You're the HR Hero, but what if your managers and supervisors knew enough employment law to make your job easier, and your company safer?

Super Supervisors: 5 Employment Law Essentials is a clear, compelling and concise DVD presentation that teaches managers what to say and do, and what to never say and do, to steer away from expensive employment litigation and toward a more productive and focused workforce. Employment law attorney John Phillips has distilled and compressed some of his most popular and effective training presentations into a seamless 36-minute DVD-based discussion every supervisor should see. In it, he speaks directly to your team, explaining the legal aspects of 5 critical management tasks and providing best practices for reducing friction and increasing effectiveness:

• Discrimination, Retaliation, and Harassment: What supervisors absolutely have to do, and what they never should forget
• Hiring: Legal pitfalls to avoid
• Performance Reviews, Progressive Discipline, and Documentation: Keys to these vital yet unpopular tasks
• Firing: Best practices for cutting ties without sparking a lawsuit
• Fairness: How respecting subordinates engenders respect for management and creates a positive working environment

Phillips explains not only key laws but the reasons behind the laws, so your team members understand the potential impact of their actions.

Super Supervisors: 5 Employment Law Essentials features:

• Candid straight talk from an attorney who regularly counsels some of the nation’s largest employers
• Fast-paced explanation of key concepts with a focus on the real-world impact
• Revealing anecdotes and true-life examples that keep the presentation rooted in reality
• Powerful emphasis on the critical details that are vital to leading a successful work team

• Why supervisors are on the frontline of employment law defense.
• Good management practices vs. the “don’ts”

First Essential:
Discrimination, Harassment & Retaliation

• The six protected classes under federal law and additional state-mandated protected classes
• Impact of an employee’s protected class status on supervisor decision-making
• Unintentional discrimination, when perception trumps reality
• “September 11th” and religious discrimination
• Defining “hostile work environment”
• Supervisors’ role in squelching language, jokes, and ethnic slurs
• Forms retaliation can take
• Difference between retaliation and discrimination

Second Essential:
Hiring

• Why hiring right is as important a task as discipline and firing
• Interviewing essentials, including note taking tactics for avoiding discrimination claims
• Committing sufficient time to hiring and eliciting important information from candidates
• Dangers of over promising and overselling a position

Third Essential:
Performance Reviews, Progressive Discipline, and Documentation

• Right and wrong ways to review employee performance
• Reviews used as evidence against employer
• Reviewing full time period of employee work, not just most recent month
• Why letting a poor employee “hang around” can be so deadly
• Timely discipline key to derailing lawsuits
• Laying out expectations during orientation
• Special advice for new supervisors facing problem employees who’ve never been negatively reviewed.
• Documentation expectations at the EEOC and with juries
• Dangers of recreating or altering documentation
• Risks of excessive documentation

Fourth Essential:
Firing

• Why terminations are the largest source of employment law suits
• The role of hiring, documentation, and discipline in termination decisions
• Risks of on-the-spot terminations
• Suspension vs. termination
• Red-flags to consider before firing – workers’ comp claims, pending discrimination or harassment claims, and more
• Employee replacement factors that can reduce risks
• Rehearsing the termination conference
• Who should be in the termination conference
• Dangers of arguing with employee, or trying to counsel
• Giving reasons for termination
• Organization, confidence, courtesy
• Illegal statements in conference
• Things that embarrass
• Documentation

Fifth Essential: Fairness

• Perceived unfairness leading to discrimination claims
• Two major legal concerns: union organization and litigation
• Jury consideration of fairness
• Applying the “golden rule”
• Focus on job performance
• Dangers of yelling and berating employees
• Leadership essentials: giving other people power to do their jobs