“How many friends do you have?”

Have you asked this question in a job interview yet?  If not, you may find yourself doing so sometime soon.

As marketing and recruiting for our companies is accomplished more and more through social media, the ability of our employees to reach others through their own social media networks becomes more important.

This raises a very important question:  When an employee leaves the company, can they take their social networking “friends” and followers with them?

There have been a couple high profile cases in the news lately that may start laying legal groundwork in this arena.

Tug-of-war over Twitter followers:

Noah Kravitz worked for Phonedog, where he had a Twitter account, @PhoneDog_Noah.  When Kravitz left the company, he changed his Twitter account name, effectively taking the account’s 17,000 followers with him.

The company sued Kravitz, claiming they had the rights to the followers, not Kravitz.  They estimated that each of the Twitter followers were worth $2.50 per month to them.  Eight months after Kravitz left Phonedog, the company filed a lawsuit against him for $340,000, which they estimated was the total value of having 17,000 followers, worth $2.50 each, for eight months.

This case is still working its way through the courts, but is being closely watched by many.

LinkedIn custody battle:

LinkedIn also brings up interesting dilemmas.  Linda Eagle, an executive who worked for Edcomm, had a LinkedIn account that an Edcomm employee created and maintained for her.  When she was terminated from the company, her password was changed and she was locked out of her account.

She sued claiming an invasion of privacy by misappropriation of identity.  The company countersued with a claim that their policy required employees to create and maintain LinkedIn accounts, of which the contents were to be returned to the company.  Eventually Eagle retrieved her account, but the court upheld Edcomm’s claim that Eagle misappropriated their idea.

What you can do to protect ownership of your company’s social media followers:

We can only begin to imagine the areas of employment law that need to be ironed out regarding who has the rights to friends and followers in the workplace.

Many corporate recruiters are developing vast networks on their LinkedIn accounts for the purpose of filling their company’s positions.  These connections are made on their employer’s time and equipment, utilizing their position with the company.

When they leave for a new job, do they have a right to take those connections with them, or is that a trade secret belonging to their employer?  The same question can be applied to the sales team and other staff that depend on strong networks to perform their jobs.

The solutions are not simple.  While we wait for litigation to determine best practices, internal policies can help to protect your business.

• Incorporate social media into your company’s definition of trade secrets in your confidentiality agreements and your non-compete agreements.
• If you hire an employee because he or she is particularly adept with social media and/or blogging, agree together in advance, in writing, what will remain the property of the individual and the property of the corporation.
• Whenever it’s possible, create social media accounts in the name of the business and have more than one administrator on the account, so ownership is spread between multiple employees.
• As part of retrieving company property during an employee’s termination process, retrieve access to all company-owned social media accounts.

As the old saying goes, “make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other’s gold.”  With the price of silver and gold what it is now, we’re probably going to see more and more legal battles over who has the rights to social media friends in the future.

Normally, those are not words that most people want to hear out of their boss’s mouth! Nevertheless, these words are being said in offices all around the country, as businesses implement workplace weight loss programs inspired by the television show The Biggest Loser.

Workplace Wellness Programs have been in vogue now for several years. Companies, motivated by spiraling health care premiums, have looked to these programs as a way to lower the costs of employee benefits.

These programs can range from co-workers agreeing to go on a diet together, to a structured contest implemented by management. While these bring many advantages to the workplace, they have to be balanced with laws that protect employees’ rights.

You have a stake in your employees’ health.

No matter the size of your company, you have a stake in your employees’ health, and good reasons to care about their weight.  According to the Centers for Disease Control:

• Two-thirds of Americans are overweight.  This not only causes health insurance rates to rise, but also contributes to many chronic health conditions, which results in increased absenteeism, loss of productivity, turnover, increased stress and lowered morale.
• The CDC estimates obesity costs US companies about $13 billion a year! Even safety on the job and workers compensation are impacted. For example, in 2009, two courts ruled that obese employees who were injured on the job had the right to have their weight loss surgery paid for as a necessary part of their treatment for their injuries.

Workplace weight loss programs and discrimination laws:

As employers consider the type of weight loss program or contest to bring into their office, they must consider laws that protect employees against discrimination.

While obesity itself is not a qualified disability, it may be caused by one. In addition, the EEOC guidelines state that severe obesity (defined as body weight more than 100% over the norm) is an impairment, which may then qualify an individual for some protections.

• A workplace weight loss program needs to be entirely voluntary for the staff.
• It  should be structured to accommodate participants who have disabilities, and provide them with the reasonable accommodations they require in order to participate.
• Most of these successful contests involve rewards, but in order to be nondiscriminatory, those rewards should be available to everyone, not just to those who clearly are overweight.
• There cannot be any negative ramifications for employees who choose not to participate.
• Ask employees to seek advice from their doctor before taking part in any strenuous physical exercise.
•  Have all employees sign a waiver relieving the company of responsibility.

As an example, a company may be better off allowing employees to select their own diet plan from a variety of choices offered, rather than having everyone going on the same diet, which might not work for someone in the office who has a health condition such as diabetes or severe food allergies.  Similarly, exercise options offered to employees during the program would need to accommodate everyone’s needs, so that an employee with restricted mobility could still participate fully.

Don’t violate employee privacy.

The ADA prohibits employers from asking employees about their medical histories or conditions unless it has to do with their job, or is a business necessity.

It does give employers the ability to gather this information if it is part of a voluntary wellness and health screening program. Employers should not gather any medical information that they don’t need, but typically employees will be asked to provide information on their weight, which for most people is sensitive and should be kept confidential.

If employees do reveal medical information that prevents them from participating, it needs to be kept confidential under the requirements of HIPAA and the ADA. Employers can never use this information as the basis for decisions on hiring, firing, or promoting employees.

How healthy is your company’s environment?

Certainly we all know that being overweight is a contributing factor to our rising health care costs. Conducting a weight loss program in the workplace is one way to attack the problem. However, companies can review their own policies and environment to help employees lose weight every day, not just during a contest period.

• Do you serve muffins or cookies during the staff meetings? How about providing healthy snacks instead?
• Do you have a vending machine filled with chips, candy bars and soda? Remove it and in its place provide fresh fruit, yogurt, and other good food.
• If an employee wants to walk on their lunch hour, bike to work, or take a mid-afternoon aerobics class, can you be flexible enough with them to make that work?
• Does your company’s leadership model the behavior you’d like to see in your employees? If the top management is overweight and eating fast food every day while they work through lunch, it sends a message to their staff that this is what a successful person at the company looks and acts like.

Free resources for creating workplace weight loss & wellness programs:

The good news is that there are some great free resources available to help a company put a program in place that benefits the business and the employees!

• The Center for Disease Control has the LEAN Program (Leading Employees to Activity and Nutrition). Their website contains comprehensive information on the impacts of obesity in the workplace and interactive tools and resources to implement a program.
• Washington State’s Department of Health provides a Worksite Wellness Resource Kit online, as well as links to many other resources. The kit also assists employers with setting up an in-house programs that comply with applicable state and federal laws.

Losing to win:

Companies have been looking for ways to cut the fat in their budgets, and most of us are running pretty lean these days. Considering the financial impact of obesity, it’s tempting to encourage our employees to “cut the fat” in order for us to continue to tighten our financial budgets. Doing it the right way will benefit our health, our employees’ health, and the company’s health.

Originally published in the Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal.

Email Julie Tappero

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Alongside large benefits, like health plans and 401(k) plans, are smaller benefits, such as mileage reimbursements, holidays, and other perks.

Here are a few benefit areas to consider in 2012.

Mileage reimbursement:

On July 1, 2011 the IRS raised the optional standard mileage rate for businesses to 55.5 cents. In December, the IRS announced that the rate will stay at 55.5 cents beginning January 1, 2012.

Did you know that your business may reimburse your employees for less than the optional standard mileage rate issued by the IRS?

• If you pay them less, then the employee may be able to deduct the difference on their income tax return.
• If you choose to pay them more, it may become income, and then payroll taxes might come into play.

Since it is a deductible business expense for companies, most companies consider it worthwhile to compensate their employees for the use of their personal vehicles.

Cell phones:

The IRS has issued new guidance on employer provided cell phones.

Have you taken a look yet at the holiday calendar for 2012? If not, you might want to do that pretty soon and start planning ahead.

• In 2012, both Christmas Eve and New Years Eve fall on a Monday. Will your business close that day? If so, will you give your employees holiday pay for those days as well, increasing their paid holidays by two for 2012?
• Did you know that you can close your business, and you are not required to pay your hourly employees for the day? Your salaried employees, however, must be compensated for the time.

Do you ever wonder what holidays you should provide to your employees? SHRM (Society of Human Resource Management) polled companies and found the most commonly observed holidays in 2012 will be:

• New Year’s Day
• Memorial Day
• Independence Day
• Labor Day
• Thanksgiving Day
• Christmas Day.

96% polled said they would be offering the same number of holidays as they did in 2011.

This can be traced back to 2002, when Weyerhauser fired some Oklahoma employees for having guns in their cars on company property, violating the company’s policy.  Lawmakers jumped to protect employees’ rights to bear arms, at least as far as the parking lot.

Since that time, many other states have followed suit, and the laws have withstood legal challenges.

The arguments for and against workplace firearm policies:

There are many critics of the parking lot gun laws.  Generally speaking, the laws provide protections to employers, granting them limited liability for incidents involving guns and injuries.  A company, however, is not totally immune from responsibility.

Under OSHA’s “general duty” clause employers must provide a workplace that is “free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm.”  Critics argue that guns on the premises conflict with this employer obligation.

An example would be the case of Amanda Beech vs. Hercules Drilling Co., LLC in which an employee’s gun accidentally discharged, killing a coworker.  The employer was held vicariously liable and ordered to pay the deceased employee’s family almost $1.2 million.

Opponents argue that the decision should be left up to the individual company.  Employers who want to forbid firearms on their property should be able to set that employee policy.  They argue these laws create a new protected class, the gun-toting employee.

Proponents argue that keeping a legal handgun in a locked private vehicle is a Second Amendment right, and that employer’s private property rights do not trump it.  They point out that the great majority of gun-related acts in workplaces are committed by strangers or former employees.  And they believe that someone determined to cause harm with a handgun will not be deterred by a policy barring it.

Do you want a firearm policy at your company?

While parking lot gun rights are not an explosive issue today in Washington state, it’s interesting to watch it play out in other states.  As it stands today, your company can create whatever policy it deems best for the corporation’s interests, and for the employees’ safety.  Are your employees safer when guns are banned from the premises, or is there peace of mind in knowing employees can provide protection for themselves and others in an emergency?

It feels like a fitting time to discuss mental health issues in the workplace.

The National Institute of Mental Health tells us that:

• One in four of adults in the U.S. at any one time are suffering from a diagnosable mental disorder
• Mental disorders are the leading cause of disability in people ages 15 – 44

Mental health parity:

When Congress passed the financial bailout package in October, it contained legislation regarding mental health parity for American workers. Washington State has also passed mental health parity legislation.

The Society for Human Resource Management has supported mental health parity legislation, acknowledging the impacts that employees’ mental health issues have on companies and the workplace.

How do mental health issues directly affect the workplace?

Some of the obvious costs include:

• Increased absenteeism
• Lowered productivity
• Increased risk of other illnesses
• Safety risks
• Employee turnover

Mental Health America reports that:

• 90% of employees agree that their health issues spill over into their professional lives, directly impacting their job performance
• Mental health conditions are the second leading cause of absenteeism

How can managers and employers recognize the signs of mental health disorders?

The first thing you can do about mental health issues in your workplace is to learn to recognize signs of depression, anxiety and substance abuse.

Some of the signs of mental illness include:

• Marked personality changes
• Inability to cope with problems
• Prolonged depression or apathy
• Feelings of extreme highs and lows
• Dramatic changes in eating or sleeping
• Excessive fears or anxieties
• Strange or grandiose ideas
• Excessive anger, hostility or violence
• Working slowly and missing deadlines
• Appearing numb or emotionless
• Chronic lateness or absenteeism
• Forgetting directives, procedures and requests
• Talk of suicide

How should employers handle performance problems that stem from mental health issues?

It is, of course, never your role as an employer to diagnose an employee. While it is important to familiarize yourself with signs that performance issues may be related to a mental health condition, avoid making and acting upon assumptions.

• Always treat performance issues as performance issues only.

• Be prepared and know what steps to take in the event that an employee addresses the subject of having a mental health condition.

• When you must discuss performance problems with an employee you believe to be troubled, it is best to control your own emotions by planning the conversation ahead of time.

• Be prepared for the employee’s reaction and that it might be an emotional one, whether it is surprise, anger, denial or defensiveness. Give the employee time to talk, and remain focused on the performance issue itself.

• If the employee does bring up the fact that they are experiencing mental health issues, make sure that you are aware of and can tell them about resources in the community, such as Kitsap Mental Health.

• Post important phone numbers where employees can see them, such as on the lunchroom bulletin board. Don’t forget about 211, the United Way’s referral phone number.

• Treat your employee just as you would an employee with any medical condition. They have the same right to privacy regarding their situation as any other employee who is ill.

The Americans with Disabilities Act:

Remember that if your company is large enough, employees with mental health conditions will be protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act, requiring you to provide them with reasonable accommodations.

These accommodations might include such things as:

• Flexible hours during period of recovery
• Time off for counseling and doctor appointments
• Frequent leave during times of hospitalization or incapacitation during recovery
• Easy access to supervision
• More frequent feedback and guidance about performance

How can employers alleviate the impact of mental health issues?

Beyond handling employee mental health issues on an individual, case-by-case basis, the best thing you can do for your company is to also address this subject on a more general scale.

• Insurance: Review your insurance plan and make sure that your employees have good mental health coverage. Early treatment lowers the cost of care and gets employees back to work quickly.

• Wellness plans: Many companies today have a wellness program, since prevention is known to lower health care costs. Incorporate mental health into your company’s wellness program, if you have one.

The importance of removing the stigma of mental health conditions:

It is important to create a company culture that understands mental health issues and removes the stigma attached to them.

Many times an individual puts off seeking help for a mental health condition far longer than they would for another health condition, driving the cost of treatment and the time for treatment much higher.

Many mental health conditions are treatable. However, it is still more acceptable to admit you need time off to recover from your heart attack than to recover from clinical depression. But both are very treatable, and neither should mark an employee for the future.

Would you hire Mike Wallace, Abraham Lincoln, Buzz Aldrin, or Ellen DeGeneres? All have recovered from depression.

There is a long list of famous accomplished people who have coped well with mental illness. We would all gladly have them in our organizations. It’s an important lesson to remember when someone on our own staff is faced with that same challenge.

Conclusion:

As we business owners today struggle to keep up with rising health insurance costs, we may groan as more benefits are added.  However, we’re smart to listen to the human resource professionals who tell us that preventing and treating the mental illnesses of our workers will, in the long run, save us money and make our workplaces more efficient and productive.

Originally published in the Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal.

Email Julie Tappero

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When to pay employees for holidays, sick days or vacation days can sometimes be a confusing issue for small businesses with part-time or seasonal workers.  We’ve got the info you need!

What the law has to say about compensation & time off:

Neither federal law nor state law require you to pay anyone for vacation time, sick days or holidays.  All of these are benefits that businesses choose to provide, based on their ability to compensate their employees and remain profitable.

However, a few cities across the county have jumped into this discussion and are now mandating that employees be compensated for sick days.

In September, Seattle’s City Council voted to mandate that all but the smallest or newest employers provide paid sick days to their employees.   This ordinance goes into effect in September 2012 and is quite specific, complex and broad.  If your company performs business within the city of Seattle, it may apply to you.

The skinny on providing holiday pay:

Some small businesses must remain open on holidays, and wonder if they are required to pay employees time and a half for the holiday.

• State law does not require that you pay extra for employees working on a holiday
• If employees work 40 hours during a week that also contains a paid holiday (thus technically earning 48 hours of total pay instead of their normal 40) you are not required to give them overtime pay
• Overtime is only required to be paid on actual hours worked, and does not include holiday, vacation or sick pay

Floating holidays:

If your business is one that must remain open on many holidays, you might consider giving your employees the option of “floating holidays”.  This allows them to designate holidays that are important to them.

After all, not everyone in the U.S. celebrates Christmas or Easter.  Hindus celebrate Diwali, Jews celebrate Hanukah and Muslims celebrate Eid al-Fitr.  If your business can have a flexible holiday policy, it may allow you to attract a more diverse workforce.

The wrap-up:

Just remember that all employees appreciate and need some paid time off.  Our lives are very stressful these days, and we are all more productive when we have an opportunity to be relaxed and refreshed.  While providing holiday pay is an additional expense for employers, we are repaid in the form of increased employee morale!

What are these curious phrases?  They’re the new trend in job titles!

Why do we care about job titles?  Well, they can matter a lot to your employees — and they can also create problems for your company.  Job titles can also be fun, motivating, and important in the recruiting process.

What should a job title communicate?

It’s important that a job title accurately portrays the work that an employee is doing.

In this struggling economy, our businesses have learned to do more with less, and as a result, many of our employees have taken on new roles and responsibilities.  If you review your employees’ job titles, you may discover that they are no longer an accurate fit for them.

If the Receptionist is now assisting part time in marketing and lending a hand with payroll processing, does her title still reflect her job?  Even if she didn’t get a raise for taking on new responsibilities, an enhanced title might be appropriate for her (and appreciated).

It’s instances like this, where an employee’s responsibilities have extended in eclectic directions, that can pose a confusing problem for employers who are trying to create accurate job titles.  And it’s situations like this that can result in a Receptionist being called an Ombudsman, or something equally confusing.

The pros and cons of creative job titles:

Some companies allow employees to create their own job titles.  Certainly this has the potential of being a lot of fun, and bringing out the creativity in the staff.

But creativity taken too far may end up confusing your customers.  Will they understand that your Master Handshaker is your Marketing Manager?  Or will they move on to a company that seems a little more serious?

We have also encountered some very confusing job titles in our years of recruiting.  Sometimes, it seems like a company has tried to cram an entire job description into someone’s title:  Director of Logistics, Transportation, Inventory Management, Accountability and Coordination of Strategic Positioning.  Huh?

Sometimes, titles are overinflated, such as an Administrative Assistant being called Manager of Office Operations.  You may think giving someone a title of manager makes them feel important, but what it also does is create an expectation of a higher level of responsibility, respect, and compensation.

There are no laws that pertain to job titles.  You can call everyone in your company a Director or a Manager or a Grand Poobah if you want to.  The Fair Labor Standards Act, which sets the rules for determining who is exempt or not exempt from minimum wage and overtime provisions, bases those determinations on job responsibilities, not titles. 

Creative titles can make for troublesome recruiting.

If you do decide to be very creative with your job titles, bear in mind that you may have a little more difficulty in your recruiting process.  Someone searching for a Human Resources Manager position may not enter the search terms to pull up your job ad for a People Person.

On the other hand, if your job posting has all of the necessary key words in it, and your corporate personality is expressed as well, you might attract just the right person for your business.

Job titles as an expression of corporate personality:

Companies have more opportunities today to express their “personalities”, and are under more pressure than ever to have a corporate personality to express.  Social media and the internet provide businesses with the ability to reach out in fun ways to touch their customers.  The goal in our social media dominated world is to create lasting relationships with our customers, which is difficult to achieve with old fashioned sterile, impersonal corporate personalities.

Companies have to find ways to stand out and make themselves attractive to their customers.  Humor and creativity are essential tools for companies seeking to shape and give insight into their corporate personalities.  Playful job titles are definitely one way to achieve this.

So here are just a few more potential job titles for your consideration.  Can you figure out what these people do?  Word Herder.  Director of Smiles.  Manager of Reputation.  Director of Amazement.  Princess Paysalot.

Fun, huh?  I’m thinking I don’t want to be a boring President anymore.  Perhaps I’ll change my title to Queen of the Staffing Machine.  How about you?  What will your job title be?

“My coworker leaves his dishes in the sink and expects me to wash them for him.  My coworker never replaces the toilet paper when the roll runs out.  My coworker has terrible body odor and I can’t stand working next to her.

My coworker interrupts every conversation I’m having and joins in.  My coworker’s cell phone rings and rings, and she’s never at her desk to answer it.  My coworker tells inappropriate jokes that offend everyone, including me.  My coworker has pin-up pictures on the walls of his cubicle.

Dear Miss Manners, please tell me, what am I supposed to do?  Should I tell my boss, or the HR manager?  Will they help me?  Or will they think I’m the problem, because I whine and complain?”

As employers, we focus on hiring the best person for the job, the most skilled worker for the best price.  But what happens when the best person for the job lacks an important element needed for fitting into any team — good manners? 

Is it the job of management, or HR, to police employees’ manners?

In addition to teaching our employees how to be safe on the job, learn the company’s policies and practices, and upgrade their skills, must we also teach them workplace etiquette?

I posed this question to a group of HR professionals and the answer was overwhelmingly consistent that it was not the job of management to teach etiquette to employees.  However, it was generally agreed that poor manners are a problem in the workplace, and that boorish behavior causes problems for other employees.

What are the biggest workplace etiquette problem areas?

The kitchen:  One area that is called out over and over is the kitchen.  Common issues seem to be employees leaving dirty dishes in the sink, not emptying the dishwasher, leaving the kitchen a mess, leaving food rotting in the refrigerator, cooking smelly food in the microwave, and even stealing other employee’s food.

The bathroom:  Following on the heels of the kitchen as an irritant is the bathroom.  Complaints range from the bathroom hogs, those employees who take their reading materials in with them, or those who use it as their dressing room to do their hair and make-up.  Other complaints are about the employees who fail to replace the toilet paper rolls, and the ones who leave the restroom a mess.  I’ve even heard complaints from employers about employees who talk on their cell phones in the bathroom stall.  The list of boorish bathroom behavior is a long one!

Basic politeness:  A lack of simple politeness can be a wide-ranging problem.  There are employees who take the last of the coffee and never make another pot.  People who ignore the ringing phone, and always assume someone else will answer it.  Employees who hog resources, such as printers and copiers.  People that stand outside others’ workspaces and hold loud discussions, or butt in on the private conversations of others.  People who play music at their desks, happily invading everyone’s airspace with their tunes.  The list goes on and on.  Rudeness clearly comes in many, many forms!

Hygiene:  Overall hygiene seems to be another problem area for people.  In my years in the staffing industry, I’ve heard complaints about employees who smell bad, employees who don’t wash their hands after using the restroom, and those who have other poor hygiene related issues come up over and over.  Related to this are employees who use too much perfume, offending the noses of coworkers.  Unfortunately, there have even been times where we have had to address employees who continually belch and pass gas, annoying their closest coworkers.

Management must set a good example.

My group of human resources peers agreed that the tone for good manners in the office is set by top management, and that it flows outward from there.  If we want our employees to treat each other with respect, we must create a workplace where employees are respected, and our own behavior sets the proper tone.

I once dealt with a boss who would interrupt her employee in the middle of a sentence, saying, “Stop talking!” to abruptly end their conversation.  Her employees were miserable and their behavior towards each other showed it.

This is an opportunity to check our behavior as bosses.

• Do we speak respectfully and use appropriate language?
• Do we listen without interrupting, or becoming distracted by cell phones during conversations?
• Are we on time to meetings with our staff?
• Do we return our phone calls and emails, or does our staff have to cover for our failures to follow through?
• Do we say please and thank you, and take time to tell members of our staff when they do things right?
• Do we give credit where credit is due?
• Are we known for being considerate and willing to assist others?

What tools can managers use to promote civility & etiquette in the workplace?

Let’s use the lunchroom as our example.  Overall, the employee lunchroom is an area that boosts morale, providing our staff with a place of respite from their stress.  But what should we do about people that make it a place of increased stress by not properly caring for it?

The shotgun approach:  One method of handling these problems is the shotgun approach, wherein you establish and post rules for everyone.  The signs that say, “Your mother doesn’t work here, clean up after yourselves!” are a good reminder to all of us to continue to clean our dishes, and helps to establish expectations.  Email reminders can be sent to clean out the fridge and not eat food that doesn’t belong to you.  But, the slob amongst us may still be a slob.

Make employees share workplace maintenance duties:  Another approach is to have your staff share the job of cleaning the kitchen.  If you’ve got a habitual mess-maker in your crew, having to clean up after everyone else may cause him or her to realize the error of their ways.  Making your staff share these duties has an added benefit, in that it empowers your employees to handle issues that arise as a team, helping them to work together better.

It’s not always necessary, or best, to escalate etiquette issues to management and HR.

Oftentimes, it’s best for employees to address etiquette issues amongst themselves.

For instance, when an employee leaves the coffee pot empty as they walk out of the lunchroom, the next employee can politely remind them that it’s everyone’s responsibility to keep the coffee going.  Or when Susan sets her dirty bowl in the sink rather than the dishwasher, her coworker can remind her that everyone’s working together to keep the kitchen clean.

Sometimes, our employees don’t know how to handle minor issues that arise, which causes them to fester and grow into bigger issues in their minds.  Eventually someone may bring the problem to the attention of management. What could have been a minor and easily addressed issue can take on large and troublesome dimensions when employees shoot the problem up the management flagpole, rather than dealing with it themselves.

For example, an employee may feel humiliated or confused by a manager scolding him for leaving a dirty cup in the sink, and be left wondering why his coworker(s) chose to get him into trouble, instead of just simply reminding him to put the cup in the dishwasher.  This can cause hurt feelings and create divisions in a team.

As managers, we help maintain a cordial workplace by training our employees to work out their minor issues amongst themselves.  Counseling employees on how to resolve minor issues before stepping in assists them in working better as a team. 

Good etiquette equals good teamwork.

Teamwork is an essential component of today’s workplace.  Regardless of our job positions or titles, we move amongst various teams.  Workplace etiquette boils down to an employee’s ability to be an effective team member, and employee evaluations generally contain a teamwork component.

An employee might be very technically skilled at their job, but if their coworkers don’t want to work with them, it greatly diminishes their effectiveness and their value to the organization.  Employees must realize that their manners will impact their evaluations and their advancement opportunities in the company.

In these overly stressful times, when all of us are doing more with less, and stretched a little too thin, there may very well be times that employees get a little cranky, or forget to always follow all of the rules of the polite workplace.  It’s our job to provide good counseling to everyone involved.

On the one hand, don’t allow sour or thoughtless employees to make the workplace miserable for all.  On the other hand, sometimes turning the other cheek or overlooking minor indiscretions can be a great gift.  Help your employees pick their battles, and most important of all, help them maintain the peace.  In the end, we’ll all benefit from it. 

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.”

Originally published in the Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal.

Email Julie Tappero

Find Julie Tappero on LinkedIn

• In New York, town clerks refused to sign marriage licenses for gay couples, believing that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.
• Pharmacists in Illinois sued then Gov. Rod Blagojevic, claiming that he violated their right to religious freedom by requiring them to fill prescriptions for contraceptives.
• In Wisconsin, the state has had a long standing argument over whether health care workers could legally ignore a patient’s do-not-resuscitate order.  The governor has twice vetoed this legislation.
• In San Diego, physicians refused to provide a single lesbian woman with fertility treatments.

These are just a handful of the examples of the collision between employees’ moral, religious and ethical beliefs, and the obligation of companies to provide goods and services equally to all consumers.

Always create detailed written job descriptions for the positions within your company.

Before discussing conscientious objection in the workplace, I must first emphasize the critical importance of having detailed written job descriptions on file, spelling out every duty and requirement, for all of the positions within your company.

By providing job applicants and employees with a thorough description of their duties and your expectations, you are creating a layer of protection for yourself when thorny employment issues like conscientious objection crop up.

Can someone always refuse to do their job duties when they conflict with their religious beliefs?

Under Title VII, current and prospective employees have the right to be reasonably accommodated for their religious beliefs.  But this does not necessarily mean that someone can always refuse to do their job duties when they conflict with their religious beliefs, or that a company must always provide accommodations for a conscientious objector.

Here’s a hypothetical example:

A small hotel has an opening for a night desk clerk, and the company’s written job description for the position states that the night desk clerk works alone on the graveyard shift and is responsible for booking and checking in guests.  A job applicant for the position informs the hotel that, for religious regions, they cannot book hotel rooms for any unmarried couples.

In this instance, the company is within its rights to not hire this person, on the grounds that the applicant’s conscientious objection drastically limits their ability to perform the stated responsibilities of the job and is too difficult to accommodate.  Similarly, the company would be within its rights to terminate a current night desk clerk who suddenly refuses to check in unmarried guests.

What happens if circumstances change, creating a conflict for an employee?

This is what has happened in New York with a change in law that now allows gay couples to marry.  Some clerks, on religious grounds, are not comfortable with performing this new task.

Hopefully, in this case, accommodations can be made for other employees to process these applications for them, preserving the rights of the conscientious objectors to their beliefs, and the rights of the citizens under the law.  If not, the conscientious objectors may feel they have to resign in order to not violate their beliefs.

Conscientious objection in Washington State:

Under Washington’s laws, there are several “good cause” reasons an employee can quit their job and still receive their unemployment.  One of them is a “change in the claimant’s usual work which violated their religious convictions or sincere moral beliefs.”

If the issues with the town clerks objecting to gay marriage had occurred in Washington State, and they couldn’t be accommodated on the job, they would be able to resign and collect unemployment while they sought new positions.

The wrap-up:

The workplace is a place of diversity, combining people with a wide variety of backgrounds, religions, beliefs and moral structures.  We may ask our employees to leave divisive opinions at the door, but we cannot ask them to violate their core belief systems.  Oftentimes legislation guides us on this path, but hopefully more often than not it is our understanding that “diversity is the one true thing that we all have in common.”

An employee termination is usually performed with a lot of thought and preparation.   When you fire someone, you generally do it with good cause.  However, we’re all human, and ending someone’s job still feels really bad.  How do we take care of ourselves in the process?

Feeling like the executioner meting out the workplace death penalty can be one of the most depressing responsibilities management has.  Having a few coping mechanisms at hand enables managers to themselves recover from the trauma of the situation.

Only shoulder your burdens:

The terminated employee leaves with many emotions and concerns to process, and tasks to handle.  As a compassionate person, it’s easy for you to let your mind ponder how they’re feeling, how their family will react, and what their future will hold.  The reality is, however, that from this point forward, those are their burdens, not yours.

You, no doubt, have your own burdens to shoulder!  You will have to figure out how their work will get done and how you’ll be replacing them, how to manage the impact on your staff, and how to handle the many other issues that result from the termination.  Keep your mind on your own troubles, as they will be placing a large demand upon your own emotions and energy.

You performed a termination with dignity and compassion.  Feeling heartache on behalf of the fired individual is only natural, but you nevertheless must resist the impulse to let your empathy pull you into a dark place — after all, it can’t help the person who’s been terminated, and it definitely isn’t helpful to you.

Give yourself a break:

Letting someone go is a weighty emotional experience, and may very well have taken a toll on you.  Give yourself a break and take care of yourself.

What helps you recover from stress?  A hot bath and glass of wine?  Extra playing time with the kids?  A nice dinner with your spouse followed by a quiet walk?  Going for a run with buddies?  Whatever it is, make it a point to do something that brings your stress down and gives you some relaxation time.

Tomorrow you may have some rebuilding to do, but for just this night, give yourself a break.

Rely on a trusted ally:

There are times that it is very lonely being in management, especially in a small business!  You may find yourself deliberating a termination decision without having anyone else with whom you can discuss it.

Do you question if the timing is right, the decision appropriate or warranted?  You don’t want to second guess yourself once the termination has been made.  Seek the advice of a trusted colleague or peer with whom you can discuss the situation.  Be sure that you protect your employee’s right to confidentiality while you acquire the advice you need to be assured your decision is right.

Plan ahead and move forward:

How your company responds to the termination event will be strongly influenced by the way you respond.  You can reduce your own stress, as well as stress levels throughout the company, by being organized and planning ahead.

Since you have the advantage of knowing that the termination is coming, create a plan for the days and weeks after.  How will you announce the change?  Who will handle the extra work?  What is the process for replacing the employee?  The quicker you move forward in a positive manner, the easier it will be for you to also move forward emotionally.

Remember that it really is for the best:

In the movie Up in the Air, George Clooney plays a professional ax-man who travels around the country firing people from their jobs.  At one point, he confidently informs a freshly-terminated worker that, “Anybody who ever built an empire, or changed the world, sat where you are now. And it’s because they sat there that they were able to do it.”

Telling yourself that terminating an employee is for the best may sound like you’re trying to justify a difficult decision to make yourself feel better, but honestly, oftentimes it really is the best decision, not just for your business, but also for the employee you are letting go!  Sometimes, someone isn’t in the right job for them, or the right company for them — or even in the right time of their life to be doing a particular job.

Here are some famous examples of people whose terminations ended up working out very positively for them:

• A newspaper editor fired Walt Disney because “he lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”
• Thomas Edison was fired because he wasn’t productive enough.
• While in the military, Abraham Lincoln was busted down from a captain to a private.
• Elvis Presley was fired by the manager of the Grand Ole Opry, who told him, “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, son.  You ought to go back to drivin’ a truck.”

Someone who has been in the news a great deal recently is Steve Jobs, who was once fired from Apple.  Here’s what he had to say about the experience:

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.  The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything.  It freed me to enter into one of the most creative periods of my life.  I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple.  It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.

As a good manager, trust that you’ve made a good, thoughtful decision that is best for your company.  Then, trust that the terminated employee will follow the example of Steve Jobs, and turn their difficult circumstance into an opportunity to change their own future.