How to promote without bias - employee promotion guidelines to avoid lawsuits

Nation's Business, August, 1991 by Thom K. Cope

Where qualifications of two or more applicants are relatively equal, seniority can be a major consideration in the selection decision.

If damages are awarded against you on the grounds that you discriminated in making a promotion, they could take the form of "front pay," which anticipates an eventual promotion. In such cases, a court has determined that you should have promoted the complainant, but it will not order you to terminate or demote the person who received the promotion. The court will, however, require you to pay the complainant the salary that would have been received in the higher position. That will go on until another promotion opportunity occurs, at which time you will have to give it to the complainant.

If your employment practices, including promotion policies, are held to be discriminatory, plantwide or companywide, the court may order you to establish hiring or promotion quotas. The theory is that quotas are acceptable in order to correct past discrimination. The company must then hire a stated percentage of minorities until the percentage in the workplace more closely resembles the percentage of that minority in your community or geographical area.

Remember that for an employee, the filing of a discrimination charge is a simple process. A worker doesn't have to hire an attorney but can initiate a complaint simply by presenting it to a local office of the agency that enforces the state's fair-employment laws or to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The cost to the employer in time, effort, and legal fees begins to run at this point. Even if the employer should prevail at some step along the way, the cost is significant.

That's why it is important to do things right, to document policies and administer them uniformly.

PHOTO : Develop a system that enables all employees to learn about promotion opportunities on an equal basis.

PHOTO : Don't impose barriers unrelated to the requirements of the higher position the employee is after.

Thom K. Cope is a Nebraska attorney who specializes in employment law and conducts seminars and lectures nationwide on that subject.