Recently I was asked, why do I need personnel policies?

The answer is simple. Having a well-written employee handbook can help you win and avoid lawsuits by educating employees. Explaining things such as harassment and other forms of unacceptable conduct reduces your personal, legal and financial exposure from things involving your employees.

A poorly written or outdated employee handbook may create liability. If for example, you do not have policies or have not explained the policies to employees, you may find that you are being sued for several relatively minor things. If these “minor” things were covered in your policies and a little time was spent explaining policies to employees, you might have avoided legal problems that would cause you time and money.

Recently, I had an employer come to me for policies and she only had one employee. By being pro-active she now has the tools needed to help defend against employee related issues. Plus we had a nice discussion on how to respond to unemployment claims in the future and she knows she can call me in the future for help.

That's why every company should have personnel policies.

OBNOXIOUS EMPLOYEES

We all have someone we wish we never had to see or talk with again. Often it is a specific person at work, church or maybe even a family member.

Hiring managers periodically make a mistake when they hire someone and that mistake may be around for 20 years or more. Most of the time hiring mistakes are not because of qualifications or ability to do the work but the personality type just doesn’t work well with co-workers.

Dealing with obnoxious employees is different from the occasional employee disagreement which should be worked out by the employees involved and can be especially challenging to small business owners.

The ability to get along with others is sometimes hard to judge during an interview and complainers, gossips, story tellers and other “different” personality types do get hired.

When an employee falls into one of these personality categories, work can become almost unbearable for co-workers and management.

The conduct the employee is displaying draws attention of other employees causing lost or reduced production, morale declines and sometimes results in hurt feelings which only tend to fester if the situation is not corrected.

Companies do not make money by terminating employees but in cases similar to this where the entire work group can be affected, the problem needs to be addressed and corrected immediately. This type of problem only gets worse and will not “just go way” by itself.

As the business owner or manager you should discuss the problem with your human resources advisor or consultant. Most experienced human resources advisors or consultants have handled similar situations in the past and can guide you through this problem.

The obnoxious employee needs to have a counseling session with management who has specific facts and examples of the unacceptable conduct. In a non-threatening manner the employee should be presented with the examples and asked for his input and suggestions for correcting his problem.

This is a perfect time to review and explain company policies that deal with unacceptable conduct, harassment and discrimination. The employee should be given clear expectations of how he must conduct himself while at work.

It is admittedly difficult sometimes for managers to keep calm while talking with this type employee. The manager should make a point to discuss potential discipline if the conduct does not improve. Before the meeting ends, a date usually within 30 days should be set to follow up on how things are going.

Also, it goes without saying that the manager documents these conversations in writing within 24 hours of the meeting. The employee should sign the original which goes into his personnel file with a copy to the employee.

The few minutes it takes to reduce to writing what happened during the meeting does not come close to what you will pay your attorney if the employee files some sort of claim with a governmental agency. The anxiety and frustration you save yourself to prove you were right makes the documentation worth your time.

At the scheduled follow up meeting or sooner if there are additional problems, the employee should do most of the talking and describe how he feels things are going. If there have been other incidents before the scheduled meeting, the manager should have examples of the conduct and ask the employee why this conduct happened.

Before the end of the meeting, the employee should be asked if there are any questions about what is expected.  Before the end of the meeting if there have been incidents since the last discussion, the manager should tell the employee that he (the manager) is going to confirm the meeting in writing as he did earlier but this will be considered as a disciplinary write up.

If the employee is uncooperative about signing the disciplinary letter, tell the employee that it is not optional. In the event an employee continues to refuse to sign the letter, allow him to write an explanation that you will attach to the disciplinary letter. As a last resort, call in two other employees (exempt if available) and explain that the employee refuses to sign the letter and ask them to witness the refusal and write on the bottom of the letter that they witnessed the employee refusing to sign the letter.

To maintain confidentiality, the witnesses should not be allowed to read or have knowledge of the contents of the write up.

To avoid potential lawsuits and involvement of various government agencies, documentation cannot be stressed enough. Often this type personality feels that he is not only right but “righteous” and will challenge the employer.

Preferably at least two disciplinary letters should be issued before terminating the employee. The disciplinary letters should have the dates of conversations, a brief description of what was discussed and what the employee agreed to do to correct the problem.

Near the end of each disciplinary letter include the following verbiage “failure to correct the problems discussed may lead to additional disciplinary action up to and including discharge”.

In most states there is no requirement to give the employee anything in writing at time of termination. If, however, your state or company policy requires something in writing at termination, the letter or memo should be very short and only say “You are being terminated” and the date. The reason for this small amount of verbiage is the less you say, the less an attorney or government agency can latch onto to come after the company.

However this situation is resolved, employee morale and productivity will increase and may be cause for a celebration!

If you would like a copy of the template of a discussion planner that I use, just send me a short email and it’s yours.