Gruntled Employees

Why HR might not want to read Firing at Will

Book authors want everyone to read their book. It's a universal law. They spend a year or longer typing and retyping words, and when they're done, they want as many people as possible to read what they've written. And I'm no different.

But it occurs to me that some people may want to avoid my book.

Firing at Will is listed (and intended) as a management book. My publisher (Apress) even included a handy little instruction on the back cover: "Shelve in Business/Management." But so far, in every Barnes & Noble store I've checked, they've filed it under "Human Resources." And I get that, because as much as it is a book for managers, it's also a book for HR professionals.

But HR professionals who read it may be in for a surprise. Because the book takes on many of HR’s long-held beliefs, showing how some common practices harm employee morale and business profitability.

Many of the rules and policies that well-meaning HR professionals and employment lawyers put into place lead to toxic, dysfunctional workplaces. These rules are designed to protect companies from bad employees, but they instead drive away good employees.

Instead, the book promotes doing away with outdated management tools that end up becoming crutches for managers and take away their independence and discretion. For example, instead of sticking with these outdated tools, the book advises employers to:

• Throw out your personnel handbook (the title of Chapter 16)
• Abandon annual performance reviews (“the dumbest managerial tool”)
• Dump progressive-discipline policies
• Avoid performance-improvement plans (PIPs)
• Stay away from arbitration agreements
• Treat employees differently

That last one might be the biggest surprise. Employment lawyers are always telling companies to treat everyone the same. But when you do that, you end up treating everyone equally badly.

HR pros who have grown comfortable with these conventional notions may be put off by the shots taken at accepted wisdom.

On the other hand, there are things in the book that many HR people will appreciate. The book advocates for more responsibility and autonomy for human resources. It favors changing “human resources” to “talent” and elevating the role to the C-suite level: “Every company should have a chief talent officer reporting to the CEO.”

If you're a human-resources professional, or any kind of manager or employer, and you're thinking about reading Firing at Will, please proceed with caution. Some of what you read might be upsetting to you.

And some of it might just change your mind.

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To order your own copy, click the following links:

• Kindle
• Paperback (Amazon)
• Nook
• IndieBound (independent bookstores)

To read Chapter 1 for free, go to the Firing at Will website and click the link at the top of the page.

The 10 most important traits for job candidates

Over at jayshep.com there's a new excerpt from Chapter 17 ("Hiring to Avoid Firing") of Firing at Will: A Manager's Guide. In it, I talk about the ten things to look for when hiring an employee. The better you do at hiring, the less likely you'll need to fire. Check it out.

A Facebook policy for grown-ups

Bop on over to jayshep.com to check out a Facebook policy for grown-ups. Feel free to adopt it as your own.

Why corporate Facebook policies are stupid

Today we've been talking about social-media policies in the workplace. (See "The twitterable Twitter policy updated" over at my new site, jayshep.) In my recent book, Firing at Will: A Manager's Guide, I covered the legal problems that can crop up when you set out a Facebook policy. Here it is, from Chapter 3, "Risky Business":

Don’t Hit the “Like” Button

Private, nonunionized employers usually don’t need to worry about the National Labor Relations Act or the federal agency that enforces it, the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB’s purview primarily extends to disputes between employers and unions. But one of the times when the NLRB sticks its nose into the private, nonunion workplace is when an employer creates rules that prevent employees from talking with each other about their working conditions.

Section 7 of the Act gives all workers the right to engage in “concerted activities,” a term that sounds ominous to employers and management. It’s a broad term that usually refers to employees’ getting together to form a union or engage in labor-related activities.

But it can also be used to describe workers’ informally complaining about bosses or pay or other goings-on at work. Employees have a right to do that, and employers—even those in nonunionized workplaces—can’t create policies restricting that right.

This has come up a lot recently with Facebook-related incidents. The scenario is increasingly common: an employee gets into some kind of beef with her supervisor, then logs onto the social-networking site and complains about her boss. The company then fires her. Problem? According to the NLRB, it may well be.

In a nonunion environment, an employer can fire an at-will employee for any reason, including an angry Facebook rant. (And before you start squawking about the First Amendment and freedom of speech, remember this: there’s no such thing as the First Amendment in a private employment context. You need a state actor—a person acting on behalf of the government—to have First Amendment concerns.) But Section 7’s concerted-activity clause creates a type of free-speech protection. And this is where Facebook comes in.

In the rash of recent Facebook cases the NLRB has brought against employers, the workplace was either unionized or the employer created a policy that restricted workers’ concerted-activity rights (or both). Well-meaning employers created policies that prohibit employees from saying mean things about coworkers or supervisors on Facebook or Twitter or some other social-media site. By doing this, the nonunionized employer gave the NLRB a hook to go after it, because a policy like that can be seen as squelching concerted activities among the workers. (One employee bitching about his boss is a terminable offense, but two employees complaining together can be protected concerted activity. Makes sense, right?)

So far, most of these NLRB Facebook cases have ended up with the employers settling to avoid costly and distracting litigation. And in my opinion, the NLRB has been overreaching and outstepping its proper authority. But the main takeaway is that you’d better be careful about creating workplace policies that prevent employees from discussing work. Idle gossip may be a negative influence at the workplace, but trying to legislate it away with policies may get you into hot water.

— from Firing at Will: A Manager's Guide (Apress, 2012), copyright 2011 by Jay Shepherd.

Got employees or managers? Then you need this book. Seriously. Order your copy today from Amazon. Need more convincing? Check out the book's website and read a whole chapter for free.

The twitterable Twitter policy updated

I wrote the post nearly three years ago here, but it keeps popping up in social-media circles. So I decided it was time for a little updating. Check out "The twitterable Twitter policy updated" over at my new site, jayshep.

One word that will reinvent how you serve clients

Want to know what that one word is? Here are two easy ways to find out:

1. Go grab your nearest unabridged dictionary. Turn to page one. Start going through each defined word one at a time. You'll get to it eventually. (OK, maybe that’s not so easy.)

2. Go to the LexThink.1 site and vote for my proposed talk, “One Word That Will Reinvent How You Serve Clients.” Just click on the handy "vote" icon (see image).

Voting ends February 24. There are 23 other proposals from a rogue’s gallery of big legal thinkers, and only the top 12 will be selected. Your vote will make a difference.

Then come to the ABA TechShow in Chicago starting March 28. The LexThink.1 program is Wednesday night at 6:30 CDT. You can sign up for free tickets here.

So what is LexThink.1? Well, it’s an evening of very short presentations with a challenging constraint: 20 slides, 18 seconds a slide (equaling six minutes exactly, or 0.1 to you lawyers who still use timesheets). The speaker has no control over the slides, which keep advancing like sands in the hourglass (or something) every 18 seconds. It forces the speakers to keep it brief and pithy, and to leave home all the boring bits. It’s inspired by Japan’s Pecha Kucha Nights, which allows a luxurious 20 seconds for each of the twenty slides. This is its third year; it was previously called "IgniteLaw."

To see an example, here is my talk from last year: "Quantum Leap: How You Will Practice Law in 2019."

No matter which proposals get chosen, it promises to be an amazing event. Hope to see you there. And thanks for the vote!