Document Employment Practices Training

Employment practices lawsuits can be extremely expensive and damaging to any business.  The number of employment practice claims have increased substantially in recent years.  Understanding and complying with employment law as well as routine training helps managers to do the right thing and will help minimize an organization’s exposure to employment practices liability claims. 

Both new and existing employees should be provided with initial training on the organization’s goals, safety programs and policies.  The objective of an orientation program is to provide an overview of the job procedures so the employee gains a feeling of belonging and to educate them on the principles of safety and polices of your organization.  Once established, a continual and adequate training program should be provided in order to ensure employees are able to maintain and develop the necessary skills required for their position.  There should also be provisions for supervisory level training regarding the differences between understanding the policies and how the reporting and enforcement procedures work.

As with all employee issues, all training should be documented to verify participation and documentation should be retained indefinitely.  While document retention is dependent on each state’s laws and minimum requirements, you should never strive to meet a minimum.  Therefore, VFIS recommends records are retained based on your entity’s legal advice.   

During the recent risk control survey, it was identified that your organization was not maintaining complete written documentation of all training sessions, mainly training regarding employment policies and procedures.  To better document the extensive training your organization completes – which in turn might prove invaluable should training ever become an issue during a law suit – VFIS recommends including brief, but comprehensive, explanations of the topics reviewed during each training session be placed in individual personnel files.