Read Your Personnel Manual

If you’re having issues at work, you really have to get in the habit of looking through the personnel manual. Yes, it’s boring reading. But, you never know what information is in there that can be critical to defending yourself against a coworker, supervisor or the company, as a whole. There is nothing worse, from an employer’s perspective, than to have an employee quote from the personnel manual in explaining that someone or the company is violating written policies and practices.

If you are contacting HR, you can use quotes from the personnel manual to support your position or explain how someone is violating corporate guidelines, standards of conduct, etc. If you are going through and internal investigation, you will have an understanding of the guidelines, timing, determination, appeal, etc. of the internal complaint process. If HR is aware that you have an understanding of this procedure, it makes them work harder and it makes violations of their own procedures that much harder to execute. HR will know that you are watching them, may be comparing their actions to the corporate guidelines, and that it is likely you are documenting everything!

Anytime you quote from the personnel manual, it lets HR know you’re familiar with the policies and procedures of the company. It tells them you have some idea of how things should be handled, the policies that dictate their actions/response to a situation, etc.

This also lets your company know how serious you are about your issue. This awareness should encourage your employers to follow their own written procedures. However, if they deviate from the procedures, they are simply providing you with documentation that is evidence of a potentially deliberate attempt to violate your employee rights and to ignore your complaint. Know your rights and hold your employer’s feet to the fire, when it comes to adhering to their own written policies and procedures.

Read the personnel manual and look for anything germane to your circumstances. Make copies of that section for your records or to show any additions or revisions that might be made associated with your complaint.

Try to Use Your Employer’s Policies and Procedure Against the Company

If you are a target at work, one of the things you need to do is to take a good hard look at your personnel manual. I don’t mean skim the manual. I mean read it. Look for anything in the policies and procedures that show that your supervisor, manager, HR or anyone in authority violated or side-stepped the company’s established guidelines.

Think of how you can use the company’s policies and procedures to illustrate and document how your employer was intentionally and blatantly disregarding their own written policies and practices in order to ignore your plight, disregard your requests, silence your complaint, and/or in order to create a hostile and offensive work environment for you as a means of retaliation. Here’s what I suggest you do:

-- Check the personnel manual on a semi-regular basis to see if there are any changes or updates. Your HR department is supposed to announce changes, but they don’t always do so in a timely fashion.

-- Check the sections of the personnel manual that relate to any issues you have and make sure the company is following its own policies and procedures. If decisions are made that seem to contradict the company’s policies and procedures, ask for clarification--in writing. Be clear about the contradiction to policy and ask that the procedures outlined be followed or for a full explanation about why another course of action was taken.

-- Use quotes from the personnel manual when you are emailing HR or executive staff about your complaint. This will let them know you’re familiar with the policies and procedures of the company. It tells them you know how they are supposed to be handling your case. This also lets your company know how serious you are about the issue. This awareness should encourage your employers to follow their own procedures. However, if they deviate from the procedures, they are simply providing you with documentation that is evidence of a potentially deliberate attempt to violate your employee rights and ignore your complaint.

-- If you are confused about something in the personnel manual, ask questions. Some of the information may be confusing. You have a right to ask for clarification. If you’re uncomfortable asking someone in HR for clarification, speak to someone you trust--who would know the correct answer.

-- Develop a list of any contradictions in the actions taken by your employer against you and the policies they have established. Show how you company has repeatedly gone against policy, if they have done so.

-- Make a copy of the personnel manual, at the very least copy the sections that are relevant to any issues you may have at work. You may need to compare an old version of the manual to an updated version of the manual in order to highlight changes that have been made. Some companies only have their personnel manual available online through an intranet, so you should definitely be certain to maintain a hard copy of relevant policies.

-- Always look at the sections on anti-harassment, anti-discrimination, retaliation, filing an internal complaint, promotion criteria, performance review guidelines, and addressing performance issues. These are some of the likely sections that will be relevant; especially if your company is setting you up for tangible employment actions (e.g., misrepresenting promotion criteria in order to pretend you don’t currently qualify for a promotion) or setting you up for disciplinary action, up to and including termination.

Here’s something to remember about written policies as you read through your personnel manual. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) states:

“…there are no safe harbors for employers based on the written content of policies and procedures. Even the best policy and complaint procedure won’t alone satisfy the burden of proving reasonable care…if the employer failed to implement its process effectively.”

In other words, if your employer wasn’t taking the necessary steps to ensure that its anti-harassment polices were properly enforced, your employer can wave a hard copy of their anti-harassment policy all day and all night and it won’t do them any good. Simply having a written anti-harassment policy won’t protect them from allegations of harassment nor will it prove that your employer has not violated Federal law.

Tangible Employment Actions Aren't Connected to Maintaining Salary or Benefits!

Workplace harassment is defined by law as behavior that, while offensive, is extremely serious because it changes the conditions of your employment or creates a hostile work environment. In regard to the law, for something to change the conditions of your employment, the “something” must be a tangible employment action. A tangible employment action is any significant change in your employment status. It’s an action that has a negative impact on your work environment, job function or career.

A tangible employment action is not simply someone making a threat or giving you lip service. So, if someone’s telling you they’re going to meet you in the parking lot, next to your car, at 3 o’clock—that’s just not going to cut it. Now, if they show up and attack you, then that would be assault. A tangible employment would be:

--a demotion;
--a suspension;
--being stripped of your staff;
--being denied a promotion with no basis;
--receiving a pay cut under false pretenses;
--being transferred to a menial job;
--being transferred to a remote location or being transferred to a hard to reach location (making it difficult to get to and from work) or being isolated from other staff; or
--being subjected to a hostile work environment that is so offensive and persistent that you can’t perform your job.

Some employers try to get all Slick Willie with these actions. So, sometimes they won’t take away an employee’s salary or benefits. Then, they’ll argue that there isn’t a really significant change in job status/no significant penalty. But, that argument doesn’t fly because tangible employment actions aren’t considered based on whether or not an employee retains the same salary or benefits. So, if there is a significant and negative change to your job—even with the retention of pay and benefits—you can argue that you were hit with a tangible employment action.

In my case, I was denied a promotion without basis—except racism and retaliation. I kept my salary and benefits. I filed a complaint with the Office of Human Rights (OHR). My employer responded to OHR that they didn’t change my salary, title, etc. and used that to try to prove that everything was legitimate that happened to me. They didn’t know that I knew they were full of sh*t and that I could argue such based on the fact that I knew that tangible employment actions are not linked to retaining salary, benefits, etc.!

Anyway, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, tangible employment actions:

--occur when a supervisor uses the official powers of the company to take action(s) against an employee;
--are official acts of the company;
--are often documented in company records;
--often have the official approval of the company and its internal processes;
--often cause financial harm; and
--generally, can only be caused by a supervisor or other agent of your company, since a coworker just doesn’t have the power to bring about a significant, negative change in another employee’s employment status or job responsibilities.

So, if you feel you are the wrongful victim of a tangible employment action, PREPARE TO FIGHT BACK!

Tip #1: Maintain a record of any memos or emails you receive that are meant to justify the tangible employment action (e.g., corrective action notice, written warnings, etc.);

Tip #2: Be able to produce your salary history, by maintaining a record of your income with your employer. Show any decrease in pay. Maintain a record of any memos or emails that are meant to justify a salary decrease.

Tip #3: Check the personnel manual! Before such extremes actions were taken against you, check to see if your employer is following its own policies and procedures. If not, point out any violations that may exist.

Tip #4: Find out about past history! Have other employees engaged in the same behavior that you were accused of engaging in or of having the same performance deficiencies that you were accused of having? If so, what happened to those people? Does it differ from actions taken against you? If so, and the consequences for other employees was nonexistent or very minor, you may be able to claim disparate and unequal treatment by your employer.

Tip #5: Keep pushing your side of the story! Don’t let HR or your employer ignore your version of the facts. Document everything, including every relevant conversation you’ve had with HR staff and authorities at your job. List any contradictions in what they say about policies and justifications for the actions. Provide witness statements to support you (e.g., character references or eye witness accounts of events, etc.) and request that HR check with these individuals to confirm your story.

Tip #6: File a grievance or request an internal investigation! Don’t let tangible employment actions slide. If you believe a manager is acting on racist whims by stripping you of your staff or cutting your pay, ask for HR to investigate the matter! It’s your career, fight for it! If the company doesn’t find in your favor, appeal the decision!

Tip #7: Seek legal counsel! Don’t be afraid to consult an attorney in response to a fraudulent tangible employment action.

Tip #8: Remember that your company will usually do everything in its powers to make it appear that the tangible employment action was warranted. This will be their justification for why no violations of Federal law occurred. It is your job to show that the arguments presented by your employer are nothing but pretexts used to hide their true motivations, which might be harassment, discrimination or retaliation. By keeping a log of events that transpired, keeping hard copies of memos, emails, and other documentation that supports your case, and by tracking comments made and actions taken by your supervisor, Human Resources, and corporate management, you can begin to demonstrate that their defense is dishonest and solely meant to cover up the violation of your employee rights. Focus on why their defense is untruthful! That is the burden placed on complainants!

Handling Performance Evaluations - Part II

Continuing from yesterday’s post, we’re starting with Tip #4 for handling performance evaluations:

Tip #4: Ask lots of questions! You don’t have to sit in a performance review meeting simply accepting every word that’s said as if you’re sitting in front of the Burning Bush—instead of in front of your supervisor or manager! You have a right to ask for specifics about the statements being made about your performance, you have a right to explain your side of the story in any incident being used against you, and you have a right to ask for the project names and any other information regarding allegations that you are a poor performer or have engaged in negative behaviors, etc.

You can ask questions about anything you want AND your supervisor or manager should have the answer—immediately. They should not have to go talk to anyone to learn specifics. If they have included information on your performance evaluation, they should be able to back it up—on the spot—or there should be conversations about removing the comments from the review. It is not inherently plausible that a supervisor or manager is unable to provide a worker with the specifics about rude, intimidating, unprofessional, or any other negative behavior. Similarly, a supervisor or manager should automatically have the answers regarding missed deadlines, sloppy work/lack of attention to detail or any other performance-related issues.

If your supervisor or manager can’t answer your questions about their critiques of you, you may have a serious problem and you should question who wrote/shaped the content of your review. Ask your supervisor or manager what the issue is regarding their problem with memory recall of your performance or behaviors.

Tip #5: Ask for examples! Don’t allow your supervisor or manager to make blanket statements about you, your work or your attitudes/behaviors. If they want to attack it, they should own it! In other words, if your supervisor or manager wants to make a vague criticism, they should be willing to go as far as they have to in order to prove the criticism is legitimate. On a performance evaluation, every critique and every compliment is used to give your performance evaluation an overall score/grade. That is how many employers decide on an employee’s yearly salary increase, promotion eligibility, etc. Employers look at the overall performance of an employee and they compare it to the overall performance of other similar employees. Every critique adds up—against you!

If you hear something and you don’t know what your supervisor or manager is referring to, ask them, “Can you provide an example of when I allegedly behaved that way?” Get examples because your supervisor or manager will be held to the examples and justifications they’ve provided against you. By asking for examples, it forces your supervisor or manager into a position they may be uncomfortable with, but too bad. Many people don’t like to be questioned, just as a matter of course. Many people believe that their authority, words or commands should be accepted at face value. But, you have a right to ask for examples. Your supervisor or manager took the time to criticize you—in writing—at your yearly review. Therefore, he/she should take the time to defend the content of the review and to make sure you understand where you’ve allegedly gone wrong.

How can you gauge your progress towards correcting negative behaviors or poor performance if you don’t know what the exact problem is because you’ve never been given an example of what you’re doing wrong? How can you improve? You can’t! Without examples, you’re being set up for failure and possibly just set up! Blanket statements can be used to ensure that you are denied a promotion, etc. If you have a racist manager, you can be sure they’ll do whatever they can to make sure they further any goals they have against you—as a minority employee.

Ask for examples. If your supervisor or the company comes up with different “examples” to use against you at a later date, it will make any adjustments to their rationale/story very suspect!

Tip #6: DOCUMENT EVERYTHING!!! If your supervisor or manager says anything strange or makes very harsh critiques of your work performance, behaviors or attitudes—that you believe are completely baseless—write down the exact quotes. I don’t care how hard your supervisor or manager watches you move your pen over your notepad. Write everything down. You may need exact quotes at a later time. Hold your supervisor or manager accountable to everything they’ve said.

In my case, when my supervisor created a mid-year review process, simply to attack me and discriminate against me for another race-based incident at work, she wouldn’t document the content of the fraudulent mid-year review I received. Therefore, I didn’t get a copy of a performance review to sign or keep for my records.

The day before my year-end review, my employers changed the personnel manual to state that supervisors could give “informal” reviews anytime they chose to and they didn’t have to provide a written component for the review. In other words, this justified the lack of documentation for that retaliatory mid-year review. However, I wrote like a fiend. I captured every attack made against me and I submitted a complaint the very next business day. Regardless, the company changed the policy to cover their tracks AND…

My employer only referred to the “2nd half of the review cycle” throughout my year-end review. At no point during my year-end review would either of my supervisors or the HR Representative in attendance talk about the mid-year review. I was told, “That’s old news. We want to move past that.”

Always document what’s being said to you because, even if you do receive written documentation of your performance evaluation, it doesn’t mean that there is consistency with what was written and what you were told. Some supervisors and managers are willing to go out on a limb with what they say, compared to what they write or document. So, document everything!

More tips will be provided tomorrow.

Handling Performance Evaluations - Part I

Sorry for not posting this morning. I lost my Internet connection and couldn’t restore my service before leaving for work. Anyway, here’s today’s post…

In the past, I’ve written numerous posts about negative performance evaluations and I’ve provided some suggestions for performance reviews. The reason why performance evaluations are heavily covered on this blog is because some people in the workplace are very good at hiding the real motivation behind their actions against Black and other minority employees—racism.

Anyone, who is under attack at work, must show that the reasons their employer has given for the "special attention" are nothing more than a pretext to hide their real motivation—active racism. This can’t be stressed enough. It is up to you to point out the lies and inconsistencies being offered by whoever is attacking you on the job.

Performance evaluations are a great way for a racist to hide their motivations for stifling the career of a Black or minority employee, to justify any negative employment actions they’ve taken against a Black or minority employee, and to set the employee up for future employment actions, up to and including termination. Empowered racists in the workplace (those with authority to direct the work of others, to suggest tangible employment actions, such as suspensions and demotions, etc.) heavily rely on their ability to corrupt the legitimate processes, procedures, and policies at a company for their own evil purposes. And, performance evaluations are a favored way of accomplishing many goals, when it comes to harassing, retaliating against or discriminating against Black or other minority workers.

Many racist managers make it very clear, when a minority worker is going to receive a negative review. These managers spend a lot of time laying the groundwork to provide a horrible review to minority workers. So, many Black workers are not surprised to walk into a review and hear all manner of falsehoods, misrepresentations, etc. regarding their performance and behavior during a review year. But, sometimes, there are surprises.

In my case, my supervisor created a mid-year performance evaluation process that was unprecedented. The sole purpose of the review was to retaliate against me to for providing truthful testimony in an investigation involving a Black manager. So, she decided to give me a very negative mid-year review at a company that never gave mid-year reviews. And, she followed it up with a very negative year-end review.

So, don’t make any assumptions going into a performance review meeting. You never know how it will turn out. So, it’s best to prepare for the best or worst case scenarios. Keeping that in mind, here are some tips for handling performance evaluations:

Tip #1: Know the performance evaluation guidelines at your company! If the guidelines aren’t included in the personnel manual, find out if there is other documentation and ask HR for a copy. You have a right to know the standards and criteria that will be used to judge the performance of EVERY employee. Without knowing the standards, you won’t know if you are being treated equitably and fairly, compared to other staff.

Additionally, knowing the guidelines for performance evaluations will help you hear anything “fishy” that’s said and can help you spot violations of corporate policies. For instance, your performance evaluation guidelines may state that recency errors shouldn't negatively impact your review. Therefore, if your supervisor is putting extreme weight on something that happened in the weeks prior to your review AND you never had a problem such as that, your supervisor may be engaging in recency error. This means that your review is being skewed towards the most recent negative behavior you showed as opposed to reflecting the entire review period—as it should!

Tip #2: Ask for a copy of your draft performance evaluation—in advance! Some employers allow employees to see a draft copy of their performance review in order for employees to prepare notes and questions for their performance review meeting. If policy allows you to see an advance copy of your review, make sure you do! If your supervisor doesn’t mention this, ask for a copy of your review. You don’t have to provide any other reason for seeing the review, except that you are entitled to a copy of the review (assuming it is in the policy/guidelines) and you want to be prepared for your review meeting.

Tip #3: If you don’t get an advance copy of your review, ask for a copy of your review AT THE START OF YOUR PERFORMANCE EVALUATION MEETING! Many managers like to read the review to employees and provide them with a copy of the review after the review meeting. However, a person can read a review anyway they want to make it sound one way or another. Your supervisor can read you a watered down version of the review. Or, your supervisor might skip several key and highly critical sentences contained the review. This might be for malicious reasons or this might be done because your supervisor doesn’t like confrontation, etc. But, you don’t know what the review says unless you read it yourself.

Remember, you are usually expected to sign the review before you leave the performance evaluation meeting. There’s not a scenario where you’re asked to take the review home, think about the content, sign it, and return it to your boss. You shouldn’t have to skim the review at the end of the meeting because your supervisor allegedly read the entire thing to you. I think we all know that supervisors usually want us to rush through the reading of the review and to just sign and get out of their office, so they can do the next review or just be done with the process. But, you should be able to completely read the review—AND ASK QUESTIONS. And, there shouldn’t be an issue with you reading the review as your supervisor is discussing it/reading it aloud. You can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Many more tips will be provided tomorrow. Stay tuned…

Lax Performance Evaluation Standards and Guidelines

One of the easiest ways to fulfill a race-related agenda against an employee of color is to use the performance evaluation process against that person. What makes this such a good mechanism for targeting employees is that the content of evaluations, as I’ve mentioned before, is often not reviewed for accuracy by anyone outside the departmental structure.

Human Resources staff are not reading each individual review and questioning accusations or negative content. So, supervisors and managers often feel pretty confident that they can get away with formally trumping up false allegations against Black employees.

When White supervisors or managers use this tactic against Black employees, they often try to disguise the true motivation, which is race-related (e.g., to discriminate against or punish the Black employee, etc.). What they often try to do is to take racially-charged accusations and turn them into race-neutral accusations. For instance, instead of using the stereotype of saying that a Black person is angry and defensive or has a chip on his/her shoulder, etc., the White supervisor or manager will say that the Black person can’t take constructive criticism or is “unapproachable.” The reason is that these types of accusations don’t carry any racial weight with them and they sound like the types of critiques that any employee might receive.

These tactics can make it hard to prove discrimination because they don’t sound racially-loaded and could potentially be true. So, you have to reveal the motives, as I keep reminding you, behind all of the accusations being made about you.

Not only that, you should look at challenging your company’s performance evaluation process, if you believe that your employer uses lax and corruptible standards for evaluating employee performance. Here are some things to consider and argue, regarding performance evaluations at your company:

-- Does everyone get a mid-year review and/or year-end review? If every employee at your company doesn’t receive a mid-year review or a year-end review, the entire performance evaluation process is unfair and inequitable from the start. Every employee should be held to company-wide standards, as well as job specific standards. Therefore, if one employee is being held to the letter of the performance review guidelines and company-mandated standards for performance, EVERY employee must be held to those same standards or disparate treatment/discrimination is applicable. Additionally, if some staff are getting mid-year reviews, they are at an advantage because they know where they stand regarding their performance and they know what they need to improve before the end of the performance review period. EVERY employee should be treated and evaluated in the same way. Find out if some employees are getting mid-year encouragement and advice on their work performance, while others are not.

-- What standards guide the reviewers that administer performance evaluations? For instance, what training are reviewers given before they are allowed to evaluate employees? And, what reviewer errors are they warned against, if any? For instance, are they warned against recency error? Recency error means a reviewer gives a biased performance review based on something RECENT that took place, instead of based on the employee’s entire performance for the review period. This is very damaging, when the recent thing/allegation is negative.

Or, maybe there was subjective judgment error, which means that too much weight may have been placed on an incident (positive or negative). Subjective judgment error can slant a performance evaluation too far in either direction. Reviewers use subjective judgment errors intentionally, when they want to prop up their favorite staff. So, they’ll blow the most routine duties into life-saving, money-saving feats of glory in order to justify a big salary increase or promotion for one of their peons. Subjective judgment error can be used to deny a promotion or significant increase to a targeted/disliked employee. So, a reviewer may use minor incidents or fabricated incidents to ensure that a person is stifled, frustrated, punished, etc. for reasons that may not truly exist, except to serve the agenda of the reviewer.

These are just 2 types of reviewer errors that reviewers should be cautioned against prior to evaluating employees. So, find out if there were any training or reviewer cautions provided by your employer.

-- If there aren’t any official standards/criteria for conducting performance reviews and evaluating employees—there should be basic standards, even for “informal” reviews—how can performance reviews be administered in a fair and equitable manner? Every supervisor, manager, etc. must be using the same criteria for company-wide standards and job specific requirements. This is the only way to ensure equitable treatment and comparable evaluation of employees. And, this prevents some supervisors and managers from propping up desired staff based on lax standards that others don’t benefit from.

-- Can your employer produce a written copy of company-wide standards and job specific/job level/job classification expectations of performance?

-- Can your employer identify when these standards were shared with employees, so they’d know how they would be evaluated?

-- Can your employer identify when official standards were shared with reviewers?

-- Who at the company ensures that the standards are upheld by reviewers? What are the checks and balances for the performance review process?

The reason this is a valid question, is that at my former employer, big problems developed because White managers were targeting Black staff with negative performance evaluations that contained surprise content and false allegations that only served to ensure that these Black employees would not be promoted and would not receive a significant salary increase.

After 2 external investigations were launched, suddenly this employer changed its review process because they alleged that supervisors were ACTING ON THEIR OWN in preparing malicious reviews or inaccurate performance reviews for employees. And, they stated that they suddenly realized that far too many supervisors were not the most knowledgeable about what their subordinates were actually doing. So, instead of having supervisors go to staff or other project managers to find out how their subordinates performed the new policy was that the project manager, etc. that worked with an employee most frequently would be the person identified as the employee’s primary reviewer. A secondary reviewer would also be put in place, to add another layer of REAL input.

While we worked at the company, nothing was done, we were told the process was fair, and we were both told that none of the reviewers assigned to us would be removed. The company forced us to get reviews from supervisors that were engaged in illegal misconduct and that demonstrated clear race-related issues with us.

So, again, a question you might ask is: what are the checks and balances involved in the review process?

You've Got to Prove Your Case!

When you are contemplating filing a race-based complaint, internally or externally, think about how you will overcome the lies that your employer probably has already told about you.

An employer can make up any excuse to justify employment actions against an employee. These excuses don’t have to be proven unless the employee complains about the action. So, the employer can go ahead and accuse you of fabricated performance deficiencies and use those false allegations to deny you a promotion, for example. Unless you say, “I’m being denied advancement for reasons that are without merit…,” no one will ever examine the charges against you. Human Resources is not going to step in and say, “Wait a minute. That’s not the [insert your name] that I know. What’s going on?”

Unless you work for an extremely small company, HR staff may know your name, they probably remember what department you’re assigned to, they may remember your title, but they don’t know your specific contributions to the company—during any given day, month or year. So, don’t think someone in HR will get suspicious, if you are suddenly accused of very negative behavior at work, which is completely out of character for you.

They don’t know you like that and, half the time, HR staff isn’t getting into that level of detail on any employee, unless they are asked to give input on an employment situation—usually at manager’s/supervisor’s, etc. request. When I worked in HR, not one HR staff person read the performance evaluations that were filtered through our office for filing. We simply got a copy, ensured that the employee signed that they read and understood the review, ensured that the supervisor signed the review, and placed the review in the employee’s personnel file. That was it! We never read it to see if anything was fishy or inconsistent or contradictory or just plain unacceptable at face value.

So, it’s up to you to challenge false allegations that a coworker or supervisor, etc. is making about you that are impacting your career or work environment in a negative manner.

If you decide to challenge a false claim, the first thing you need to consider is how you are going to refute the lies. In other words, based on the example, how do you prove that you don’t have performance deficiencies? Well, you could:

--Show copies of previous performance evaluations that contradict what was said;
--Produce copies of emails that contradict new negative allegations against you; and
--Show thank you cards form clients and coworkers; etc.

I know, I’ve gone over some of this before, but we—as a people—really need to get these things drilled into our heads! What else can you do?

Go to the personnel manual. Try to show that your supervisor, employer, etc. violated the company’s own written policies and procedures. That is powerful! Your employer is then forced to justify why they did not follow the pre-existing guidelines they established. This goes a long way in showing an agenda against an employee and shows clear intent, not an accident, in executing an employment action!!

If you are placed on probation, for example, based on false allegations, go to the personnel manual. What does the manual say about handling management issues? If the manual says that an employee should first be given 1) an oral warning; 2) a written warning; 3) be placed on probation, your employer would have to answer why they jumped to step #3 of their own process. They have to justify why what you did was so egregious they violated their own policy, especially if you don’t have a history of having any performance issues.

Other things you could do include:

--Getting witness corroboration to support your version of events. Ask coworkers to write statements for you or to speak to HR reps on your behalf. Getting support in writing is best!

--Tape recording meetings to get verbal threats, racial epithets, etc. on tape.

--Keeping a log of all race-based incidents, incidents of harassment, etc. with specifics details on who did what and when!

--Requesting an internal investigation to place the burden on the company to stop or reverse the fraudulent employment action. Get the HR department on record, should you need to go to a lawyer or outside investigatory agency!

--Keep a log of all the lies your employer tells and write specific quotes (include the date and time of conversations, etc.). Put yourself in a position to have fantastic recall of who said what and when!

Don’t just hand over your career to workplace racists! Fight for what you have earned. It’s a small world. You never know who you will be working with again in the future, especially if you work in a targeted industry. A bad and falsely earned reputation can haunt you for years!

Tips for Fighting False Allegations About Your Job Performance

When companies, managers, etc. decide to target an employee, particularly one with a positive reputation and strong work ethic, one of the first things they often do is to begin making sudden and extremely strong criticisms of that person’s job performance. So, a person that is respected and valued by their colleagues, may suddenly find their supervisor claiming they have a bad reputation around the company, that no one wants to work with them, and that their job performance has become a significant issue and liability for the company.

I’ve had this tactic used against me and have seen it used against other Black employees. In one case, a Black male was complaining about discrimination and sexual harassment, in another case, a Black manager was the victim of retaliation for complaining about racially insensitive remarks made by a White manager, and, in my case, I participated (truthfully) in both internal and external investigations about these race-related issues. So, retaliation—among other things—was the company’s response to me, when I came up for a promised promotion.

I’d like to give you some quick tips on dealing with false attempts to slander your reputation, regarding your work ethic. These things worked well for me.

--Quote from performance evaluations. Use all relevant comments about your job performance that show you have a pattern of successfully and professionally performing your duties. Don’t forget to pull out quotes that speak to your personality/temperament at work. For instance, you could quote from a recent performance review where you are credited with being patient and flexible, which contradicts a sudden and false accusation that you are rigid and demanding.

--Print up copies of emails or cards that speak to your job performance, especially kudos from clients. This will also demonstrate you have a pattern of successfully and professionally performing your duties and that staff are aware of your positive contributions to your projects/assignments.

--Get signed statements from coworkers that show you are successfully performing your duties. If possible, get your coworkers to have the statements notarized.

--Print up requests for you to work with other staff – why would you be invited onto projects if it were known that you were underperforming?

--Ask specific questions about all blanket statements about your job performance. For instance, do not let someone accuse you of being rude without asking for examples and situations where you’ve supposedly shown this behavior.

--If someone is suggesting you have a pattern of exhibiting poor behavior or poor performance, ask (in writing) why this issue is just being brought to your attention and why you were not offered any suggestions for improving your performance. Remember, if you are not told of performance issues, and are, therefore, led to believe that there are no issues, you can’t accurately gauge your performance and live up to the expectations of your position. So, the onus for the alleged issue being a so-called continuing problem is on your supervisor/manager because they did not inform you of any alleged problems at work.