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Employment Law

Pay cut for poor work? Document carefully

02/03/2012
If an employee isn’t working as hard as you expect, reducing his pay might conceivably provide enough of a kick in the pants that he’ll pick up the pace. As long as you carefully document why you are making the pay cut, he won’t win a discrimination case even if his pay puts him at a lower level than others outside his protected class who perform the same job.

Is there a way to ensure sensitive investigation records remain confidential?

02/02/2012
Q. One of our employees has just filed an internal complaint claiming that she has been sexually harassed. We are concerned that if we discipline the alleged harasser based on our findings and note this incident in his personnel file, he may demand to inspect our investigation records. May we avoid this by maintaining a separate investigation file?

Beware defamation claims based on discipline write-ups

02/02/2012

Remind supervisors and managers to stick with verifiable and documented facts when writing up an employee for poor performance, a mistake or other disciplinary matter. That’s because a false write-up could be grounds for a later defamation lawsuit.

Carefully review sudden claims of disability during discipline

02/02/2012

Some employees, forced to confront poor work habits, workplace mistakes or other disciplinary problems, decide to tell their employers that they have a disability. Don’t take the bait.

Be sure to document the effective date of all new disciplinary policies

02/02/2012
When you change a disciplinary policy, make sure you document exactly when the change went into effect. That way, an employee who is punished more severely can’t point to the earlier disciplinary actions as evidence he was unfairly singled out.

New FMLA status: pet-abuse protection

02/02/2012
Florida’s version of the FMLA allows workers to take up to three days of leave if the employee or a family member is the victim of domestic violence. Now a state senator, Mike Fasano, has proposed an amendment that would extend that protection to pet abuse.

How to make ‘one rule’ discipline work

02/01/2012
If you want to streamline your employee manual and disciplinary process, you may be tempted to create one general misconduct rule. It might state, for example, “Violating company policies can result in discipline, up to and including termination.” But before you adopt such a rule, make sure HR is ready to administer it.

Beware contradictions in performance reviews

02/01/2012
Do you evaluate employees’ overall performance and then conduct a special appraisal to determine extra rewards such as bonuses? If so, make sure both processes paint a true performance picture and don’t contradict each other.

Use objective measures to make firing decisions

02/01/2012
If you terminate subpar workers, it goes without saying that you must be prepared to show they were, in fact, poor performers. Do so by using objective performance measures. Let the facts and figures speak for themselves.

He said, she said: What if they both did? Trust investigation to reveal harassment truth

02/01/2012
If your sexual harassment policy is comprehensive, any complaint may trigger an investigation that uncovers many violations—perhaps even by the complaining employee. When that happens, the best policy is to let the investigation take its course and document everything. Then discipline everyone who violated the policy.