Labor / Employment, On The Job

Don't Be Famous For The Wrong Reason

Hire smart, train well, and if something comes to your attention, act swiftly.

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facepalm fear shame embarrassed embarrassment face to palmI’m a helper by nature, and this is the best part of my job. I help companies assess risks, and make changes. I help them solve problems, and build their business, focusing on the best policies and practices for hiring, training, and retaining employees. So, I deal with a lot of “this happened, now what” types of issues.

Generally, I see employee management issues such as poor performance from someone who has voiced concerns regarding discrimination, but occasionally I see really interesting things. Mostly it’s curious variations on the workplace dating problems we have all witnessed (and may have even been a part of), but sometimes it gets really interesting. And occasionally these issues show up in the special place where work and public interaction meet, like the employee of a retail store and his stars-and-bars shirt (that he hid under an apron until the opportune moment). That did not end well, of course.

But often when poor retail management training meets management person with many biases, we really see fireworks. Like this lawsuit that broke on Christmas Day, which has all of the colorful allegations that make it a fascinating train wreck worthy of a journalist’s attention. Code words for patrons based on race? Check. Special section for undesirables? Check. Purposefully awful customer service? Check. Horribly overpriced product? Check. Soon to be shuttered business? Very likely! Don’t be Bagatelle.

But perhaps you are thinking to yourself: my workplace isn’t this bad, but I’m worried. Or: I have no idea what my employees do when I am not around. What can you do (or anyone do) to make their workplace less likely to end up on the news? Here are a few steps, because it could happen to you:

1. Training is essential. So often I talk to the person engaging our firm, such as the COO of a company, and I learn that they have policies in place to prevent these types of things but no training. That means that managers get promoted, start to feel important, but get none of the responsibility that comes with it. I was a teenaged retail worker managed by a college-aged retail worker. I lived this stuff. Fortunately, my college-aged supervisor wasn’t too crazy, more typical (he just had sex with his subordinates, which I have come to believe is the most common violation for supervisors and is of course the most likely to get you a lawsuit). But what happens when you have a manager who believes his life was ruined because his mother left his father for an [enter race here]? This is why you have training. Because the penalties for managers (and companies) are more severe than an average employee. Train them to be sexist on their own time, and remind them often.

2. Act swiftly. At least once a week, we hear about some person who has decided to act inappropriately in a very public way online. Maybe it’s the employee who has had one too many and goes online to talk trash about his co-workers in a public forum, and identifies them by name and location. Perhaps it was a bad day, but your latest hire attacking fellow readers on CNN and proudly announcing they work at Company X on their social media profile does not good PR make. The companies that survive these incidents with little fallout are companies that act swiftly. Your employees are, with little exception, at-will workers. Heck, even if they aren’t, you can fire or discipline them and deal with the fallout later. Let the union take the “L” on that one. Don’t “investigate” for a week and hope it goes away. Social media lynch mobs are out for blood. Act appropriately according to your guidelines, but act quickly.

3. Don’t hire jerks. This would seem to go without saying, but one of the saddest allegations in this lawsuit is how simply cruel these employees were to their own customers. I know from personal experience that twenty-something year olds who want to see famous people will do really silly things. But that ends pretty quickly when you are no longer starstruck. I also know personally that twenty-something year olds can be cruel. People can be cruel if placed in an environment where that type of behavior is acceptable. But at the end of the day, if you want staying power in a service industry, you need to provide good service. I’m assuming that is what the owners meant to do. It’s possible they wanted to go down in flames of bad publicity from the court of public opinion, but I doubt it.

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If you want your company to be around long enough to be something meaningful, or to just be there to pay you a check, you need to be sure that it isn’t a magnet for lawsuits and bad press. The way to do that is to not be this company, or this company, or this company.

What do all of these examples have in common? Managers who brought shame upon their companies. Some people may think that with our new president-elect, it’s en vogue to be offensive, and even that they will get away with it. But in this age of Facebook Live, where anyone could be a journalist and everyone has access to one through social media, the media is even more likely to report your bad behavior. Don’t feed the monster. Instead, hire smart, train your managers well, and if something comes to your attention, act swiftly. It’s the best you can do in this day and age of oversharing and social media. Good luck out there! I’m wishing you all a scandal-free 2017.

beth-robinsonBeth Robinson lives in Denver and is a business law attorney and employment law guru. She practices at Fortis Law Partners. You can reach her at employmentlawgurubr@gmail.com and follow her on Twitter at @HLSinDenver.

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