The Need to “Know Your Employment Law”
A growing wed of HR-riled laws effects virtuaiiy every HR decision the HR or line manager makes. Equal employment laws set guidelines regarding how the company write sits recruiting ads, what questions its job interviewers ask, and how it selects candidates for training programs or evaluates its managers. Occupational safety and health laws mandate strict guidelines regarding safety practices at work. Labor laws lay out, among other things, what the supervisor can and cannot say and do when the union comes calling to organize the company’s employees. As one employment lawyer sums up, “the use of such terms as probationary period, permanent employee, merit increases, white-collar . . . , annual salary in a job offer, and personality problems on the termination form now causes serious exposure to a lawsuit.”29
Consider some examples. You discharge a worker for excessive absenteeism, but her excessive absenteeism was caused by a work-related injury. The employee sues the company, saying that you actually fired her for filing a Workers’ Compensation claim.