The start of a new year is an excellent time for HR professionals to focus on key New Year’s resolutions in terms of proper Human Resources management. Although none of us typically follow through on every New Year’s resolution we make, the following provides a thoughtful checklist of resolutions and actions that should pay great dividends in the coming year, and potentially save costly resources down the road through avoidance of employment claims and litigation. Let’s get right to the checklist.
Employee Handbook & Policy Review: Conduct a thorough review of your employee handbook and other written policies to determine if revisions are necessary due to changes in employment laws at the state or federal level. Do your employee handbook and other policies sufficiently preserve your right to exercise management discretion to determine when employees can be terminated at will? Do you have an appropriate acknowledgement form on file for every employee to whom your employee handbook has been issued, which confirms receipt of the handbook and acknowledges that, absent a formal contract, employment is at will? Do you have an appropriate sexual harassment/workplace harassment policy? Has it been provided to all employees, and does it clearly articulate an internal mechanism to register complaints? If you are covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), are your FMLA policies up-to-date?
Review Employment Applications: Your employment application should be carefully reviewed on an annual basis, to ensure that you are only requesting valid job-related information, and not requesting any information about an applicant’s age, previous injuries, worker’s compensation claims or disabilities? Your application is critical, as the application itself can become the subject of an employment discrimination charge or legal action.
FMLA and ADA FORMS: Review your form library to ensure that you have all of the proper forms in place for utilization whenever an employee requests medical leave or accommodation for a disability. Are you possibility using outdated forms or handling requests on an inconsistent basis? This is simply a good time to review your policies and procedures in this area.
Wage & Hour Audit – Exempt Classification Review: Conduct a thorough audit of your exempt and non-exempt classifications, to ensure that your salaried employees who are deemed exempt from overtime truly meet all aspects of one of the recognized exemptions, and do all such employees who are “exempt” meet the “salary basis” test? Are your hourly employees subject to overtime properly recording all hours worked? Do you have sufficient procedures in place to ensure compliance with overtime requirements and regulations? Are you properly including non-discretionary bonuses in the regular rate for hourly employees for overtime calculation purposes?
Review Job Descriptions: Job descriptions are not a luxury, but rather a necessity. Accurate, up-to-date job descriptions are critical, not only with respect to establishing employee expectations and performance parameters, but also when it comes to complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and its various requirements.
Supervisory Training: When was the last time you conducted training for all supervisors on the basics of diversity and harassment in the workplace, wage and hour administration, FMLA and ADA requirements, etc.? If it has been more than 18 months to 2 years ago, now would be an excellent time to conduct supervisory training early in the new year.
Review Employee Evaluation Policies and Procedures: You should thoroughly review and examine how you are evaluating employees and grading performance. Employee evaluations can be an excellent management tool, but they can also become a major problem if not properly and effectively administered., e.g. we are often called upon to defend a disciplinary or termination decision, and although it is apparent that performance problems existed, the problems and issues were never accurately reflected on a recent performance evaluation. It is imperative that employee evaluations are performed on a timely and accurate basis to reflect the employee’s actual performance and any identified shortcomings.
The above checklist presents a few suggested New Year’s resolutions. No such checklist is ever complete, and everyone will undoubtedly want to expand on this list. Taking some time at the start of the year to focus on these issues will provide continuous benefits going forward.