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Distinguish, but don’t discriminate
By Lauren | October 16, 2009
Continuing my Friday series on keeping your business out of court, let’s talk about another potential pitfall in the employment arena: discrimination. Executives sometimes complain that the laws against employment discrimination unfairly tie their hands. They claim that it’s so legally risky to fire any minority employee (and they usually include women in that category) that they’re afraid to hire them in the first place.
Nonsense.
Contrary to their complaints, U.S. law mostly allows employers to hire, assign, promote, and fire their employees at will. It does, however, prohibit employers from doing so if their motivation is to discriminate on the basis of age, gender, race, national origin, religion, or disability. (State and local laws add various other categories to the list of protected classes, so check with your lawyer if you don’t know what laws apply to your company.) The goal is to protect workers from suffering discrimination over personal traits that they either can’t change, like age or race, or shouldn’t have to, like religion. The case law gets a little more complicated when applied to specific situations, but the fundamental principle is that workers should be judged on the quality of their performance, period.
All this really means is that companies need to think carefully about their employment decisions and be sure that they’re acting for the right reasons. You’re allowed to distinguish between your employees, so long as you do so for lawful reasons. It’s perfectly acceptable to fire an employee for unacceptable work, or to reward your superstars with extra perks for superior performance. You can also let an employee go if he or she just can’t do the job even with reasonable accommodation. But it’s not okay to let your personal prejudices interfere in your employment decisions, or to allow other workers to make a minority employee’s life intolerable.
And, of course, it’s important to document the legitimate reasons for the employment actions you take. Making a record not only helps if your company gets sued, it also helps employees understand why you took the action you did. Far too many employee lawsuits get filed because angry workers don’t know why they weren’t promoted or got let go. They may not like hearing that their performance was under par, but if they know you acted fairly, they’ll be much less likely to sue.
Topics: Business Ethics, Risk Management, business communications, corporate responsibility, ethics |