An Ounce of Prevention

Courts often throw out overly broad non-compete agreements. A good agreement is reasonable, doesn’t last forever, and places limited restrictions on an employee’s ability to make a living. An agreement might say a worker will not join another ball-bearing manufacturer in Minnesota for a period of two years after leaving your employ, for instance. You probably couldn’t require that the employee never work in Minnesota manufacturing again.

The Hassle of Harassment

The issue of illegal harassment (or harassment of people who are in protected classes because of their age, gender, marital status, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, et cetera) has received a great deal of attention, so you might expect that Minnesota companies have learned to handle it well. Alas, Engdahl says, employers still make expensive mistakes.

Preventing harassment is one of the best ways of stopping it. Companies should include information about what constitutes illegal harassment in their employee handbooks, as well as information about reporting harassment, the company’s procedure for investigating harassment claims, and the consequences to offenders, which might include apology, mandatory harassment training, demotion, or firing, depending on the severity and number of the offenses. A company might also require all employees to attend anti-harassment training as part of their employee orientation.

If harassment takes place, firms need to quickly investigate and, if warranted, discipline the offender, sticking with the plan as stated in the employee handbook. You’re looking for an overall workplace atmosphere—written, spoken, and carried through with action—that says that harassment won’t be tolerated.

However, Engdahl says employers often blame the workers who complain instead of taking steps to end the harassment. “Employers immediately take a defensive posture that sees the employee who is complaining as somewhere between disloyal and the enemy,” she says.

That reaction costs companies money. Stopping the harasser is usually the least expensive course a company can take. If the number of people victimized increases, it in turn increases the company’s liability. If one or more victims   ultimately go to court, Engdahl says, a company often pays judgments that are much more expensive than the cost of stopping the harasser in the first place.

She remembers a 1999 case in which an African American employee in St. Paul walked into his supervisor’s office to find a noose dangling from the ceiling. Another employee had put it up to hassle the black worker; the supervisor knew it was there but left it up.

The targeted employee had a strong reaction. “He remembered mobs chasing his grandfather when he was a child in the South,” Engdahl says, and he needed counseling. When the employer refused to cover $1,100 in copayments and deductibles for that counseling, the employee sued. The award was nearly $200,000.

A better educated employer, she says, might have made a less expensive decision.