Employees don’t have the right to decide which directions they must follow. Unless there are clearly extenuating reasons (safety concerns, for example), you can...
What if an employee has a fear of entering a burning building … and that person is employed as firefighter? Is such a fear considered an Americans with...
Employees have to abide by reasonable rules whether they like them or not. Insubordination remains a reason to deny unemployment compensation to terminated workers.
Some jobs require co-workers to get along and support one another. An employee who isn’t a team player may cause enough problems to warrant termination. But...
Poor performance sounds like a legitimate reason to fire someone. That doesn’t mean the employee won’t sue. If that happens, you must be prepared to show...
Do you have an employee who is so disruptive that co-workers repeatedly complain? You may have to fire her. Before you do, carefully document how her behavior...
Q. One of our employees gave us a two-week notice because he found another job. However, now the employee is unmotivated and not focused on his work. Can we let him go...
Have you ever offered an employee the option to resign or get fired? Maybe you believed you were helping the employee to graciously exit the workplace without the...
You may have heard that the EEOC is cracking down on employers that use criminal records in hiring. But that doesn’t mean you can’t ask in the hiring process.
Ordinarily, if an employer can show it decided to terminate an employee before she announced her pregnancy, a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit won’t succeed. But...
Q. We have an employee who has been performing poorly and who has shown up for work appearing to be intoxicated. In a discussion with a manager, the employee admitted...
You can reasonably expect employees to cooperate with internal investigations so you can get all the facts and make well-informed decisions. You can and should...
Fired employees who file lawsuits alleging they were singled out for discipline because of some form of discrimination usually follow a basic legal strategy. They try...
Be careful before firing someone for violating email policies that prohibit forwarding company documents to a personal email account. If the forwarded documents support...
If you think an employee has broken a rule, ask her. If she admits she did, that’s reason enough to terminate her. Just make sure you ask the question of every...
If you have a poor-performing worker but don’t want to fire him before you have lined up a replacement, make sure you document all the problems—and your...
A San Francisco jury has awarded $2,729,037 to five former employees of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who alleged wrongful termination and breach of...
