Employment Policies Help Level the Playing Field

• Posted by Geoffrey G. Gussis on August 4th, 2005


• Filed in Employment Law

A recent article at Law.com discusses a topic that has provided consternation for many a general counsel - the oft-litigated employee handbook:

"While lawyers can debate the wisdom of employee handbooks, the truth is that in-house counsel can significantly improve their company’s chances of prevailing in employment litigation by carefully drafting and widely disseminating a handbook.

Many lawyers have seen employee handbooks backfire on companies. Exhibit A at trial, oversized for the jury’s viewing pleasure, is a photo of the all-white, male management team with quotes from the welcome page raving about how much money the company made last year. Nevertheless, even though they can and will be used against an employer, handbooks remain a necessary risk. So unleash that Mont Blanc and begin drafting aggressively. It is time to turn the tables on those unwitting plaintiffs lawyers.

A well-crafted handbook can create penalties for the kinds of bad behavior some workers engage in when they’ve decided to sue their employer. For example, some employees gear up for their planned suits by engaging in what can best be described as entrapment. Equipped with a small recording device concealed in a purse or pocket, they secretly tape workplace communications. Cell phones with video recording capabilities now provide the opportunity to add visual evidence. In some instances, a supervisor may suspect that the future plaintiff is goading the unwitting target into saying exactly what the plaintiff’s counsel hopes to capture. Unfortunately however, that part of the communication rarely gets recorded or saved."

Link: Employment Policies Help Level the Playing Field (at Law.com).