Proper Employment Practices Liability: Prevent Wrongful Termination
Allegations of wrongful termination are common grounds for employment practices liability claims. Establish policies and procedures to safeguard your company against liability to ensure that your business’ leadership and human resources personnel fully comply with relevant employment law. A few practical measures can dramatically reduce your risk of contending with a claim asserting that your company improperly terminated someone’s employment.
Utilize Resources From Employment Practices Liability Insurance Providers
When evaluating how to prevent wrongful termination claims, it may be helpful to contact insurance providers. Mostly, insurers want their clients to be completely up-to-date and compliant with legal standards pertaining to human resources management. It reduces their and clients’ risks of dealing with costly lawsuits. Furthermore, carriers have wonderful insights on emerging trends involving employment practices liability. They also have ideas on general liability claims because they’ve dealt with them firsthand.
A knowledgeable representative may work with you individually to review your current practices. Insurance providers may also offer specialized resources summarizing the most important things about proper employment practices.
Define Expectations in Job Descriptions
When someone’s performance on the job is subpar, you should theoretically have sufficient cause to terminate that individual’s employment lawfully. However, it is not always the case, as there are any ambiguities regarding the scope of personnel’s responsibilities or your expectations surrounding the quality of their work.
Set clear expectations for your staff members by writing job descriptions describing their duties. With this critical referential tool, there isn’t any room for doubt about what people have to take care of in their day-to-day work to fulfill their roles satisfactorily.
Create a Comprehensive Employee Handbook
Creating a thorough employee handbook that advises people about workplace policies is also a good practice. Handbooks educate employees on fundamental standards concerning general conduct, safety practices, and grievance processes.
In addition, a well-drafted employee handbook will serve as a playbook for your leadership and human resources personnel. With unequivocal guidelines on handling disciplinary matters or offering coaching and counseling as necessary, they can make fewer on-the-spot decisions about the best way to handle complicated situations with staff.
Having a playbook to refer to ensures consistency in your employment practices, which may play a critical role in averting employment practices liability claims. Disparate or inequitable treatment can prompt claims that you discriminated against a team member. Taking the same approach to disciplinary matters and terminations can prevent perceptions that you mistreat someone.
Provide Key Personnel With Training on Employment Practices Liability
Offer training on employment practices liability issues to personnel whose job roles include supervisory functions or involvement in terminations. By giving them meaningful context, training can enrich people’s understanding of your company’s policies and applicable federal or state regulations. Being well-informed and conscientious about liability risks will equip staff to handle terminations judiciously.
Ultimately, initiatives to facilitate consistency and compliance in termination procedures and other personnel management functions benefit both companies and their workers. They enable companies to avoid regrettable liability scenarios, and they can also foster better sentiment from workers in employer-employee relationships.
About Byrnes Agency
At Byrnes Agency, we offer insurance solutions that can be tailored to meet your specific needs. Whether you’re looking for personal policies or commercial coverage, we have the right coverage for you. To learn more about our products, contact us today at one of our two locations.
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info@byrnesagency.com