How Not to Write An Employee Handbook

The Peters Law Group in Southern California is a small firm representing employees in discrimination, harassment and other litigation.  They also publish the often excellent California Employee Rights Blog.

Over the weekend, they published an amazing post on Tribune Co.'s (owner of the L.A. Times, which also covered the story here) new employee manual, designed to get rid of "mind-numbing lawyer gobbeldygook" and replace it with "common sense."  But the manual, apparently written by a PR executive,  is full of mistakes, and ripe for an enterprising employee-side lawyer to use against Tribune in a future discrimination and harassment case. 

The many gaffes should remind every company doing business in this state that it needs meaningful, written employment policies, and those policies should be vetted by an employment lawyer who knows what she / he is doing, not by the company flack. 

My favorite is the description in the manual of sexual harassment:

    4.2 Working at Tribune means accepting that sometimes you might hear a word that you…might not use…experience an attitude you don’t share…[or] hear a joke that you might not consider funny.

    4.3 This should be understood, should not be a surprise and is not considered harassment.

    4.4 Harassment means being told that a raise, promotion or other benefit is dependent on you going on a date with your boss or some other similar activity.

Well, no, not actually.  While harassment is sometimes "quid pro quo" harassment (the type described in section 4.4 above), the much more common type is "hostile environment" harassment, which apparently isn't described anywhere in the manual.  While I agree that use of "a word that you…might not use…[or] an attitude you don’t share…[or]  joke that you might not consider funny" is not usually sexual harassment, when a sexually charged atmosphere is created by conduct which is severe or pervasive -- including the use of words, jokes or expressed attitudes in some instances -- an employer might well face liability for harassment.  And a lawyer representing an employee making claims of this type against Tribune would love to cross-examine Tribune's executives about language like this in an employee handbook or manual.

Comments

[Andrew Mitton]

I agree with your post if the employer's only goal is to create a document that protects the employer in court. Those sorts of documents normally collect dust on a shelf. But if the company is trying to change its culture and create a document that employees actually read and understand, then I think the Tribune is on the right path. If employees actually read the document it just might affect their behavior and prevent bad things from happening. So the Tribune's document might end up being more valuable in the end.

[Peter]

Is that the best exsample you can come up with what is 'wrong' with it. At least I could read the Handbook once and understand it. Rembember this is a handbook to be read and understood by ordinary everyday workers, not Lawyers. I had to read your comment several times before I think I understood the point you are making.

Now ask yourself, who did the better job?

[Steven]

The handbook seemed to work okay when it was used by Local TV, LLC:

http://www.localtvllc.com/aboutus/Local_TV_Policy_Manual.pdf

Yep, Sam's new handbook is all but identical to the handbook of Randy Michaels old company.

Since Randy was CEO of LocalTV before joining Tribune, it's not like he can be accused of plagarization, just creative re-use.