April 30, 2009 -
Once your organization has ethics policies and
programs in place, don't forget to follow them with employee training
on these policies and programs. It is best practice and could save an
organization a tremendous amount of money. There are financial and
legal penalties for those organizations that do not conduct training to
cover ethics, personnel policies, and legal concerns.
For those
organizations with personnel policies related to harassment and
discrimination, training is critical to build management and employee
understanding and compliance. Without training, additional punitive
damages can be awarded in the event of a lawsuit.
For example, according to the Society of Human Resource Management,
"An
employer tried to dispute sexual harassment claims by pointing to its
written policy prohibiting such harassment. A state appeals court
recognized that the policy was handed out to employees when hired. But
it also saw that the company did not provide further training to
employees on sexual harassment issues and failed to take even minimal
steps to post that harassment policy in staff areas; and didn't
periodically schedule employee group conferences to review the policy.
The court punished those failures with an award of over $700,000.
(Hanley v. Doctors Hospital of Shreveport, LA Ct. App., No. 35,527-CA,
2002)"
We recommend the following article by Rush Nigut, in Business Law, October 10, 2008,
"Protect Yourself from Employee Lawsuits When the Economy Tanks".
This article gives practical advice on how an organization can protect
itself from employment lawsuits in these difficult times.
This
clearly speaks to the point that just having a policy is not enough to
protect an organization from damages. The Nigut article argues that the
greatest predictor of the growth in employment lawsuits is the national
unemployment rate. Given our current downturn, it is more important
than ever for organizations to make sure they have personnel and ethics
policies, distribute the policies, train their organization on these
policies at least annually, have an avenue for grievances (such as an employee hotline), and investigate every complaint.