Tag Archives: Training

Preparing Your Business for a Natural Disaster

Forms and Policies, Training, , ,

The Texas Senate and House General Investigating Committees on the July 2025 Flooding Events recently released their 115-page report on the negligence at Camp Mystic last summer, and it contains sobering information for employers about keeping everyone safe during a natural disaster that affects the workplace.

Amid the wider tragedy and the broader impact of the floods, 100-year-old Camp Mystic near Hunt, Texas, stands out for having lost 28 souls, including 25 young campers, two young adult counselors, and the camp’s co-executive director. . . . [T]his report is focused primarily on examining the preparation for, response to, and impact of the flooding at Camp Mystic. The lessons to be learned from the camp’s inadequate emergency planning and response are worthy of careful study for opportunities to avoid similar future tragedies.

The report pointed to several errors that contributed to the ruinous response of the camp owners to the unfolding natural disaster:

  • Inadequacy of advance emergency planning. The report specifically points out that employees were not trained on how to respond in emergency situations. The written emergency plan wasn’t specific enough and there was no evacuation plan for the individual cabins. The written plan also wasn’t communicated well to staff, counselors or campers. In an area where cell phone service was unreliable, there was a public address system and walkie-talkies that were in working order that night, but they were never used to deliver evacuation instructions to the counselors or campers.
  • Despite a long history of flooding in that area, despite most of the residential cabins and central facilities being located within an area FEMA once designated as “a special flood hazard area”, despite camp director Dick Eastland’s experience serving multiple terms on the Upper Guadalupe River Authority and his awareness of the area’s topography and its propensity to flood, the National Weather Service’s Flash Flood Warning issued at 1:14 a.m. was received by Dick Eastland, but no evacuations were undertaken until almost two hours later. Even then, the 39 adults who were present at the camp were not tasked to assist with orderly flood evacuation. No adult staff members received advanced assignments to help evacuate the children and many were unaware of the crisis as it was occurring. Some teenage counselors were left to their own devices when they realized the water was rising and there was no help coming. Some were able to save their campers by using better judgment than the adults.
  • Once the sun rose and the flood waters receded, the communication completely broke down. “Parents of campers were traumatized by incomplete and conflicting information while waiting to learn whether their loved ones had survived.”

The report is a completely heartbreaking read, and it should also make you angry about the preventable deaths. But as a business owner, manager, HR director, or supervisor, the committee’s report should spur you to action. Look around your own business. Are you prepared for a natural disaster?

The OSHA General Duty Clause mandates employers to ensure a safe workplace. This clause, found in Section 5(a)(1) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, requires employers to provide a work environment free from recognized hazards that could cause death or serious physical harm.

In the Texas Panhandle, recognized hazards include natural disasters. For example, flooding can certainly occur, and particularly if your business is located in a flood zone, you need to have emergency plans related to flooding.

Continue reading Preparing Your Business for a Natural Disaster →

Sexual Harassment Focus Should Prompt Employer Vigilance

Discrimination, Employee Rights, Investigation, Sexual Harassment, Training, , , , ,

To no one’s surprise, my life as an employment lawyer for the last two months has focused primarily on one issue—sexual harassment. I have conducted several investigations and advised numerous employers on this issue recently because the national news and the #MeToo movement have had a direct impact on employers in the Texas Panhandle area, including some of my smaller employers.

Female employees nationwide and locally obviously feel freshly empowered to say something about any mistreatment and to expect that their complaints will be seriously addressed. As Oprah Winfrey predicted at the Golden Globes awards ceremony, “For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up.”

While the recent sexual harassment focus is inspiring to many women as a political call to arms, business owners and human resources directors are trying figure out how to hear and handle the resulting complaints with compassion, but also with practicality. That’s where your employment lawyer can help.

Any claim of sexual harassment is what we employment lawyers consider an emergency for your company. When an employee alerts you to a problem, you have to spring into action immediately to make the complainant safe, undertake a thorough and impartial investigation of the claim and finally, resolve the matter with the appropriate discipline. At that point, it is too late to improve upon your written policy or regret a bawdy joke that you recently told.

If you are a business owner or manager in a company with at least 15 names on the payroll, you would be wise to expect to face a sexual harassment complaint sometime in the near future, and to take these six steps now to lessen the sting of such a complaint: Continue reading Sexual Harassment Focus Should Prompt Employer Vigilance →

Suspicious Behaviors Common in Workplace Harassers

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After 30 years of advising employers, conducting sexual harassment investigations, and defending companies sued for discrimination and harassment, I have developed a list of suspicious behaviors that I see repeatedly among sexual harassers in the workplace.

I don’t think of myself as precogniscent of whether a person is actually a harasser or not prior to investigating a complaint, but I have repeatedly seen what I would call these “red flag” behaviors that certainly make it more likely that a supervisor may be accused of harassment at some point.

From the stories in the press about the sexual misconduct of Harvey Weinstein, Roger Ailes, and others, it appears from witness statements that many of these warning signs were present and ignored by their companies before the complaints about their misbehavior finally came to light.

Red flag behaviors that employers should take very serious notice of even before a harassment complaint is filed include:

  • Any inappropriate remark at work by a supervisor that has racist, sexist or other prejudiced overtones;
  • Criticism directed towards employees of one gender, one race, those of different religious beliefs, etc. and not towards ones of the supervisor’s own gender, race or religion;
  • Comments by a supervisor that are often about an employee’s or applicant’s appearance or personal attributes rather than work-related competence;
  • A supervisor who verbally hits back aggressively when challenged by someone “beneath” the supervisor;
  • Unprofessional online behavior, such as forwarding questionable emails or viewing porn at work;
  • Attempts to cover tracks, for example, by using a texting service like Snapchat that quickly destroys messages for what are allegedly work-related conversations;
  • Flirting by a supervisor, even if it seems harmless, that makes the object of the flirting uncomfortable;
  • A supervisor who complains repeatedly about his/her marriage and acts like the victim in that relationship;
  • Supervisor dating a subordinate;
  • Supervisor who can’t be trusted to behave correctly around alcohol, such as during the company Christmas party or softball game;
  • Gifts given by a supervisor to a particular subordinate and not to others; and
  • The settlement of a prior sexual harassment complaint for an eye-popping $32,000,000 before the employer has to pay to settle five other claims. Let’s just call that one the O’Reilly Factor.

Continue reading Suspicious Behaviors Common in Workplace Harassers →

HR Director Can Be Individually Liable for FMLA Violation

Attendence, Employee Rights, Management, Termination, Training, , , , ,

Most human resources professionals and managers think that working for a corporation gives them some protection from being sued themselves by former employees, but a federal appeals court recently held that an HR director can be individually liable for violations of the Family and Medical Leave Act (“FMLA”). The federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals made this decision in Graziadio v. Culinary Institute of America, No. 15-888-CV (2d Cir., Mar. 17, 2016).

The Second Circuit decided that the HR director who instigated the firing of an employee who was out on leave to care for her ailing sons could be sued in addition to the company who formerly employed the plaintiff. The FMLA provides that for purposes of being a defendant in a lawsuit, an “employer” includes “any person” who “acts, directly or indirectly in the interest of an employer” toward an employee. Therefore, a manager, supervisor, vice-president, HR director, leave administrator and other decision-making employees could be sued along with their company if the FMLA isn’t administered correctly.

The courts look at the “economic realities” of the situation, including whether the HR director had the power to hire and fire employees; supervise and control employee work schedules or conditions of employment; determine the rate and method of payment; and maintain employment records. Although a vice-president actually made the final firing decision in the Graziadio case, the evidence suggested that the HR director played an important role and the vice-president essentially just rubber-stamped the HR director’s recommendation of terminating the employee who was on leave.

These kinds of decisions are frightening to management employees who have to make hiring and firing decisions and those who have to administer the complex FMLA. However, this ruling should not come as a complete surprise to those of us who live and work in Texas, because the Fifth Circuit, which rules on federal cases in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, made a similar ruling ten years ago.

In addition, our Fifth Circuit court approaches the Fair Labor Standards Act (wage and hour) cases in the same manner. If the economic realities demonstrate that a supervisor was responsible for the misclassification of an employee as an independent contractor (meaning that the proper taxes weren’t paid, among other violations of employment laws) or the underpayment of minimum wages or overtime, then that supervisor may face a personal lawsuit by a former employee, along with the company being sued.

How can you as a manager or HR director protect yourself from a lawsuit that could endanger your personal assets? Continue reading HR Director Can Be Individually Liable for FMLA Violation →

Texas Discrimination Charges Too Numerous

Discrimination, Employee Rights, Forms and Policies, Personnel Policies, Training, , , , , , ,

Texas leads the nation in number of charges filed with the EEOC alleging gender discrimination, race discrimination, age discrimination, and disability discrimination, according to a recent story from the Society for Human Resource Management.  It is time for more employee training and better personnel policies for your Texas business so you don’t have to battle a discrimination charge.