BUSINESS MANAGEMENT DISCUSSION POST

Keeping It Reale

Recent events of employee dissatisfaction and general staff upheaval are threatening the continued operations of Giggle, Inc., a large internet search company, and management believes that a strong employee bill of rights would be a positive step to address the turmoil. I.M. Reale, the new senior executive vice-president for human resources for the Company has been tasked with the responsibility of developing a new employee bill of rights. Because he is rather clueless as to how to approach this assignment, he has called you in as a consultant (actually he wants you to do all the drafting but be sure he gets the credit).

Using the reading, “Examples of Ethical Issues in Business”, embedded here as an initial frame of reference, develop the employee bill of rights (“BOR”). What would such a document look like? I.M. Reale, the consummate professional that he is, has left you with the following instructions:

1) make sure the bill of rights is clear and practical and not theoretical;

2) it should use negative injunctions that are more precise than “you should” statements; (think of negative injunction in terms of something that should not happen). I think there are a couple of ways you could phrase your bill of rights provisions. For example:

"An employee shall not be discriminated against in the workplace because of age, gender, religion or disability." (This would be an example of a negative injunction description).

You could also state the provision as:

"An employee shall have the right to a workplace environment free of discrimination based on age, gender, religion or disability."

3) it should be written in lay language (none of that legal mumbo jumbo—I think he has a strong dislike for lawyers—imagine that);

4) it should be succinct; and

5) it needs to be enforceable and not dependent on goodwill to work.

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/examples-ethical-issues-business-24464.html

Just as you are putting the finishing touches on the BOR, you make the mistake of taking a call from I.M. Reale, who in a panic asks you if you know what a bona fide occupational qualification (“BFOQ”) is because his boss asked him, and he has no clue. I.M. Reale asks if you can include in the BOR project a short explanation of what the term BFOQ means.