Top 3 Reasons Managers Should Take Employment Law Training

Our clients often ask us – “Why should our managers take employment law training (AB 1825 Training)?” This is a very legitimate question. All training has associated tangible and intangible costs. The answers come down to mitigating risk, speed of execution, and performance.

A lot of people in HR or management think that it is a waste of time to teach managers the basics of employment law through AB 1825 Training, because HR or management will catch their mistakes before they happen. There are a few false premises to this argument.

1. First, managers often do things that are illegal before HR/management learns about them. For example, at one of our clients with more than 30,000 employees, a manager fired an employee on the spot without consulting with HR or management. That cost the company several million dollars. What is the risk for your company?

2. Second, even if HR catches the mistake, it can set back a process for months.
Let's say a manager has a poorly performing employee. The manager calls HR and is told to document the situation. If the manager doesn't know the correct way to document, he or she could spend months documenting only to find out when it comes time to terminate that the documentation is faulty. The disciplinary process must begin again. Can you afford to wait?

3. Another common problem is the manager who thinks he or she is "encouraging" a bad employee by giving good performance reviews. There is no reason for HR to think there is a problem with the reviews—until the manager comes in complaining about the employee and wanting to terminate. Would this underperformance cause a problem for your organization?

Unfortunately, we also know of many cases where managers have discouraged employees from making claims of harassment, thinking they have resolved the problem, only to have it blow up later. For all these reasons, all managers should be trained in the basics of employment law.