Courses

In many respects the people aspect of a manager’s job can be much more difficult than the technical aspects. Understanding how the law looks at the relationship between supervisors and the employees they manage is a first step in becoming the well-rounded leaders we want to be. We will discuss 

     - Hiring and Promotion

     - Discipline and Discharge 

     - Illegal Workplace Harassment

     - Retaliation for making an EEO complaint

     - ADA Basics for Managers

This session is a must for anyone who supervises employees. We will look at these topics through an EEO lens so that we can learn the right questions to ask ourselves before taking action.

This is a session about responsibility. We will cover the legal standards for harassment cases, management’s duty to report and investigate allegations of illegal harassment, and the recent change to the Texas Labor Code regarding sexual harassment cases. We will then cover retaliation cases. We will talk about US Supreme Court cases that expand the definition of illegal retaliation, and we discuss the legal and proper way to manage employees who have made protected complaints of discrimination.

How does an organization get a group diverse people who largely disagree with each other to work together toward a common goal?  It does this through culture, a common set of internalized organizational values.  But it’s not easy.  So, in this session we will discuss building a culture around the idea of care – care about the job and care about the people we work with.  We will talk about how to create high-functioning teams, how to help employees internalize the goals of the organization, and most of all, how to harness the productive disagreements we need to move forward and be successful.  

One day someone interrupts Jane in a meeting, and she responds harshly, in a way that seems disproportionate to the slight. Why? Is there something more going on here than first meets the eye. Microaggressions are small verbal and non-verbal slights, snubs and insults. They happen more than we may think, and over time they carry a weight that ultimately corrodes and ruins the relationships organizations need to thrive. In the session, you will learn about microaggressions, what they are and how they impact employees. You will also hear practical tips for addressing them and reducing their impact on you and your employees.

Our managers don’t need to be expert on the entire law to master parts of it. This is important because managers can often inadvertently make mistakes that cost employers big money, simply because they haven’t been adequately trained. So, in this session we will discuss what managers should know about hiring, setting qualification standards, and managing employees with disabilities. We need our managers to feel more comfortable hiring and supervising people with disabilities, so we need to teach them what they need to know. 

Maybe hiring is as much, if not more, about us than the applicant. In this workshop you will be placed into hiring committees, given a job description and resumes, and asked to hire the best candidate for the position. As we work, we will discuss how we bring our own experiences into the hiring process and how those experiences influence our evaluations of the candidates. We will talk about unconscious bias, confirmation bias, and conformity bias. We will discuss the impact those biases have on our decisions and how we can minimize their influence. And we will learn how to take advantage of an inefficient labor market to get the most out of our hires. 

We say we want to work in ethical workplaces, but no one seems to agree on what that means.  So, we teach ethics as a series of right v wrong outcomes, which doesn’t add any clarity or create any consensus.  Eventually, we fall back on “don’t like, don’t cheat, and don’t steal,” and we are left with the feeling that we missed an opportunity to impact our organizations in a positive way.  This session takes a thoughtful approach on how organizations create ethical standards and teach them to their staffs (whether they mean to or not), and how employees build ethical frameworks and use them to make decisions.  Ethics does not have to be the dead language of organizations.  We can raise ethics from the dead and use it to fulfill the promise of a positive, productive, and authentic culture.  

The first thing we are taught as managers is that being consistent in how we treat our employees keeps us in compliance with the law.  Simple.  But then, we are told that we also have an obligation to reasonably accommodate our employees, which is the exact opposite of being consistent, and that is confusing.  In this session we will cover the basics of reasonable accommodations under the ADA, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), and Title VII of the Civil Right Act of 1964 (religion).  We will learn how to interview job applicants and manage employees with disabilities so that we stay in legal compliance while guaranteeing our employees meet performance and production standards.  We will discuss our responsibilities under the PUMP Act.  We will hear practical tips about navigating some important differences between the ADA, PWFA, and Title VII interactive processes.  But mostly, the training will help us feel more comfortable in our jobs as managers.

Few aspects of labor law cause HR managers more apprehension than the ADA, and no part of the ADA is more misunderstood than reasonable accommodations and the interactive process. This is partly by design. The ADA is a big law, meant to cover an almost inexhaustible number of conditions and an almost inexhaustible number of different jobs, and it is written to be adaptable to all of them, which means when it comes to reasonable accommodations, there are very few bright lines. Instead, employers and employees are mostly left to determine the correct outcomes. But I think employers should love the ADA and reasonable accommodations. In this session I will take you through the process step by step, defining important terms, and offering practical tips along the way. The ADA does not need to be scary, and today in the post-pandemic world with reasonable accommodation requests at all-time highs, understanding a few basic principles and learning how and when to apply them, will keep you in compliance and help you get the most out of your talent. 

One day your boss hands you a file, and in it is a discrimination complaint. You are told to investigate the complaint and determine whether it has any merit. You recognize that this is a very important assignment. A lot is riding on your investigation. Unfortunately, no one has ever taught you how to investigate an internal complaint of workplace discrimination. That is, until now. In this session you will hear from an instructor with nearly thirty-years’ experience working for the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In his time with the agency he investigated thousands of claims and taught hundreds of investigators their craft. He will teach you how to investigate workplace discrimination in hiring, promotion, discipline, and discharge. You will learn the correct legal standards for these cases and discover how to write and maintain an effective investigative plan. You will work through scenarios and learn where to find the evidence you need to complete a thorough investigation. And along the way you will hear common sense and practical tips on how to complete investigations properly and efficiently. A must for any new investigator and a great refresher for experienced investigators. 

Illegal harassment is one of the most common internal investigations.  So common, that often investigators take short cuts and don’t examine the issues as thoroughly as they should.  This can lead to bad outcomes and leave the organization without a complete understanding of its potential liability.  In this workshop we will dig into often overlooked corners of the law and give tips on how to get to the most out of your investigative strategy.  We will discuss the legal standards of harassment and vicarious liability and how to investigate them.  We will dive into witness interviews and how to structure them.  And we will cover advanced investigations that focus not only on individual behavior but also on cultural shortcomings within organizations that contribute to bad behavior.

Reasonable accommodation is a fundamental concept of the ADA.  Employers have a legal responsibility to reasonably accommodate applicants and employees with disabilities.  But what if the disabilities are hidden?  How do conditions that are psychologically or neurologically based impact a person’s employment and the employer’s ability to provide an adequate and appropriate accommodation?  In this session, we will discuss the interactive process and how to manage employees with known psychological and neurological disabilities legally, conscientiously, and effectively.  

Workplace accommodations are familiar to us, but this summer has seen a new law, Pregnant Worker Fairness Act (PWFA), and significant changes to religious accommodations coming out of the US Supreme Court decision in Groff v DeJoy.  In this workshop we will outline the fundamentals of the interactive process.  We will compare how each law looks at the interactive process and discuss how they are similar and different in defining the important concepts of coverage and undue hardship.  We will learn how PWFA addresses long standing issues of pregnancy discrimination in its interactive process, and what the Groff decision means in our analysis of undue hardship for religion accommodations.  This workshop is a must for HR managers and specialists who want to keep up with the latest changes in the law.  

We say we want to work in ethical workplaces, but no one seems to agree on what that means.  So, we teach ethics as a series of right v wrong outcomes, which doesn’t add any clarity or create any consensus.  Eventually, we fall back on “don’t like, don’t cheat, and don’t steal,” and we are left with the feeling that we missed an opportunity to impact our organizations in a positive way.  This session takes a thoughtful approach on how organizations create ethical standards and teach them to their staffs (whether they mean to or not), and how employees build ethical frameworks and use them to make decisions.  Ethics does not have to be the dead language of organizations.  We can raise ethics from the dead and use it to fulfill the promise of a positive, productive, and authentic culture.