In my last Insight, I explained the misunderstandings employees have that can lead to discrimination lawsuits.
Mismanagement—or really poor management decisions—can sometimes seem discriminative, even if the actions taken weren’t intended that way.
There also may not be sound management practices in how a company is communicating to its employees.
This could be a reason why lawsuits keep happening.
Preventing Discrimination Lawsuits
To prevent discrimination lawsuits, I think companies need to:
- Document everything appropriately
- Set employee performance expectations at the very outset of an individual’s employment
- Have up-to-date job descriptions in place
- Conduct performance reviews at regular intervals
- Clearly define to employees job expectations
- Continually monitor employee performance
- Provide constant, constructive feedback
For example, if an employee’s performance is not where it needs to be—if he/she is not meeting expectations—managers need to really work with the employee in the early stages to correct the behavior and let the employee know the ramifications if it’s not corrected.
The best way to prevent discrimination lawsuits is to do a lot of up-front work with employees to make sure that when his/her actions don’t meet expectations, his/her manager takes due diligence to correct it.
Also, when conducting layoffs, a company needs to make sure selection criteria is objective, business-related and that the company has documentation to support who was selected and why.
Even in a business-related layoff, a company is not isolated from having a discrimination lawsuit filed against them.
So preventing discrimination lawsuits is really about understanding why you are taking actions and doing what you can to document everything in case you need to use the documentation as a defense.
Having sound management practices in place really works to prevent discrimination lawsuits.
What to Do If a Discrimination Lawsuit Claim is Filed
If your company does find itself in a lawsuit, what you need to do is work with your legal counsel from the inception of the lawsuit. Gather all the documentation that supports the decisions you made regarding the employee who filed the claim.
If, for example, your company conducted a layoff and an employee who was laid off files a discrimination claim, you will want to gather any documentation you have to support why this specific employee was laid off.
So if it was a business-related layoff, you’ll likely have documentation, such as sales results, sales volumes and the skills you need employees to have.
If a claim is filed, your company needs to create a communication plan for existing employees. You need to figure out how much to tell employees; you need to think about who, specifically, you need to talk to; you need to figure out how you’re going to communicate that a suit has been filed and what your company’s intentions are. Again, the best way to approach and answer these questions is with the assistance of your employment counsel.
These types of things oftentimes need to be decided and communicated to employees before the lawsuit goes public. You generally don’t want your employees to find out about the lawsuit by hearing about it on the local news.
Planning a communication strategy takes a lot of time and effort. You need to be mindful of how you communicate to your employees.
You also need to make sure you’re protecting your employees’ privacy rights by minimizing damage control, because you don’t want your current workforce to stop supporting your organization or to end their commitment to your company.
In my next Insight, I’ll give some examples of times when I helped employers avoid discrimination lawsuits.