Welcome Home Soldiers! By the way, you’re fired.
In all reality, many of our soldiers returning home from overseas assignments have difficulties transitoning to both home and professional life. On top of it, many soldiers are returning to find themselves receiving a pink slip from their former employer or their business gone down the tubes if they are an entrepreneur/small business owner. Your Business on MSNBC recently had a feature story on this exact topic. Can you believe that upon returning home, many soldiers are either demoted or fired? Check out Mindy Chaplin’s blog for her report of some extremely outrageous stories and the legal implications. I’m including her lessons learned below, for your reference.
Lessons Learned … Without Going to Court
- Discipline in real time. Companies should provide immediate performance feedback to employees in order to avoid any intervening issues, like military leave (or pregnancy leave), from popping up and making the situation complex. That’s how retaliation cases get started.
- Document without any discriminatory references. Never document or make references to protected characteristics (age, race, sex, etc.) or activities (military leave, whistleblowing, etc.) in relation to an employee’s performance. Doing so can create an inference of discrimination and/or retaliation. For example, avoid documenting, “If she did not go out on military leave for so long she could have been put up for a management position sooner.” Never connect the two concepts together.
- Express no hostility about employees engaged in military duties. The courts considers this kind of testimony and specifically in this case they did. Allegedly, a Target manager made comments about how the company should “recruit less from the military to reduce the company’s exposure to personnel vacancies.” See the two concepts connected together? (Target noted the Deaprtment of Defense has recognized it as a “five-star” employer that frequently recruits from the military.)
- Look at your watches, calendars & sun dials. Map out the protected leave dates (military, family, medical, etc.) and the proposed employment action date(s) on a timeline. If you think they look too closely connected, what do you think a sympathetic jury will think?
- Try an “appreciative” welcome home approach. What ever happened to the upbeat, happy, “thanks-for-serving-our-county” welcome home handshake or party? Think about this being the first response rather than the downer of an adverse employment action followed by lawsuits, bad press and hard feelings.
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