ABC Taxes, Tips & Tools

The reces­sion has hit America’s work­places hard.  Employ­ees who remain after mul­ti­ple rounds of lay­offs are stressed out, and any­one who has been laid off prob­a­bly har­bors feel­ings of hurt as well.  With emo­tions run­ning high, all this stress is spilling out into offices and other indus­trial set­tings. But that does not mean your com­pany needs to be a hotbed of vul­gar com­ments, taunts and demean­ing behaviors.

Most employ­ers have a sex­ual harass­ment pol­icy, but many do not have a sim­i­lar code of con­duct for gen­eral inter­per­sonal rela­tion­ships.  Why would your busi­ness want a civil code of conduct?

• Employ­ers who fail to have such a pol­icy may leave them­selves open to a hos­tile work envi­ron­ment claim.  Keep in mind that employ­ees are more liti­gious than ever.
• Weed­ing out offend­ers will help with employee reten­tion, which may become an issue as the econ­omy rises out of the reces­sion and work­ers feel more secure about ven­tur­ing out to find a new job.
• A civil work envi­ron­ment is a lot bet­ter for morale, ben­e­fit­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity and employee health.
• In extreme cir­cum­stances allow­ing jerks to pros­per could lead to work­place vio­lence, which no employer ever wants to face.

If you do not have a civil code of con­duct, develop a sim­ple one now.  A civil­ity pol­icy needs to the usual sec­tions, a sim­ple state­ment of the code of con­duct, sep­a­rate from your harass­ment pol­icy, a means of doc­u­ment­ing vio­la­tors, coun­sel­ing them, and the usual esca­la­tion pro­ce­dures, up to an includ­ing fir­ing the offender.

Then of course your com­pany must uni­formly enforce these rules. This last bit is really important…

In a recent case a pro­fes­sor of Mid­dle East­ern descent faced anony­mous harass­ment.  The jerk in this case would leave notes threat­en­ing the pro­fes­sor call­ing him racist names, but the cul­prit could not be iden­ti­fied.  The admin­is­tra­tion emailed all the stu­dents and fac­ulty campus-wide remind­ing every­one to treat one another with respect and asked stu­dents to come for­ward if they had any infor­ma­tion regard­ing the harass­ment.  The col­lege also filed a police report regard­ing the harass­ment.  Later on the pro­fes­sor was ter­mi­nated for unre­lated rea­sons; he went to court claim­ing he had been sub­jected to a hos­tile work envi­ron­ment.  The court dis­agreed stat­ing the col­lege had done every­thing it could.

What does your work­place civil code of con­duct look like? Do you have a story you would like to share with other read­ers? We would love to hear from  you.

If you need help with this issue or any other, remem­ber, small busi­ness ser­vices and tax­a­tion are our busi­ness.  Please give Art & Busi­ness Con­sult­ing a call.  We would love to engage you as a client.

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