CAREER COACH
Is it ever permissable for an employer to have an employee investigated based on gossip regarding that employee’s personal life, including alleged drug use or lifestyle choices?
With so many investigations being reported and discussed by talking heads ad nauseam these past two years, you can’t even ask a couple of questions these days without being accused of putting someone under investigation. Let’s look at this workplace scenario a different way. If an employer receives information about an employee that could be potentially damaging to that employee, or create an unsafe work environment for other employees, and the employer didn’t look into it, inquire, investigate, call it whatever you want, and then something bad happens, everyone would criticize the employer. So, depending on what the information is, how pervasive and the source, I think employers are better off safe than sorry.
Can I get into trouble for giving a bad reference? A former employer of mine is bad news, and I received a call to supply a reference, but I don’t want to cause any trouble for myself. What should I do?
I’ll make it even more complicated for you. You can get into trouble for giving a bad reference, and you can get into trouble for giving a good reference. Let me explain. Let’s say you know that a former employee is prone to anger and has made threats against other employees. If you give him (and it’s almost always a him when it come to workplace violence — look at the stats) a positive reference, and he goes on to commit an act of violence, how are you going to feel? There’s also a legal liability you may face if it becomes known that you hid that fact. Most cases aren’t that severe, but if you aren’t comfortable giving someone a reference, then either don’t respond to the request, or tell them that you are unable to verify anything but title and dates of employment. That’s your safest route when you don’t have anything positive to say.
Gregory Gian grande is a chief human resources and communications officer in the media industry. E-mail your career questionstogotogreg@nypost.com. Follow Greg on Twitter: @gregg ian grande. His Goto Greg podcast series is available a ti Tunes.