Most companies house a Human Resources (HR) Department to handle employee and office matters. This includes administering benefits, onboarding employees, and planning company events, but also involves handling more severe issues including harassment, discrimination, workplace safety, and more. If you’ve experienced a serious situation at your workplace, filing a complaint with HR may be [...]
We often hear Company’s talk about their policies and strong reporting procedures to try to curb sexual harassment in the workplace. However, if employers are serious about reducing workplace harassment, they need to go beyond policies and procedures, or have policies and procedures backed by swift and certain action. One key to effecting this is [...]
WHAT EMPLOYERS SHOULD DO Make sure your harassment policy is up to date and has been recently communicated to employees. Conduct harassment training for management if you haven’t done so within the past year. We recommend that the training be live and interactive if possible, or computer-based and interactive if live training is not possible. [...]
Many companies hand out sexual harassment policies to employees upon their hire which state the company has a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment. The policy lists certain prohibited behaviors and encourages individuals to bring complaints of inappropriate behavior to upper management. However, is the company sexual harassment policy worth the paper it is written on? [...]
Massachusetts anti-discrimination laws explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. However, most other state laws and the Federal anti-discrimination law do not explicitly provide for protections based on sexual orientation. This may soon change. In a recent Seventh Circuit decision, the Appeals Court held that discriminatory conduct based on one’s sexual orientation is protected under [...]
When an employee reports discrimination, harassment, wage violations, of unsafe working conditions to their employer, they expect to do so without fear of retaliation or retribution. Unfortunately that is not always the case. Some managers cross the bounds of appropriate conduct and engage in harassment and/or adversely affect an employee’s employment status such as denying [...]
DON’T AGREE TO ANYTHING BEFORE READING BELOW Here are the top 5 things to think about before you sign a forced resignation: Are you being offered anything? If you aren’t being offered severance or something of value in exchange for the resignation, why resign? Let them fire you so you’ll at least get unemployment. Did [...]
Important information for employers and employees regarding internal workplace investigations Recent guidance from EEOC and NLRB suggests that it may be a violation of law telling employees to refrain from discussing internal investigations. The EEOC recently took issue with an employer who took the typical approach. In a letter to the employer, the EEOC stated: [...]
In this difficult economy, with jobs as scarce as they are, most of us are relieved just to be employed. But the fact is that sometimes even hard working people find themselves in unworkable employment situations. Whatever the reason, whether it is a difficult supervisor, medical problems, discrimination in the workplace (employment discrimination), or some [...]