Look Around HR

One of the most irritating parts of recruiting is trying to get references from past employers on possible new hires. Most companies have a policy that states they can only give the employee’s dates of employment and position. I had some who said that I must say what the candidate put down and they will tell me if it’s right or wrong.

Some would only give dates of service. And I would have to fax over the verification form and get it back in a couple of days. Yes, 48-72 hours to look up a former employee’s hire and term date. Kind of frustrating when you are on the waiting end.

But there is a reason behind giving out as little information as possible. Just read this story about a lawsuit involving a positive reference.

An anesthesiologist was fired after he was caught using narcotics at work. But when he tried to get another job two months later, his old boss told the new employer he was “an excellent clinician” and “would be an asset to any anesthesia service.”

After he was hired by the new company, he came to work high and almost killed a patient. The patient sued and won $8 million. So that company sued the man’s old employer — and won.

Here is some more detail on the case. The potential employee has been terminated from a previous job because of poor recordkeeping and being under the influence of narcotics. However, the same doctors that signed his termination notice also wrote a recommendation for him, which the new company relied on in hiring him. From what I have read it did not say anything about his drug use.

The lesson here is to be careful. If you are honest in your recommendation (in a good or bad way) you should be able to avoid any litigation in the future. But, I would say, that giving out as little information is probably the best way to go.

While not receiving as much attention as Florida, the Georgia legislature and the governor signed new legislation known as the “parking lot bill.” Some of the main highlights of the bill include a prohibition against employers from maintaining or enforcing a concealed weapons ban and limits on searching an employee’s vehicle.

The NRA, whom led the fight in Georgia and elsewhere for this legislation, has a timeline and bullet point details of the bill on their legislation website.

Jackson Lewis, a workplace law firm, also has some very good details on the bill including the rights of employers, exemptions, limitations, and the perceived impact of it.

According to Jackson Lewis, it states that employers who own the property that their business is on are “exempt from the law and may restrict access to their property as a property owner.” Not only can you prohibit firearms from property you own, but you can also search employees or guests as you have in the past. As far as searches go, Jackson-Lewis outline specific instances when they are legal, and that mainly includes when you have good reason to think it might prevent an immediate threat or if you believe the employee unlawfully has company property. Normal law enforcement search warrants also apply.

Certain sensitive industries are exempt from the law (prisons, airports, etc.). The law also protects employers from liability:

An employer, private property owner, or property owner’s agent may not be held criminally or civilly liable for actions resulting from the transport or use of a firearm unless the employer commits a criminal act involving the firearm or the employer knew the criminal act would be committed on its premises.

Read more about the bill at the Jackson Lewis website.

It’s been said that as long as there has been offices, there has been office relationships. And I think it is also true that as long as there have been offices, there has been office gossip. After all, they don’t it water cooler talk for nothing.

Here is an excerpt from the Christian Science Monitor:

Just a year ago, the atmosphere in Sam Chapman’s small public relations firm was often tense.

“We had information leaks, we had disgruntledness, we had competitors finding things out, and we had sniping about senior management policies,” says Mr. Chapman, CEO of Empower Public Relations in Chicago. “People would stop talking when you walked by.”

A life coach identified the problem: gossip. Determined to elevate the tone, Chapman took dramatic steps. He fired three employees for gossiping. He also established a strict policy, turning the whole office into a no-gossip zone.

More…

To quash such talk, Chapman devised a policy for his staff of 17: “If I hear you gossiping about somebody, we send you back to the person about whom you were gossiping and you tell what you said. That dispels all the false information.”

There is no doubt in my mind that excessive gossip is bad for the morale and can lower office productivity. To me, office gossip is an issue like talking about compensation, you can discourage and work to reduce it but outright banning it is a little trickier.

You need to have a definitive employee communications process in line. Employees need to know whom they can talk to if they have problems (their supervisor, HR, etc.) related to something or someone at work. If they don’t know whom to contact they may just tell the guy or gal standing next to them.

And you need to weed out the bad roots. You can not ban talking (obviously), but can certainly discipline employee who are breaking the rules and hurting business operations.

In today’s workplace it seems there is a mix of policies with regard to PTO. Some companies break it into different categories such as sick time, vacation time, and personal time. Others give you one lump sum and let you take it if you are at the doctor’s or the beach. I prefer the latter, if for no other reasons, because it makes it easier for HR and managers to track. If you are going to give your employee 20 days off a year- let them use it how they want to if scheduling permits (that’s just my opinion).

The reason I am talking about this…Because CareerBuilder.com has a list of the best excuses for calling in sick that I think will make you laugh this Friday. Here is the list:

1. At her sister’s wedding, an employee chipped her tooth on a Mint Julep, bent over to spit it out, hit her head on a keg and was knocked unconscious.
2. While at a circus, a tiger urinated on the employee’s ear, causing an ear infection.
3. An employee’s dog wasn’t feeling well, so the employee tasted the dog’s food and then got sick.
4. “Someone put LSD in my salad.”
5. An employee’s roommate locked all his clothes in a shed for spite.
6. “Stuck on an island – canoe floated away.”
7. An employee was upset because his favorite American Idol contestant was voted off.
8. “I didn’t think I had to come in if I had time in my vacation bank. I thought I could take it whenever I wanted.”
9. An employee said he wasn’t feeling well and wanted to rest up for the company’s holiday party that night.
10. A groundhog bit the employee’s car tire, causing it to go flat.

Some of these are pretty funny and I am not sure how I would react if I actually heard someone try to get away with this. According to the story, 67 percent of employers require a doctor’s note when an employee calls in sick, 35 percent have checked up on their employees, and 14 percent have paid the employees a house visit.

I say alleviate the headache on everyone and give one flat PTO amount.

The issue of guns in the workplace has been on the front pages since the Florida legislature recently passed a new law prohibiting employers from banning guns in their parking lots. Business interests have immediately filed injunctions to stop this, and the general assumption in HR is that we would be safer to continue outlawing guns anywhere on company property.

However, an interesting situation occurred in Iowa about a month ago that involved a pizza delivery man. He was delivering the pizza to an apartment complex when an armed robber approached him. James Spiers, who was delivering the pizza, reacted immediately, grabbed the gun from the robber, and pulled out his own gun and shot Kenneth Jimmerson, who tried robbing him.

It was deemed that Spiers acted in self-defense and would not be charged. He had a permit to carry the gun. However, Pizza Hut did not feel the same way about the situation.

After initially suspending Spiers, he was fired about two weeks ago and given a severance package that included two months pay.

Here is what Pizza Hut had to say about the situation:

Vonnie Walbert, vice president of human resources at Pizza Hut’s corporate offices in Dallas, also told the Des Moines Register that the company prohibits employees from carrying guns “because we believe that that is the safest for everybody.”

Walbert did not say whether Pizza Hut had a written policy in place banning weapons at work.

The only person that would have been safe if Spiers was not carrying a gun would have been the armed robber.

This is similar to a story from Florida last year where an apartment leasing agent was fired for grabbing his shotgun and going to help a woman after he heard gunfire. Colin Bruley may have helped save a woman’s life by getting to the scene of the crime so fast, but it didn’t help him save his own job.

Remember the good ole days when fears of lawsuits were not hanging over your head on everything you do (I am only 23 so I don’t…). Now, we can only give out minimal information on things such as employment verifications. And the reason we do this is because we fear a lawsuit if you talk bad about an ex-employee and they don’t get that new job. So today’s take seems to be- as little information as possible.

Ready for the latest story that will make you scratch your head? A worker sued for workers comp because he hurt his foot at work. Sounds normal…but he hurt his foot rocking the snack machine in the break room trying to dislodge a candy bar that was stuck (h/t: HR Blunders).

This was done while on an unpaid lunch break and this is not part of his job responsibilities (although he is a maintenance worker).

The comp board ruled his claim could go forward because the event wasn’t a “recreational or social activity”. The insurance company appealed and the Court of Appeals reversed the initial decision and sent it back for further consideration. Read the case here.

The final decision has not been made yet, and we will keep you updated.

I guess we live in a world where we have to put a warning sign on the snack machine reminding employees not to shake it. I don’t know if this has more to do with frivolous lawsuits or an uneducated public.

P.S. It’s amazing the things people will do for their 75 cent candy bar.

Rob Diel worked in the Information Technology department at Chrysler for ten years, but was recently fired for a strange- but very legitimate reason. He posted Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli’s e-mail and office phone number in the comments section of a Detroit Free Press story on the newspaper’s website.

The story he was commenting on was about the decision for Chrysler to outsource several hundred IT jobs. Diel was expecting to lose his job at the end of May. The comment has since been deleted but here is what he said under the name “Chryslerworker:”

“Boycott Chrysler. If Chrysler is going to screw all the American workers, than (sic) it is only fair that America screws Chrysler. E-mail Nardelli and tell him what a great job he is doing.”

According to the Free Press, Nardelli began to receive scores of telephone calls and e-mails. Also, to make the situation for Diel worse- he did this on a company computer, which employees are not allowed to use for personal business.

Diel may have been losing his job in a month regardless, but he now has a recognizable name and a ton of bad publicity when he goes for his next interview. Why would an employer not think he is going to do the same thing if he gets upset about something at his next job? As this Google search shows, this is all over the web. Not exactly a wise move.

Following a Supreme Court decision last year that said an employee could not sue for wage discrimination because she did not make the claim within 180 days (as the current law states), the U.S. House passed a bill effectively stripping the statute of limitations on back pay. The Senate tried to take action, but failed to get the necessary 60 votes to end a filibuster. On top of that, the president had threatened to veto the legislation.

Read more about the legislation here.

From the New York Times:

Under a measure sponsored by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, the court’s ruling that Ms. Ledbetter failed to file a timely challenge to pay practices at a Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. plant in Gadsden would effectively be overturned, though Ms. Ledbetter would not benefit directly.

“Never mind that Ms. Ledbetter didn’t know about the discrimination when it first began,” Mr. Kennedy said. “Never mind that she had no means to learn of the discrimination because Goodyear kept salary information confidential. Never mind that Goodyear’s discrimination against Ms. Ledbetter continued each and every time it gave her a smaller paycheck than it gave her male colleagues.”

It looked as though this would be dead until 2009, but Kennedy, who heads the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has brought this issue back to the fore and their will probably be a vote on it in the coming weeks.

I think, as Kennedy had admitted, the bill probably doesn’t have the 60 voted needed in the Senate. But it doesn’t mean supporters of this bill will back down anytime soon.

This bill is dangerous to HR and companies in that anyone could make a claim at anytime. This means companies will have to take the expensive step to keep records on employees for an unlimited time essentially. Add that to the fact that the managers involved may no longer be at the company and/ or memories may fade over years; and this bill is a trial lawyers dream. The litigation will be endless and hard to defend.

Regardless of what happens with this bill, HR should continue to take efforts to regularly monitor pay to make sure discriminatory cases are not going on. The best offense is a good defense, and a company can stay out of court and easily defend themselves if they stay within the law.

A little over a week ago, I wrote of a new law in Florida that prohibits employers from banning guns in employee’s vehicles in most cases. As expected, the governor signed it- and the Chamber of Commerce immediately reacted.

Here is the statement on the Chamber’s website:

Well, its not quite as bad as the title makes it sounds. Recently the Florida legislature approved a bill that would allow employees to have guns in their car at work as long as they are legal and locked.

From the Tampa Tribune:

In a major victory for the gun lobby, lawmakers have approved legislation that would allow Floridians to bring a gun to work as long as the owners have a permit and the gun is locked inside their car.

The Senate’s vote Wednesday follows last month’s House’s approval, sending the guns-at-work bill to Gov. Charlie Crist, who is expected to sign the bill into law.

Like the House, the Senate’s Republican majority was forced to choose between the right to bear arms and private property rights, each supported by powerful special interests. The bill was approved in a 26-13 vote along party lines.

Crist on Wednesday said, “I understand there are competing interests. There always are in this process. But people being protected is most important to me.”

Most Human Resources organizations around the country oppose these bills, which are strongly backed by the NRA. Patrick Muldowney from the Central Florida Human Resources Association explained why he opposes it:

If an employee becomes angry and a gun is readily available, “there’s no ability for that person to cool off,” Muldowney said.

Also, the legislation raises liability issues for the business owner if employees are injured in a gun-related incident.

“The idea that an employer cannot preclude guns from being on its workplace is extremely problematic from an HR perspective,” he said.

I have heard the retaliation argument on a number of occasions, and think if someone is going to get a gun, they are going to get a gun. I’m a big Second Amendment guy and think allowing them in your locked car is reasonable; while prohibiting them from the office. That may not be the correct HR answer, but I have a pretty good response to those who are scared of guns in the parking lot. Many people here in Mississippi may remember this story of a high school teacher who may have saved many lives when he held a school shooter at bay after he went to get his gun from truck.