Ho, Ho, Holidays Are Here - Let's Party!

As I often heard growing up, “Laissez les bons temps rouler”. Thanksgiving is right around the corner and, before you know it, you’re in December with holiday festivities right up to ringing in the New Year.

Employer-sponsored holiday parties have been around since the first employee was hired, I imagine. They are a good way to boost morale, lighten the corporate mood, and to demonstrate to employees how much you and the business values each one of them. But there are several legal pitfalls HR needs to watch for. For example, your choice of venue and theme is important for avoiding religious discrimination lawsuits. And the venue should be ADA compliant. If you’re planning on having it outside of normal work hours, Fair Labor Standards Act issues come into play.

Then there are those risks that come from the drinking and merriment that often is part and parcel of the workplace holiday party. If you don’t serve alcohol, will anyone come? And, if you do, could you wind up with a sexual harassment, wrongful death, or other lawsuit if things go terribly wrong?

In today’s litigious society, a business owner and/or manager should be mindful of all the potential issues that surround an after-hours party, especially if alcohol will be served.

If you choose an outdoor venue or a venue where alcohol is not regularly served, yet you want to allow your employees to have a drink, then I would suggest a BYOB policy. I would post an office memo to all employees of this policy, as well as, strict guidelines for those wishing to drink. If a designated driver is not available, then it would behoove you to provide one. If you allow an employee to drive away under the influence, you and your business will likely be responsible in the event of an accident.

If you choose an indoor venue at a local establishment where alcohol is regularly served, then your liability risk is lower, but it is still a good policy to have designated drivers available.

Your party policy should also address other issues that may arise, such as a sexual harassment claim. Remind your employees that the EEO guidelines that govern day-to-day operations are still in full force during after-hours get-togethers, and that alcohol will not be accepted as an excuse for unlawful behavior.

This article only covered a few contingencies you need to plan for ahead of time. Be wise, and seek legal counsel if you feel it’s necessary. The last thing you want at the end of the season of celebration is to be slapped with a harassment or discrimination complaint.

5 Hidden Costs Business Organizations Incur When A Discrimination or Harassment Claim Is Filed By An Employee

Aside from a jury’s award to a charge of discrimination or harassment, what are the other costs to an employer when a lawsuit is filed?

1.  Re-directing employee resources and hiring additional employees to gather, review and prepare documents. Depending on the size of an organization, this process can last anywhere from 6 months to two years;

2.  The loss in employee morale negatively impacts the productivity;

3.  The loss to a business’ reputation regardless of the outcome of an investigation;

4.  The loss of competent employees who move on for fear the instability could result in job loss;

5.  The high cost of legal fees associated with defending a claim of harassment or discrimination;

From an employer’s perspective, settlement costs to resolve an EEOC claim fade in the face of these additional, often unrecorded, costs to the employer’s organization.

In addition to these hard-to-quantify costs, the average single claimant lawsuit results in average defense costs of $250,000 and average jury verdicts of $350,000.

Class action lawsuits, which are also increasing, generally result in lower per claimant awards but can cost an employer millions of dollars in cash and untold millions in the above employee costs listed.

On the plus side, if an employer has properly trained its management and employees, has a defined system set up to address complaints of discrimination and/or harassment filed by an employee, and clearly provides positive recourse for individuals who utilize the system, then it can resolve most complaints in-house, and greatly mitigate any potential loss for those complaints taken to the EEOC or similar state agency.

Does It Really Matter If Your Employees Identify With Corporate Principles?

Todays' employees want to be heard on how they feel about the moral and ethical issues in business today. They care about such things as employee privacy and employee rights. When you, as the business owner, have an identifiable set of guiding principles that you yourself adhere to, then you are creating a framework for developing principle-centered policies and practices, and this leads to principle-centered employee relations decisions.  

Employees want to know their employer cares about their opinions and concerns. If you're going to create a good employee relations program, you need to have a mechanism for finding out what your employees care about, what they are concerned about, what they think of you as an employer. One way to do this is with employee surveys.

Building An Employee Relations Policy Starts With A Sound Mission Statement

Psychology research indicates the chances of success are much greater for small business owners if you develop and maintain a clearly defined vision for your employees to follow. This is also your mission statement. If you don’t have one yet, I suggest you develop one and use it as part of your employee relations strategy.  

It's not unusual for a business owner to scratch his or her head these days and ask: "How do I get my people to understand what we're trying to accomplish here?"  The mission statement will answer this question for everyone.

As a small business owner, developing a good sound mission statement is the basic building block you need to establish your employee relations policy. Employees today want to feel good about where they work and want to know that they are contributing to a business that actually stands for something other than the almighty dollar. As Simon Sinek said, “Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.” 

Building a good mission statement is not that difficult. You can make it as long or as short as you want it to be. Here are a few examples:

American Express: “At American Express, we have a mission to be the world’s most respected service brand. To do this, we have established a culture that supports our team members, so they can provide exceptional service to our customers.”

Honest Tea: “Honest Tea seeks to create and promote great-tasting, healthier, organic beverages. We strive to grow our business with the same honesty and integrity we use to craft our products, with sustainability and great taste for all.”

IKEA: “At IKEA our vision is to create a better everyday life for the many people. Our business idea supports this vision by offering a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products a prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them.”

There are many websites around to help you fine-tune your mission statement. Two websites that I’ve used to help me develop mission statements are bplans.com and missionstatements.com. 

Psychology of The Lunch Thief

Opening the fridge at work only to find that your spicy crunchy tuna roll or lovingly crafted sandwich has mysteriously disappeared is a surefire way to ruin the rest of your day at the office. The first time this happens, you might write it off as a simple mistake; perhaps someone thought your food was expired and tossed it out. But if the problem continues—as it so often does—there is usually a simple but disturbing explanation: an office lunch thief.

While teenagers often commit petty thefts as means of testing boundaries, it's difficult to imagine what would compel a grown adult to repeatedly engage in such antisocial and potentially damaging behavior. If caught, that individual risks the wrath of coworkers and could even lose his or her job.

Indeed, for many who chronically commit thefts at work, money has nothing to do with it. Nor, contrary to popular belief, does thrill. "A lot of these people can go on holidays where they can have all the thrills in the world—helicopter rides, bungee jumping, downhill skiing," said Will Cupchik, a psychologist based in Toronto, and author of Why Usually Honest People Steal. "Why they take the risk of losing their job for peanuts—either literally or figuratively—is a very worthwhile question."

Top 6 Ways To Improve Employee Relations

 

image provided by www.business2community.com

The better you are at employee relations, the happier your staff will be. The happier your staff, the more productive they will become, and thereby positively impacting your bottom line.

There are dozens of ways you can improve the relationship between management and employees whether you are a major corporation or a small business.

My pick for the top six ways to improve employee relations:

1. Share your vision – You want your company to feel like one giant family. That’s why it’s important that you not only share your company vision with your employees, but you also make them an integral part of it.
2. Ask for feedback – A common concern of employees is that upper level management doesn’t care what they have to say. To improve employee relations, consider having ways for employees to express themselves – both their ideas and concerns. And make sure you’re actually listening! Encourage and promote this activity by allowing anonymous suggestions for those employees fearful of negative repercussions. 
3. Provide incentives – Believe it or not, sometimes a paycheck is not enough to cause an employee to want to work hard. To break up the monotony, consider providing interesting incentive plans to give them something else to work towards. Remember, these extra incentives don't have to be extra money. In fact, I believe employees work harder when the incentive is something they have always wanted, but couldn't afford or justify the expense, like an Apple iPad.
4. Let them know you care – Employees want to know that management cares about what is happening to them. No one wants to feel like just another number. Do things to let your employees know they are valuable to your company.
5. Honor a job well done – Want your employees to work harder? Acknowledge them. Perhaps install an employee of the month program to make sure those hard workers keep it up and others follow suit. 
6. Finally, but not any less important: Don’t forget that there is life outside of work – Remember, each employee is facing the difficult task of balancing life outside of work with life at work. So make sure you do things to ease this arduous task as opposed to making it more difficult on them. Don’t be a taskmaster when employees occasionally request off, and don’t make a habit of asking them to take work home with them.

Implementing all or several of these suggestions will take strategic planning. Create a management project that sets out all the tasks required to complete the project, identifies the team players, assigns duties and responsibilities, identify qualifiers to test the success of your plan, and most importantly, a deadline. The amount of man hours necessary to implement changes will depend on the size of your company or organization. Proper goal-setting and planning is the key component to ensure your employee relations project is a success.

The President Does An End Run Around Congress

 On July 21, 2014, President Obama signed an executive LGBT non-discrimination order, barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity among federal contractors. The order also protects all federal employees from discrimination on the basis of gender identity. Crucially, Obama did not include the broad religious exemption that some faith leaders had begged the White House for. (These requested exemptions would have allowed religiously affiliated corporations to fire gay and trans workers with impunity.) The executive order does, however, preserve a Bush-era exemption that allows religiously affiliated contractors to continue to preference workers of a certain religion.
Obama uses Executive Order to Out-Maneuver Congress

Deliver Results Through Coaching

In the world of sports, athletes hire personal coaches to fine tune their skills and break through the boundaries to improve performance and achieve goals. In the business world, mangers need solid coaching skills to fine tune individual employees and teams in delivering bottom line results. The manager who is able to “coach” is able to make a profound improvement in the performance of employees while keeping them motivated.  

Numerous studies have clearly shown that correctly coaching employees improves the bottom line. Organizations that have paired training with coaching experience outstanding bottom line profitability. Stand alone training improves productivity by only 22.4%, while training coupled with coaching increases productivity by as much as 88%.  

Coaching is the process of open communication and feedback between the manager-coach and employee. This process can be time-consuming but the reward can be great. Your ability to inspire and coach your employees can raise the performance bar significantly, however, coaching works best if the coachee is open and willing to accept the advice being offered.

Why Training Is Important?

Training is essential for many reasons, but one important reason for large and small business organizations to provide adequate discrimination and/or harassment training is to mitigate damages in the event of a lawsuit.

Train the Decision-Makers First

Business owners and/or Board of Directors must see the benefit of training in order for an organization to make lasting and permanent changes in employee relations.