Human Resource Blog

You should terminate this person. There is no legal or ethical reason why this person should refuse to sign a W-4, unless he or she is an undocumented worker. By law, you must have the W-4 to report this persons earnings to social security and the IRS. They are hoping that if they refuse to sign the W-4, you will pay them *under the table.* However, if you do so, you — not the employee — are breaking the law.

We assume that you are allowing the employee to fill out the W-4 and claim as many dependents as they like.

We assume that you had this employee complete the I-9 form to verify their status to legally work in the U.S. The only reason we can think of for an employee not to sign a W-4 is because the employee has stolen someones identity.

There are surprisingly few legal ramifications of using Facebook, twitter or other social networking sites for hiring. In fact, this is on the cutting edge of recruiting — so kudos for being ahead of your time!

Discrimination based on race, color, religion, etc is obviously not legal regardless of the form of communicaiton — in person, on the phone or online. For that reason, as always, you will want to interveiw a diversae group of applicants and have objective, documented reasons for your selection.

You will also want to monitor the site to make sure that it projects a positive, professional image of your organization.

But outside of that consideration, we say *go for it!* 

This is a difficult situation because the employees are already hired and doing the job you pay them for. Without being too cynical, its not that they spoke English when hired and have suddenly forgotten how. Unless the job description has changed drastically, it is hard to understand how not speaking English has suddenly become a liability.

Your best option is probably to hire a supervisor or other employee who is bilingual and can translate for you. Obviously, you will pay this employee more because they are more skilled than your workers. If English is a requirement for certain jobs (such as a receptionist who must answer the phone) then you can enforce that standard. But it is very difficult to argue that an employee cannot do the job without speaking English, when they are already doing the job without speaking English.

Is this legal? Yes and no. Yes, the employer has the right to prohibit smoking on company property. Any employee who violates this rule can be disciplined or terminated. The average smoker wastes hundreds of work hours per year on paid smoke breaks. An employer can even prohibit employees from leaving the premises during lunch or rest breaks and in most states can prohibit smoking in cars in the parking lot.

Can you refuse to hire smokers? In some states this would be legal. In other states, such as Wisconsin, it would be illegal. A few states have laws that prohibit discrimination in hiring against anyone for legal use of a product. Some specifically mention tobacco and others do not.

The easy fix to the hiring situation is to not ask employees if they smoke during the interview. Instead, tell them *We are a non-smoking building. No one is allowed to smoke on the premises, inside or outside — even in the parking lot. Employees are required to remain on the premises during breaks. This means if you come to work at 8 a.m. and leave at 5 p.m. you will not have a cigarette for the entire time. Can you work under those conditions?* Note that you have not asked if the person smokes — only if they will be comfortable working under those conditions. Check with your boss first, but that is our suggestion.  

We see no reason why this issue should be addressed in written personnel policies, and it is probably not a major liability issue. It might help us if you said why you are concerned about this — what could go wrong?

It would be a liability issue for a machine shop to allow an employee operating hazardous equipment to work alone, because if the employee had a serious injury, he would be unable to dial 911 himself. In that situation, we have recommended that there always be a supervisor or coworker present. However, it sounds like your employees are office workers who are unlikely to suffer a catastrophic injury at work.

You should always take pains to secure sensitive information, including personnel files, medical files and financial information. If one low-level employee is left alone in the workplace, you should assume that she will snoop, reading everything left in a desk or unlocked drawer. The solution is one you should be implementing anyway — have the sensitive documents in a locked file cabinet where unauthorized persons cannot access them. Ideally, private offices would also be locked.

Occasionally employers are concerned about theft. Coworkers should take normal precautions such as not leaving money in their desk drawers. It seems unlikely that this employee would steal office equipment, since she would be the most likely suspect.

Other than those three issues, we see no reason to prevent an office employee from doing paperwork on weekends and holidays without supervision. If you do not want to give her a key to the premises permanently, it can be issused on Friday and returned on Monday.

This answer might be different if we knew more about your circumstances. If the office is in an unsafe neighborhood, then an employee working alone could be a security and liablity issue. If the employee would be treating clients, then that could open the door to untrue allegations of abuse or misconduct.  If you have concerns we have not addressed, feel free to post another question.