Forgiving Bosses Can Set the Stage for Employee Lawsuits
It’s easy to understand why most people prefer to avoid confrontation and sometimes… that’s advisable. However, for supervisors, that is often not an option. By definition, a supervisor has to do what is necessary whether it is pleasant or not. Keep reading to learn what an employment attorney has to say about the trouble lenient supervisors can create for their companies.
Forgiving Bosses Can Set the Stage for Employee Lawsuits
Most people prefer to steer clear of confrontation. But when supervisors take that approach with respect to under-performing employees, they may be setting their employers up for litigation. It doesn’t have to be that way. Learn some lessons from a seasoned employment attorney who has represented hundreds of employers in such cases.
Most supervisors are promoted to that role not on the basis of their leadership abilities, but because they were good employees, according to Chad A. Shultz, a partner in the Atlanta Office of FordHarrison, LLP. That doesn’t mean most can’t become successful supervisors, merely that they need to be trained and, naturally, evaluated according to their performance in that role.
“It’s easy to manage good employees, but really hard to manage those that fall short,” he says. While that statement will not come as a revelation to many, the problem arises when supervisors fail to grasp the legal and employee morale hazards when they, often unconsciously, use “hope as a strategy” for improving employee performance. They merely hope underperforming employees will, spontaneously, address their shortcomings. And when that doesn’t happen, such supervisors hope the employee will quit and take another job elsewhere.
Perceiving Lower Expectations
What typically happens instead, Shultz says, is that the employee grows comfortable with perceived lowered expectations, and other employees observe the lack of consequences for under-performance and begin to question the necessity of performing at higher levels.
The ultimate result is that the supervisor who fails to directly address the underperformance usually begins conveying what Shultz calls “under-the-radar” messages of dissatisfaction to such employees, such as by not inviting them to meetings or lunch. The underperformers interpret these signals not as an indication of a performance issue, but merely that the boss simply does not like them — possibly for illegal reasons: “He doesn’t like me because” of — fill in the blank — my age, religion, race, gender.
Meanwhile, formal performance appraisals of such workers by non-confrontational supervisors often do not give any serious indication of under-performance.
What’s to be done? Shultz and his colleague Sarah P. Wimberly outlined ten rules for preventing lawsuits in a succinct book titled “Manage Employees or Get out of the Way,” available from Ford Harrison. Here are some brief highlights, which for some serve as excellent reminders of proper supervision techniques.
