Fair, Square & Legal: Safe Hiring, Managing & Firing Practices to Keep You & Your Company Out of Court

Rating:
Summary: An Absolutely Essential Source of Information and Counsel
Review: This is the Fourth Edition of an exceptionally valuable book which was first published in 1991. Weiss has updated his material to accommodate new laws, regulations, and court decisions which are directly relevant to discrimination and EEOC guidelines, employee verification and security, technology issues, sexual harassment, negligent hiring practices, management of people with disabilities, affirmative action, discipline and termination policies and procedures, defamation, violations of privacy, the Family and Medical Leave Act, evaluations and promotions, sex and age discrimination, and labor law.

As is also true of previous editions, the subtitle correctly indicates that Weiss explains "safe hiring, managing & firing practices to keep you & your company out of court." He organizes the material as follows:

Part I Safe Hiring Practices [re recruiting, interviewing, and employment decisions]

Part II Safe Management Practices [re evaluations and promotions, preventing sex discrimination and sexual harassment on the job, employee action laws and labor rights]

Part III Safe Firing Practices [re discipline and firing practices, public policy, management of older employees]

With Weiss's guidance, it is possible for the decision-makers in any company to complete what amounts to a comprehensive "audit" of any and all areas in which that company could be vulnerable to litigation. Of at least equal importance, the same "audit" will help the company to determine precisely what its obligations are as an employer as well as what the legal rights of each employees are.

Perhaps it would be helpful to those who read this commentary if I now provide a brief excerpt which is representative of the quality of Weiss?s counsel throughout the entire book. I have deliberately selected an especially troublesome area, one which has been the focal point of countless lawsuits: Employee Performance Evaluation. According to Weiss: ?Subjective rating systems in themselves are not illegal. The EEOC and the courts recognize subjective job standards such as communication and leadership skills) and that the words [in italics] good, satisfactory, poor, and unsatisfactory [end italics] carry within them subjective elements. So where do they draw the line?

1. When standards are unequally applied or do not exist at all; and

2. When someone shows that the standards or their absence produces disparate treatment in promotion and compensation policies, as for example:

? When sex stereotyping tainted the process by which a woman was denied a partnership in a [major] accounting firm or

? When subjective decision making torpedoed promotion policies that have disparate impact on minorities.

EEOC and court rulings encourage objective performance appraisals, but they discourage using them as a subterfuge for discrimination.?

Weiss devotes all of Chapter 6 to explaining HOW to formulate policies and procedures so that all evaluations and promotions are ?safe.? That is, they are in full compliance with all applicable regulatory laws, rules, and regulations.

Throughout this brilliant book, as Weiss rigorously and thoroughly examines hiring, managing, and firing practices which are both ethical and legal, he explains What You Can Do and What You Cannot Do. However, with all due respect to Weiss, qualified legal counsel should be consulted to ensure that all of a company's policies and procedures are "fair, square & legal." One of the many value-added benefits of this updated edition is that Weiss identifies a number of ?Cases? at the end of each chapter to which his readers and their legal counsel are referred. There are 17 cited at the end of Chapter 6.

An organization?s policies and procedures concerning employment law must then be carefully explained to all of its employees as well as contained within an employee manual. If at all possible, the same policies and procedures should be readily available online. Of course, they must be rigorously and consistently enforced. Even so, there may yet be frivolous lawsuits but at least the company has done everything possible to prevent them and is thus much better prepared to obtain a favorable decision in a court of law if and when involved in litigation.