Your company's road to success is littered with curves
and hazards, not the least of which are potholes of concern about
discrimination lawsuits. Unfortunately, many employers ignore
the potholes until they hit one. Hoping it won't happen isn't
good "road sense." There are positive steps you can take to
make the road a little smoother.
Know the rules of the road. Generally,
companies with 15-plus employees are subject to federal and state
laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of age, sex, race,
national origin, religion, marital status, disability or veteran's
status. These include:
- Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1991
- Equal Pay Act
- Age Discrimination in Employment Act
- Americans with Disabilities Act
- Rehabilitation Act
- Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1973
- Florida Human Rights Act
- Laws applying to government contractors: Walsh-Healey
Public Contracts Act, Davis Bacon Act, Service Contract
Act
These are just the laws pertaining to discrimination.
More laws, such as COBRA, Family and Medical Leave Act,
Immigration Reform and Control Act, Fair Labor Standards Act, and
the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Act, to name a
few, govern other workplace issues.
Government agencies that oversee compliance and
investigate complaints include the EEOC (Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission), OFCCP (Office of Federal Contract
Compliance Programs), the Florida Commission on Human Relations,
and the City of Orlando Human Relations Board.
Perform preventive road maintenance.
Lack of deliberate discrimination doesn't protect you, nor does
just having a written policy and hanging federal and state
posters.
- Review your application forms, recruiting ads, hiring and
promotion policies and practices, job descriptions and employee
handbooks, benefits policies and procedures, and discipline and
termination procedures and purge them of any language or practice
that may be unlawfully discriminatory.
- Establish a system and procedure for documenting actions
taken with employees.
- Provide supervisors and staff training on topics related
to discrimination.
- Develop and implement a procedure for handling
grievances.
Teach your supervisors highway safety. Train
supervisors on how to intervene and respond to overt and subtle
workplace problems so that both your company and your employees are
protected from the divisiveness of discrimination and
complaints.
Fix potholes quickly.
- Take prompt and appropriate action in response to
discrimination problems.
- Give employees an objective, fair and timely process for
having their complaints investigated and resolved. Employee
problems don't go away if you wait long enough; they worsen, and
the worse they get, the greater the chance that aggrieved employees
will contact the EEOC and/or a lawyer.
Build sturdy bridges. Create
a work atmosphere in which employees know that their skills are
useful and recognized, that they will be treated with respect,
compassion and fairness, as well as with compliance, that their
problems will be heard and responded to.
Taking these steps doesn't guarantee that you company
won't travel the EEO highway, but it can help prevent your breaking
an axle by falling into a pothole along the way.
Additional Information is available from a number of
sources, including:
Websites:
