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  • HR Specialist: Employment Law
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Terminations

Employee moonlighting: Should you ban it?

06/01/2005
Issue: One in 20 employees moonlights, and a hot labor market offers employees in your shop new opportunities to work second jobs.
Risk: Moonlighting can create tired, distracted employees, plus …

Female employees can sue for ‘potty parity’

06/01/2005
Don’t make different bathroom-break rules for the different sexes. Case in point: A manufacturer’s new factory had only one restroom, which was designed for men. Female employees could use that restroom …

Prevent the damage from employee defections

06/01/2005
Issue: How to stop employees from disclosing confidential data, or jumping to a competitor and stealing your employees.
Benefit: You can stop defectors from raiding your business, but only if …

Remind managers: Base hiring only on job-related reasons

05/01/2005
Issue: Can you place conditions on employment that aren’t related to the person’s ability to perform the job?
Risk: Courts may see such restrictions as illegal “employment blackmail.”
Action: …

Cut your legal risks by reworking exit interviews

05/01/2005
Issue: Gaining more value from your exit interviews.
Risk: Intelligence gathered often falls into a “black hole,” so mistakes are repeated and legal land mines are overlooked.
Action: Ask …

Don’t retaliate against employees for controversial public opinions

05/01/2005
If your organization does business with any government entity (from a state agency to a local school board), be wary of allowing government officials to become involved in your employee discipline …

Don’t ‘get tough’ on certain staff; tie punishment to crime

05/01/2005
Issue: Supervisors tend to be quicker in disciplining employees that have given them trouble in the past.
Risk: Singling out certain “troublemakers” for discipline can spur a retaliation lawsuit.
…

State law dictates employees’ access to personnel file

05/01/2005

Q. An ex-employee whom we fired is now asking to take some documents from his personnel file. Is he legally allowed to do this? Do we have to give him the information just because he’s asking for it? —L.B., North Carolina

Don’t automatically fire after FMLA, STD leave expire

04/01/2005

Q. Our policy is to run FMLA and short-term disability (STD) concurrently. FMLA is for 12 weeks of job-protected leave. STD is for 26 weeks, with proper medical documentation. At what point can we terminate an employee, at the end of 12 weeks, when FMLA leave is exhausted? And, if so, do we end short-term disability payments, since the employee has been terminated? —E.A., Georgia

Will your anti-retaliation policy pay off?

04/01/2005
When it comes to handling employee complaints of unfair treatment, you’d better have a policy and a procedure in place to handle retaliation claims.
That’s the $520,000 message a federal …