Care is in Order in HR

In the corporate world, human resources is often the ugly stepsister. It's a department that spends money rather than making it, always has someone annoyed at it and is rarely viewed as an asset to the company. You may choose to disagree with those assertions, but that's not what this piece is about.

Just the other day, I wrote about being clear in your documents. Today, I move along the spectrum from clarity to care.

My motivation for writing this is a Supreme Court case fashioned as Yates v United States. It's not a case that relates to human resources. It's not a case that relates to anything that most HR departments ever even think about.

It's about fishing. Yes, you read that right. Mr. Yates is a commercial fisherman. And, in that role, Mr. Yates has some people who work for him. Mr. Yates and his workers were caught with undersized grouper and were ordered to leave them in the boat as evidence. Mr. Yates ordered his men to throw the grouper back in the water and they did. Mr. Yates was charged with a crime.

Of course he was, you might think. He and his workers were violating federal law by catching undersized grouper.

Hold on. That's not what he was charged with violating. Mr. Yates was charged with violating the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX or SarbOx). You remember SOX. It was passed in 2002 to help the federal government to combat underhanded business practices such as those that were found at Enron. But, in this case, Mr. Yates was accused of the destruction of "any record, document, or tangible object" for the purpose of obstructing a federal investigation. Had he been found guilty and lost his appeal(s), he could have had to serve 20 years in a federal penitentiary.

Okay, so you just know that I am going to tell you that SCOTUS voted 9-0 to throw this case out. Wrong. The vote was 5-4 with Justice Kagan joining the utlra-conservative wing of the Court on the side that felt that Mr. Yates should, in fact, suffer the consequences of SarbOx). (By the way, you should all consider reading Kagan's dissent as it is the first one that I have seen that references Dr. Seuss.)

So, what's my point?

We all need to take care. Congress especially should take care, It is often their loose wording of the bills that they pass that causes this sort of unintended consequence.

But, perhaps more than other corporate functions, HR needs to take care. HR and its programs tends to be subject to lots of laws that either were never intended for HR or had a small component that was that was embedded in a much larger law. When the latter occurs, that benefits or compensation or workplace practice component tends to be drafted very quickly by people who may not have particular experience in that area.

Nobody can keep up with all of this stuff. But, plaintiff's bar seems to look for unusual wording in statute that can be applied in ways that would appear to have never been intended by the drafters.

So, I give a word (several actually) to the wise. No matter how sound your practices appear to be, it may wise to consider how they could be twisted and misconstrued to violate something. Can someone argue discrimination on the basis of age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or anything else because of your well-intentioned policies? As strange as it seems, the prudent approach may be to work backwards. Start by assuming that your policies violate everything possible and work backwards to prove that they don't.

And don't forget to read about the application of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to Sarbanes-Oxley.