How To Avoid Employee Lawsuits

Employee lawsuits can happen for all sorts of reasons, such as unwarranted termination, workplace harassment, or other issues. They can be time-consuming, expensive, and disruptive to your business as well as stressful to deal with.

A lawsuit can also have a negative impact on your reputation and on employee morale. Avoiding employee lawsuits should be the main aim for any business, and by taking some sensible steps, being careful to initiate uniform hiring and management policies, and creating an employee evaluation system, it is possible to help to lower the risk of being sued by an employee.

Always consult an attorney regarding all legal issues.

 

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Know The Laws, Rules, And Regulations

Before you hire any employees, you need to take some time to learn about all the regulations that you will need to comply with. Ensure you know all the workplace safety laws required for your business, such as a manufacturing plant providing each employee with a cbrn suit and ensuring they are correctly trained in its use. Even if you only own an office, you would need to comply with laws for fire and electrical safety.

It’s also a good idea to seek some legal counsel to make sure you are starting off on the right foot with your hiring practices as well. There are lots of laws regarding hiring practices, rules and regulations about workplace safety, anti-discrimination laws, and more that you need to know. Do your research so you can avoid a phone call from a discrimination lawyer or personal injury law firm services because an employee feels they have been treated unfairly or unsafely at work.

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Be Prepared With Insurance

Identify your company’s risk exposure, and think about taking out a comprehensive commercial liability insurance policy, just in case. A potential insurer will conduct a risk analysis to design to exact coverage that your business needs to help you defend yourself against any possible employee lawsuits that may come up in the future.

 

Create Job Descriptions For Every Position

A detailed job description provides your employees with a list of responsibilities, a management hierarchy, a list of best practices and acceptable practices, and any other information that is needed to clearly define what is expected of the employee every day when working for your company.

A job description that is comprehensive and well-written will make sure that both the employer and the employee are on the same page about what is expected before the candidate is even hired.

 

Define Job Success

In order for your employees to be successful in their jobs, they need to know how your management team defines success and gives that information to employees. Otherwise, how will employees know they are meeting expectations?

Are they expected to meet weekly quotas or monthly sales? Will they have quarterly performance reviews? As they reach objectives and new goals are set, your employees should be informed of any changes to the definition of employee success.

 

Avoid Surprises

When an employee is terminated, it should not come as a surprise to anyone. An employee who is failing to deliver what is expected of them should be put through a review process, receive warnings that they are under-performing, and if needed, be given some additional training to improve their performance.

Only after employees have been told about unacceptable performance, often several times, should you begin the termination process.

 

Provide On The Job Safety Training

You should offer safety training for all employees, both online and on site. Train your team in safe work practices and document the training that everyone has received. Encourage your managers to attend employee safety conferences to learn more about the best in safety practices.

The better-trained everyone is, the safer they are. This can lower the risk of a lawsuit due to an injury at work.

 

Document Everything

Keep detailed employee records, files of performance reviews, remediation training, your company’s safety audits, and everything else important. Get everything in writing. Make sure your employee manual includes an explanation of the company’s termination policy.

Your managers need to file a report when an employee is reprimanded or rewarded. Keep all your job descriptions up to date. Keep everything in writing.

 

Treat your employees with respect, make sure they’re informed, and make sure they understand their job requirements, company policies, and safety procedures. Offer all the training and tools that your employees need in order to keep safe.

 

Be consistent in your hiring and termination policies, establish your company as one that cares, focus on improving employee performance, and be clear about your expectations of every member of your team.

 

Your company and your staff don’t need to have done something wrong in order to find yourself faced with a potential employee lawsuit. However, you can reduce the likelihood of this happening and be better able to properly defend your business, with well-documented, compliant business practices.

 

 

 

Good luck!

Ken Boyd

Author: Cost Accounting for Dummies, Accounting All-In-One for Dummies, The CPA Exam for Dummies and 1,001 Accounting Questions for Dummies

(email) ken@stltest.net

(website and blog) https://www.accountingaccidentally.com/