Monthly Archives: August 2017

Taking Care of Your Employees After A Natural Disaster

Attendence, Compensation, Management, , , , , , , ,

Employers along the Texas Gulf Coast are trying to determine how best to help their employees in the emergency that is the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. As business owners and managers, we have the responsibility to try to take care of our most important business resources–our human resources–in the face of catastrophe.

While lots of websites and plans are in place telling a business about stocking emergency supplies, sheltering in place and creating evacuation plans, there are fewer guides for what to do for your employees in the long days and weeks afterwards.

After any natural disaster, whether it is a hurricane on the Texas Coast or a tornado or blizzard in the Texas Panhandle, you are going to first need to check on the well-being of your employees. For that reason, you need to keep updated phone records and emergency contact information for your employees in a safe place, preferably electronically so that you can access it from any location.

Organize a group text, a telephone tree or a call-in phone number so you can determine where each employee is, if each employee is physically okay, and whether the employee will be able to report to work. Don’t assume that just because you can get the business open that you will have employees to work in it.

Then you need to worry about money, because your employees certainly are worrying about it. According to a large survey in 2016 by GoBankingRates.com, half of all Americans have less than $1000 in their savings account. Even more sadly, 34% had no savings at all.

In addition, 60% of workers in America are paid by the hour and federal law only requires employers to pay an employee for hours actually worked. So being away from work even for a day or two can have devastating financial consequences for many employees.

Some will brave any conditions to make sure they don’t risk losing a day of pay or losing their job. The New York Times illustrated this in a story about the first day after Houston started getting the four feet of rain that Hurricane Harvey eventually dropped on that city.

Gloria Maria Quintanilla appeared as a speck on the horizon, wading through waist-high waters in the middle of the road with a sack thrust over one shoulder and an umbrella perched on the other. Ms. Quintanilla, 60, seemed to epitomize Houston’s work ethic, its resolve and its shock.

“I worked at the hotel up there,” she said when a reporter approached. As she walked, she explained that she was an immigrant from El Salvador, here since 1982. She makes $10 an hour washing and ironing sheets and towels at the Doubletree.

She had started the journey from home more than an hour before.

“It was my day to work, and I’m a very responsible person,” she said, speaking in Spanish. “I had no idea it was going to be like this.”

The large majority of your hourly employees need to work, want to work and want to fairly earn their pay. However, when their homes are underwater or destroyed in a tornado, they may need extra help. Even if you don’t normally provide salary advances or employee loans, in times of natural disasters, you may need to bend the rules and allow those.

Continue reading Taking Care of Your Employees After A Natural Disaster →

Preventing Racism and Incivility in Your Workplace

Discrimination, Employee Rights, Hiring, , , , , ,

As a business owner or manager, you have the opportunity and the responsibility to combat racism and hatred in your workplace. Despite the bitterness of current political discourse and the appalling display of racism in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend, or maybe because of it, everyone deserves to be able to go to work and feel accepted, valued and safe.

From a legal perspective, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the discrimination statutes of every state prohibit racism. Racist expressions in the workplace can lead to discrimination cases that are costly, both in terms of money and company goodwill. For example, a Dallas milling company settled with the EEOC in 2012 for $500,000 after 14 African-American employees alleged that their supervisors did nothing when the complainants faced racist graffiti and slurs by co-workers, including “KKK”, swastikas, Confederate flags, and “die, n—-r, die” as well as nooses displayed in the workplace.

This kind of discrimination can hijack the future of a company. Why would anybody with a conscience choose to work there ever again? Or do business with such a company once these actions were known? No amount of wise counsel from an employment lawyer like me can really defend, much less restore a company’s prosperity after these sorts of egregious actions are allowed to occur.

Employers trying to avoid discrimination lawsuits and to build a culture of decency can put into place anti-discrimination policies and training, can immediately investigate and take remedial action when racism is suspected or discovered, and can make advancement and better pay at the company dependent on an employee’s or manager’s embracing of equality.

But perhaps the most important way you can prevent discrimination at your company is by setting an example of what you expect from your employees. You are the yardstick by which your company is measured.

Christine Porath, a leading authority on decency in the workplace, says in her book that 25% of employees acknowledge that they acted uncivilly in the workplace because they saw their bosses acting that way.  As the boss, you need to have zero tolerance for incivility because it is like a gateway drug—incivility often becomes prejudice, harassment and discrimination. Getting away with one often leads to the others.

As a business owner or supervisor, you set the tone for your employees. Your words and actions determine if the workplace is respectful or hostile. You must tell your workers that bigotry is unacceptable and that you have a zero tolerance for stereotyping, name-calling, racial slurs, bullying and other abusive behaviors.

But more importantly, you personally must show your employees, not only by avoiding participating in these kinds of abuses, but also by making a special effort to “be the behavior you want to see” in your employees—respectful of all people, patient, empathetic, humble, transparent, honest and self-controlled.

Ending racism in the workplace is not just your legal responsibility—it is a moral one. Continue reading Preventing Racism and Incivility in Your Workplace →

Running Off an Underperforming Employee Is Not a Viable Option

Discrimination, Management, Termination, , , , , ,

In my long experience as an employment law attorney, I have come to realize that employers really, REALLY hate to fire employees. Some employers are scared of confrontation, others hate admitting they made a bad hire, and some just can’t find the right words.

Whatever the reason for being unable to fire a poor performer, employers often ask me about “running off the employee”. Running off an employee usually means making the employee so miserable the employee will voluntarily quit.

The employer trying to run off an employee may give the employee the worst duties at the company, criticize the employee in front of others, deny the employee’s vacation request, cut the employee’s pay, transfer the supervision of the employee to the worst supervisor, or make the employee work the graveyard shift.

Of course, this approach to termination often also makes the employee so angry that when the employee leaves, he or she becomes much more likely to sue the employer.

Running off an employee is the layman’s way of doing what we in the legal field call a “constructive termination”. A constructive termination occurs when the employer makes the working conditions so intolerable that any reasonable employee would feel forced to resign.

When an employee quits with good cause because the employer made continuing to work there intolerable, there are numerous legal consequences, such as: Continue reading Running Off an Underperforming Employee Is Not a Viable Option →