photo credit: furryscaly
I recently came upon an article located on Entrepreneur.com regarding ways that employers can protect themselves during layoffs and keep their company out of a law suit. I have to disagree with many thing’s that are stated in this article as it almost sounds like they are attacking employees and portraying employers to be always innocent in all matters.
They suggest that there is no wrongful fire, only wrongful hires. Many people (employees) would have a problem with this statement. While yes an in depth interview and review process may find yourself a great employee that believes in the core values of your company, this still does not mean that the employee would not take action if later fired for what they believe to be a wrongful reason.
Entrepreneur.com suggests that if you state in your contract or employee handbook somewhere that it is an “at-will” company this protects you from any future lawsuits. That you are allowed to fire an employee for any reason what so ever and get away with it. However, the original laws still apply, so if that employee can prove there was some sort of discrimination, sexual harassment, general harassment, failure to uphold the state law applying to the FMLA act, and many others then you will still have a law suit on your hands. Those are not acceptable for any reason.
Be Honest, Be Consistent. Documents are crucial in litigation. If an employer terminates an employee who never received a negative evaluation for poor performance, it is going to have a lot of explaining to do when faced with a discrimination lawsuit.