Managing a Compliant and Diverse Workplace Assignment

Due Week 8 and worth 190 points

Recall from Assignment 1 the company had a few HR-related lawsuits that were not in the company’s favour. To be more specific, claims of harassment, not reasonably accommodating disabilities and work-life balance concerns were all issues brought by employees forcing the company to answer to, and defend itself. As the new CHRO you want to enact stronger policies and guidelines to avoid these types of situations in the future.

Write a five to six (5-6) page paper in which you:

Briefly note how harassment in the workplace affects equal employment opportunity and describe at least 4 elements a plaintiff must show to go forward with a harassment claim. How might an organisation avoid these elements from occurring? HINT:
https://i-sight.com/resources/6-tips-to-avoid-harassment-and-discrimination-claims/

Explain your overall understanding on reasonable accommodation of disability (consider reviewing ADA rules). Then, discuss a minimum of 3 things a plaintiff filing a failure to accommodate claim must show that helps to prove they are qualified for the job in question.

Make a connection between religious advocacy/harassment and bona fide occupational qualification. Can churches promoting a certain religion refuse to hire those who have a different religion? If so or if not, why?

Discuss your overall understanding of FMLA and the pregnancy discrimination act as it relates to organisations granting leave for each. Then, identify 2-3 common FMLA mistakes managers make and what you would do to avoid the mistakes. HINT: http://www.kansastag.gov/AdvHTML_Upload/files/FMLA-5-Slip-Ups-White-Paper.pdf

Go to https://research.strayer.edu to locate at least three (3) quality academic resources in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and other websites do not qualify as academic resources.

Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:

Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.

Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.

The specific course learning outcomes associated with this assignment are:

Assess and avoid various discrimination and harassment violations to aid in maintaining a diverse workforce.

Develop policies that are compliant with employment laws.

Use technology and information resources to research issues in employment law.

Write clearly and concisely about employment law using proper writing mechanic.

Click here to view the rubric for this assignment.

Employment Law and Hiring Process

Briefly explain your overall understanding of conducting employee background checks. Why are they done? Why are they important?

Employees are the most important individuals of an organisation, basically they are a representation of the company. Therefore, it is important to keenly make the choice of the person who will be working for the organisation.

At the same background checks are mostly confused to be a criminal history check, yes, it is part of the background check but it not the entirety of a background check.

A background check consists of more aspects than only a background check; through a background check one will be able to find the best candidate by looking at the employment and education history, criminal record reference and civil records among other aspects that might be considered to be important.

But at the same time, it is important to understand that all the parts that will be checked should be balanced so that the background check should not be biased or the company misses a critical piece of information and hire the wrong person.

A background check will help the company stay safe during a criminal history check and makes sure that the applicants actually are qualified for the position, by checking their education and employment verification (Miles 2020).

Therefore, such background checks, are important because when making personnel decisions; such as retention, hiring, reassignment and promotion the backgrounds of the employees need to be considered before assigning an individual any position. Whereby mainly the most checked items include;

the use of social media, criminal record, financial history, work history, education history and medical history will help the employee to careful get the best fit candidate of the position that needs the personnel.

Therefore, a background check is important to help in choosing the right person; but at the same time, it is important to understand some aspects that need to be adhered when checking the backgrounds of prospective employees.

The background checks are used to make an employment decision; regardless of how the information was found it’s important that the information is used in compliance with the federal rules so that employees an applicant can be protected from discrimination.

The most important aspects to consider include; colour, race national origin, sex, religion disability or genetic information. Additionally, running background checks through a company that is accredited to od background checks, the background check should be in line with the Fair.

Identify and discuss at least two (2) types of background checks you believe most organisations conduct and explain how you will ensure the types you select are properly administered in the company.

There are various backgrounds conducted by different companies; but the most crucial one which is also the popular one would be the criminal background check, among that have been mentioned before.

And as mentioned before a background check basically helps the employer to confirm a clean record of a prospective employee at the same time checking upon their level of truthful and honesty which basically helps the company to get the right person.

Also, as mentioned before background checks should follow particular rules and regulation to protect the applicants and employees from various factors other than discrimination is the most common aspect.

A criminal background is one of the background checks that are undertaken by companies, or hired companies. This background looks into the prior criminal activity of an applicant as requested by the person or an applicant.

Most of the times criminal background checks are mainly undertaken to establish whether a prospective employee would pose a threat to the workplace, or the customers; which might create the workplace unsafe.

This type of background check consists of various record searches, such as; county criminal courts, national criminal databases, sex offender’s registry and maybe domestic and global terrorists watch lists. It is important also to understand what the state laws permit employers to run as different states have different regulations when it comes to background checks (Miles, 2020).

The other background check is education verification, this is because graduated is not the same as attended. But the only way one can establish the accuracy of a candidate’s claims is through an education verification check. Also known as academic verification is basically done to deny or confirm the level of education of the applicant and maybe the place of study.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLS) clearly spells out that some applied positions that at times are classified as Exempt require employees to conduct a specialized or advance education. in the case that FLSA does not approve of the exemption, the company should be able to prove that the employee holds appropriate credentials.

Additionally, as mentioned before; Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), also governs the way such background checks should be conducted or in other words regulates the use of investigative consumer reports, consumer credit reports and this applies to when a third party (not the company in charge of background checks) conducts a background check as instructed by the employer.

This act clearly spells out that the candidate should be properly notified with full disclosure that there will be a background check conducted on them; before the company request a background check on the applicants.

List and describe at least five (5) employee drug testing procedures you should ensure in order to comply with state drug testing laws. How would you ensure adherence to the procedures?

There are various procedures that are used in drug testing for employees; mainly drug is used to ensure that employees stay clean during their tenure with the company.

Especially if at times the employees interact directly with customers. Drug tests are simply the test of detecting chemical traces of specific drugs in various bodily fluids which make up the common procedures for drug; but only two of them that are mostly used.

Again, some states only allow a number of tests to be conducted and not all of them, whereby Urine is the most commonly used fluid or specimen for illicit drug tests and breathe is the most common for alcohol; which are along the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration SAMHSA’s guidelines for drug testing (Holler & Levine, 2019).

Urine: the results from a urine test may show the presence or absence of a drug substance known as metabolites. Metabolites can be described as drug residue that remain after the drug has worn after being used.

It is very crucial to understand that a positive drug test does not imply that the individual was under the influence ta the moment; but detects the use of the drug on previous days before the drug test.

The drug test is not preferred for alcohol test as alcohol passes through the system rapidly. A perfect way to comply to state laws is that employees should be provided with urine collection points; which are then tested and resulted handed back to them, only and no one else.

Breath: mostly common in alcohol test to find out how much alcohol is no the blood at the moment. The results are given in Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) after the individual breathes into the breath-alcohol device.

The main rule is that the result should not exceed 0.08 especially for driving as this is the standard level in all states. The DOT regulation son the hand stipulates that a BAC of 0.02 is enough to hinder someone’s performance in a safety sensitive task.

Whereby a BAC higher than 0.04 is considered to be positive drug test and the employee be removed from any safety-sensitive operations, especially in return to duty process. This procedure is straight forward and there no any complications that would require any regulations to ensure the procedure is properly done (Holler & Levine, 2019).

Blood: measures amount of drugs and most of the time alcohol, specifically at the time of the test. This procedure is accurate as blood samples provide the specific measure of drug in the blood at the moment the samples are withdrawn.

This procedure is not recommended as it is possible if there is a short grace period before all drugs traces are deposited in the urine. The blood test comes in handy maybe during an accident and one tries to establish if the cause of the accident was intoxication.

The only way to make sure this is done properly is through ensuring sterilisation of equipment/ new equipment are used to avoid infecting the employees with new infections.

Hair: hair gives the test a much longer period to test for drugs; but again, is not the most common procedure used. Which a drug history that dates as far as previous 90 days. This gives specific use of drugs in the past and not like blood that covers for current impairments. Hair testing is less invasive therefore there are no issues of privacy as compared to blood and urine drug testing.

Oral Fluids: mostly saliva but other fluids can be used that come from the mouth; which can help detect traces of alcohol or drugs.

These specimens ae easy to collect (a swab in the inner cheek), whereby it is better as it is hard to adulterate and makes it easier to detect specific drugs; i.e., marijuana, cocaine; this method is fairly preferred in determining the immediate use if drug substances. Whereby as the other procedures this is specifically regulations free as there are no privacy issues, and the collection is straight forward.

Briefly discuss your understanding of bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ), affirmative action preferences, and promotions. Then, identify at least three (3) actions you would take to avoid employment law issues with these topics. Be specific.

Bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ); can be described as attributes or qualities that an organisation or employers are given the preference to consider especially in retention or hiring of employees (Cavico & Mujtaba, 2016).

Affirmative action preferences on the hand, is considered to be a remedy in the workplace that is aimed at preventing further discrimination against particular groups; and this is done through policies, procedures and programs that work for minorities in the workplace. These preferences may include women in job hiring.

Promotion on the other hand mainly involves the aspect of a company deciding to place an employee at a higher rank, or job position than the previous one; because of the tremendous performance of the employee.

Employee law issues have been common in the workplace; therefore, it is important to make sure that you have the processes in place when hiring. The first one is performing a job analysis; this is part of the process meant to design the HRM department to take on legal challenges.

The next point is documenting the hiring process, which will provide any relevant evidence needed. And finally conduct regular evaluations, but also make sure the valuations are honest. This is because no laws directly govern the employee evaluation process (Kelly 2015).

References

Cavico, F. J., & Mujtaba, B. G. (2016). The bona fide occupational qualification (bfoq) defence in employment discrimination: A narrow and limited justification exception. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 7(4), 15.

Holler, J., & Levine, B. (2019). Confirmation Methods for SAMHSA Drugs and Other Commonly Abused Drugs. In Critical Issues in Alcohol and Drugs of Abuse Testing (pp. 189-206). Academic Press.

Health and Human Services (HHS) Mandatory Guidelines by SAMHSA. Retrieved (2/1/2020) from https://www.samhsa.gov/workplace/resources

HR Challenge: 3 Tips for Avoiding Employment Law Issues by Kelly Painter 2015. Retrieved from (1/2/2020) https://www.eskill.com/blog/avoid-employment-law-issues/

Miles, D. (2020). The importance of background checks. Campus Security Report, 16(9), 1-8.

PLACE THE ORDER WITH US TODAY AND GET A PERFECT SCORE!!!