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

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 ?s

For small-to-midsize companies competing in a litigious society, this book is more than a "must read": it is an absolutely essential source of information to which decision-makers (especially owners) of such companies should constantly refer. The term "frivolous lawsuit" is really a misnomer. Check a reputable dictionary of synonyms and you will learn that the word frivolous connotes "trivial, trifling, piddling, unimportant, insignificant, inconsiderable, petty, and paltry." On the contrary, an adverse decision resulting from a so-called frivolous lawsuit can destroy a company which has limited resources...or at least create truly serious problems for it, most of which are preventable.The subtitle of Weiss's book correctly indicates that he 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 its employees are.Ultimately, 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." They must then be explained to all employees. Finally, 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.