During the years when I represented employers, there were always a few common sense things I advised my clients to do to minimize the risk of employment-related litigation. For example, managers should avoid giving inflated performance reviews because those positive ratings will be hard to explain if and when that manager (or a new manager) decides to deal with performance deficiencies in the future. Sometimes, my advice was to stop doing something, such as sending the sales force to team meetings at resort locations where the alcohol runs freely, and then wondering why human resources received multiple sexual harassment complaints following those trips.
Now that I have been representing individual employees for many years, I can confirm that the employers in the Greater Philadelphia area still have not learned how to keep their employees out of the office of a plaintiffs attorney. At the risk of a declining workload in the future, here are nine practical suggestions for employers who want to decrease the risk of employment litigation.
