Cathie's Corner Blog

Last week, I gave you something of a tongue-in-cheek treatise on discrimination, retaliation, and harassment. It's quite true that many employees misunderstand what is meant by those terms and will claim discrimination, etc., when that's not what happened at all. But I do want to share with you a couple of real-life situations that show how important it is to document the incidents that are reported to you.

I've talked about the following story before, but in a different context. I was the HR manager for a small company with approximately 90 employees, almost a third of whom were foreign born. One morning, a manager, who had been born in Poland, complained that an employee had downloaded his own screensaver (which was allowed under company policy) that depicted a swastika. I talked to the employee, who explained that the symbol was not a swastika, but a symbol of his religion. A quick search on the Internet showed this to be true. I explained this to the manager, who claimed he was not asking for the screensaver to be taken down; however, it was clear that that was what he really wanted.

Those who are born in Eastern nations do not study Western history any more than we study theirs. It became clear in my conversation with the employee that he honestly had no idea what that symbol means to the Western world. When I explained, he was horrified and he voluntarily took it down, replacing it with another screensaver that also had religious connotations for him, but which omitted the offensive (to us) symbol.

I'll tell you, this is a situation I hope I never have to face again. Had the employee not taken the screensaver down voluntarily, things could have gotten nasty. Had we allowed him to leave it up, I could see the manager claiming harassment. Had we forced the employee to take it down, I could see him claiming religious discrimination. I'm not saying either of them would have had a valid case, but as I've been saying, it doesn't have to be valid for employees to claim it. You can bet I documented exactly what happened in case either of them, at some point, suffered some kind of adverse action and claimed retaliation.

In another instance, an employee made an error that damaged a piece of equipment. It was an inadvertent error, but he was not supposed to be using the equipment in the first place; he was supposed to have someone who knew how to use the equipment run it for him. The equipment was out of use for 24 hours while it was being repaired, which affected each and every employee. The employee was told gently, but firmly, not to use it again without checking. Then, after we'd paid something like $600 for the repair, the employee ran the equipment without contacting someone who knew how to use it and ruined it all over again. Yes, I documented the resulting discipline!

And a good thing, too. Only two weeks later, we had a major layoff, and the employee was let go. I was glad to have had the documentation because this employee was a foreign national and his personality was such that I would not have been surprised if he had claimed national origin discrimination. We selected him for layoff because his position was one that could be done without and because his performance was marginal. He was already on the potential layoff list, but the final decision had not been made before he ruined the equipment. That just put the icing on the cake. I was glad to have the back-up documentation just in case.

Even if the "discrimination" (or whatever) claim is unfounded, even if the employee's definition of the word does not remotely resemble the legal definition, keep your documentation up. You never know when it might come in handy.