Employment Practice Risk Assessments

With the complexity of federal, state, and local statutes and regulations affecting the workplace, it is important to periodically examine your employment practices.  Noncompliance which is discovered prior to a formal investigation by a governmental agency or before complaints or lawsuits by employees can be more easily corrected. These corrections can be made without additional costs, penalties or adverse publicity which may occur when the legal system gets involved.

It is our goal to assist you in setting up effective employment practices.  These practices will enable your company to have a productive workforce and an efficient human resources function, while reducing the chance that your organization will be the victim of costly employment litigation.  Employment practices are steps that your organization takes to ensure that written policies, procedures, records, employer-employee relations, leaves of absence, and other management practices are handled consistently, fairly, and in compliance with federal, state and local law. 

Workplace Dynamics can conduct your employment practice risk assessment to pinpoint your trouble spots and provide you with recommendations for improvement.  The scope of the assessment can be very specific to address your organization’s concern regarding a specific employment issue, e.g. your recruiting and hiring process, or very broad, to include all areas of the human resources function. 

We work with you to define your scope and tailor the audit process to fit your needs.  Typically, the following steps occur:

1. Initial Consultation – a meeting or telephone conference call is set up to discuss the scope of the project and to identify the key players.
2. Request for Information – we will provide you with a detailed list of all the documents that we will want to review, as well as, the people we would like to interview (e.g. Employee Handbook, policy manual, employment application form, performance appraisal tools, orientation package, etc.)
3. Audit Process – we will conduct an offsite analysis of the written documentation, hold telephone interviews, and work onsite, as requested, to review personnel files, I-9 forms, employment claims, and other designed human resource tools.  We will also conduct in-person employee interviews and observe candidate interviews.
4. Results – we will present the assessment results in a detailed, confidential, and objective summary report along with recommendations to modify or change high-risk employment practices.  We will also prioritize our recommendations to aid in your planning efforts.

Workplace Dynamics recognizes that you may want to conduct an Employment Practice Risk Assessment yourself.  If this is the case, we recommend that you use the Employment Labor Law Audit ELLA®.  ELLA® is a management tool that helps employers detect hidden problems, develop positive employee relations, implement risk reduction strategies, benchmark best practices, and prioritize corrective measures.  ELLA® is designed on the premise that employers can't get the right answers if they don't ask the right questions.

The new 9th edition covers 27 employment practice areas and adds:

• New audit questions on Wage and Hour issues (including the Lilly Ledbetter Act); the ADAA (Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act); Immigration, Leaves of Absence (including the new FMLA regulations); COBRA and HIPAA, and human capital management.
• New profile on Diversity.
• Updates and expands the assessment of strategic and organizational alignment, risk management, internal controls, and HR metrics.
• Places greater emphasis on assessing the value added by the organization's human capital.
• New audit tools: (1) ELLA Pre-HR Audit Worksheet™, (2) the Employment Retaliation Vulnerability Assessment Tool™, (3) ELLA HR Audit Worksheets™, and (4) ELLA HR Audit Maps™

Workplace Dynamics is a co-author of the newly released Diversity Profile.

If, after conducting your ELLA® self-audit, you find that you would like additional assistance, don’t hesitate to contact Workplace Dynamics.  Please contact us if you are interested in previewing a trial version or would like to order ELLA®.  Please let us know if you are a consultant interested in this product.  Please contact us if you would like to demo ELLA®.