conditions—perhaps out of pride or fear that they’ll be discriminated against. They may look long and hard for a perfect job that allows them to work without any sort of accommodation. But what happens if the disabled employee who has, in effect, managed to secretly “self-accommodate” is moved to another position? Can she request that she move back to her old, perfect position?

When creating job descriptions, focus on ‘essential functions’ employees really perform

05/10/2010

Courts hearing ADA cases generally trust employers to establish which job functions are essential and which ones are not. But that doesn’t mean you can trump up job descriptions with “essential functions” that are never performed. Courts sometimes see that as a way to avoid having to reasonably accommodate disabled employees. They’ll only consider those functions that employees perform in reality.