I am a subscriber to your HR newsletter on About.com. I don’t remember ever seeing anything about when HR people (or non-HR people who are in charge of HR) could end up being implicated or in trouble in situations. I am asking this because I am in a situation where I have no HR background, but have been in charge of my company’s HR tasks for a few years now.
Recently, one of the owners of the company is becoming more and more bold, brass, and downright rude/mean, sometimes. It’s a situation where I can’t really say anything to her because she is the other owner/president’s wife and he is very aware of how she acts, but it doesn’t seem to bother him much.
I am concerned that she’s going to cause an ill-fated relationship with a certain employee (well, the relationship is already very uncivil at best) to the point where this employee could possibly file a suit against us upon departure/termination if it comes to that at some point.
My main concern though is where I fit into this. There are often times where this couple makes business decisions that are controversial within the company, and have many of us worried that they are not completely kosher.
Can I get into legal hot water over a decision they’ve made and have moved forward on, or how they treat certain other employees?
To read the answer, click here: Is HR Legally Liable for a Boss’s Bad Behavior?
That was an awesome article!
In my area, Employment Standards does not see kindly to a ‘non-manager’ telling staff what to do. We have had a similar situation where the boss’s wife wanted to ‘be more involved’ in the company and started coming in and making changes, and overstepping/overriding the Assistant Manager’s (the person directly involved in overseeing staff) decisions and directions. Staff were getting confused and unhappy and feeling like pawns stuck in the middle of a power struggle. I printed out all of the information I could from Employment Standards and handed it over to the boss when we were all in a meeting, saying “this arrangement needs to change because if any of those upset employees were to file a complaint, the consequences could be A, B, or C”. Generally, consequences passed down from the government are never a good thing! More thought was put into how the wife could be involved and communication is flowing much better. Staff are also happier!