Spring 2013 Employment Newsletter

Good Documentation HELPS Promote Winning Results

If you’ve ever attended an employment-law seminar or talked to an employment-law attorney, then you know the importance of policies and procedures. Equally important is communicating your policies and procedures to your employees and enforcing them consistently. But without documentation, none of this really matters. Doing everything the right way is no guarantee that you will win when an employee sues you, but not doing these things guarantees a rough course to any success in a lawsuit.

The recent Sixth Circuit opinion in White v. Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation, a case filed in West Tennessee, illustrates the importance of keeping good documentation on communicating and enforcing employment policies and procedures.  The hospital hired White, a nurse, to work in its emergency room. Under the hospital’s policy, if she worked six hours or more, she received an unpaid meal break and the hospital automatically deducted the meal break from her paycheck. (The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) does not prohibit the automatic-meal-break-deduction policy.) Because of the nature of a nurse’s job, White might miss her meal break or her job might interrupt her meal break. The hospital required employees to report missed or interrupted meal breaks on an exception log. This would ensure that the hospital paid employees—White included—for the time worked. The hospital put its policies in the employee handbook and White signed acknowledging that she understood the policies.  Importantly, the hospital documented all of this.

After White quit, she sued the hospital and claimed an FLSA violation because the hospital didn’t pay her for missed and interrupted meal breaks. White claimed the hospital paid her for missed meal breaks only if her entire nursing unit missed a meal break. But the records showed that the one time she reported a missed meal break, the hospital paid her. White never complained to her supervisors or to HR about the hospital not paying her for time worked. White, however, knew the procedure for reporting paycheck errors; in fact, when she followed the procedure the hospital corrected the reported error.

The FLSA requires employers to have a reasonable procedure for employees to report uncompensated time. Here, the hospital had such a procedure and communicated the process to White.  When she followed the procedure, the hospital paid her, and it documented that she knew about the procedure and what happened when she followed the procedure. White lost because she could not show that the hospital knew or had reason to know that it wasn’t paying her. The hospital’s policies and procedures, its communication, proper enforcement, and documentation helped set up a winning result in White’s lawsuit.

Practice Tip:  You can do your part to make sure you facilitate winning results too.  Employers should have written policies that include complaint procedures with alternative avenues of complaint.  Employees should acknowledge receipt of all policies and procedures and any revisions should be distributed and acknowledged timely.  Most importantly, complaint resolutions should be handled expeditiously and documented for future reference.

For the full newsletter, please click on the PDF – Spring 2013 Newsletter

Tags: employment