Procedural Fairness In The Workplace

It is crucial for the Human Resource Department at any organization to always be on top of their game for the organization. I feel like most of the termination decisions will come down to HR, but there will be instances where a supervisor makes the call. HR needs to work strategically and closely with all upper management at the organization to eliminate the occurrence where an employee can make a claim against wrongful or unjust termination. This involves thoroughly looking at the issues mentioned for the employee’s termination and deciding whether they pass a sniff test. While most instances will result in the employee ultimately being terminated, there will be some where HR would be better positioned to just relocate that employee to a different

Having a justifiable reason will almost guarantee HR is successful in their reasoning for terminating the employee. In fact, today’s laws make sure that employers are required to demonstrate both substantive fairness and procedural fairness in their reasoning for an employee’s termination (Wei, Freeman, & Kleiner, 2011). I learned in my undergraduate studies that substantive fairness makes the employer have a legitimate reason to dismiss the employee. I learned that procedural fairness concerned the manner in which the termination is affected. It is the employers who fail to apply both substantive and procedural fairness in terminating an employee’s employment that will run the risk of a claim for unfair dismissal or breach of employment contract. If the employee makes a claim citing discrimination, HR would need to counteract it by showing the courts the termination was not a result of any of the classes protected under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I feel like that if there are any complaints about sexual harassment, unfair treatment due to racism, sexism, or favoritism, the HR department should take the right measures to solve these problems immediately before they have time to manifest into a much bigger issue for the organization. To mitigate the risk of a lawsuit HR needs to investigate these claims in a timely manner and take the appropriate actions against the parties who initiated

I have had the luxury of seeing many instances where an employee was voluntarily let go or terminated by the organization for having a potential conflict of interests. Without digging too much into it, I worked at a retail organization that did not like their employees working simultaneously at other competing retail organizations. They had a zero-tolerance policy for this and made you sign agreement papers before you could even be hired by them. Unfortunately, this biggest issue I see is once again claims of wrongful termination by the fired employee. HR needs to make sure they educate all of their new hires on what the company will deem a conflict of interest before firing them. Making them acknowledge and sign agreements stipulating this would also be a good weapon to combat frivolous employee claims against this policy. When an issue arises, HR needs to inform the employee in question they are against this policy and what they can do to be in compliance. If the employee fails to take the necessary action to be in compliance with this policy, HR may have to terminate them. As an HR professional, I know that a termination looks far worse than a resignation. I would give the employee a chance to voluntarily leave before terminating them. I think it is important to also let that employee finish out their two weeks before the separation occurs. This allows