As the owner or manager of small or mid-sized business, you may feel that you have protected your business from the risk of avoidable workplace discrimination lawsuits simply by regulating your behavior and that of your management colleagues. You might keep scrupulous records of performance reviews, warnings to employees, and even base promotion and firing decisions on completely objective criteria like hours worked, total sales or tasks completed. But no matter how carefully you and your management team work to eliminate any actions on your part that could be interpreted as discriminatory, your business remains at risk if you do not manage discriminatory actions or comments by your rank-and-file employees.
If one or several of your employees create a hostile work environment for other workers, you could become financially liable for their discriminatory behavior. What follows are some basic steps you can take to minimize — if not completely eliminate — the risk of workplace discrimination lawsuits.