Employers dread being sued by their employees and many companies take great steps to prevent such events, but other companies don’t even bother to take the smallest strides toward protecting themselves from employee lawsuits. The following tips can help you protect yourself from an employee lawsuit.
Establish an Employee Handbook
Create an employee handbook with a list of all of your policies and procedures and the protocol for handling all employee relations. Then have each employee sign that they’ve read the employee handbook. This way you limit your responsibility if an employee acts outside of the defined boundaries.
Anti-Discrimination Policies
Each state has anti-discrimination policies and your company needs to have rules that comply with your state’s laws.
Thorough Performance Documentation
No matter whether it’s a good review or a bad one, everything must be documented. All performance issues should be documented, especially if it’s something that may lead to termination in the future.
Investigative Procedures
Employee complaints should be taken very seriously because you can end up with a lawsuit from either party if they’re unhappy with your results. Make sure you not only investigate thoroughly but that you document everything, and obviously make a fair judgment based on your findings.
Treat Everyone the Same
This should go without saying, but once you’re in a situation with different personalities and different attitudes it’s easy to let some employees slide while you may be firmer with others. But no matter what, every employee should be handled in the same manner or you could be accused of discrimination.
Employee Training
No matter how many policies and procedures you establish, they won’t do you a lick of good if your employees aren’t trained in the procedures and if they’re not following them.