The Center for Advanced Workplace Practices
The Center for Advanced Workplace Practices was founded by Stuart H. Brody, Esq. to address the central defect of traditional American employment practices: the tendency to depress productivity while also failing to reduce legal liability.
Typical employment practices include the handbook, the job description, the performance appraisal, hiring practices, the neutral reference, discipline as punishment, and dispute resolution methods, including sexual harassment investigations. Although serving virtually no significant legal purpose, these practices are advocated by attorneys who reflexively react to workplace issues with strategies of control and punishment.
The alternative is to create interactions with employees thatpromote and maintain, indeed require, a level of responsibility to the workplace community. The result is an increase in employee accountability that yields far greater productivity than traditional strategies. While there is much discussion about re-engineering the workplace to enhance productivity, the work of the Center achieves this result through the re-design of traditional employment practices left untouched by most re-engineering initiatives.
For instance, the current sexual harassment investigation centers around the "victim". Typically, when faced with sexual harassment charges, the employer scrambles to assign liability. This places an inordinate degree of influence in the hands of an accusing employee. Requiring both the accused and accuser to mediate, shifts focus from the "victim" and his or her demands, to the needs of the workplace community. We initiated the first formal sexual harassment mediation project under the American Arbitration Association in New York City, and have excellent results in leading employees, "victim" and "perpetrator" alike, to participate in the mediation process.
The performance appraisal is another outmoded employment practice. In theory, it attempts to focus the employee on his or her responsibilities in meeting company goals. In practice, it is a one-sided, abstract and idiosyncratic judgment by the supervisor. The performance appraisal is all too frequently used to justify employment action on compensation or discipline that has already been pre-determined.
Reduced to its essence, the appraisal is a form of discipline; a positive appraisal is essentially a reprieve from discipline. Contrary to widespread belief, performance appraisals are not of great use in litigation: the appraisal rarely defines with precision the defect for which the employee is terminated and all too often, similarly situated employees with similarly negative appraisals remain undisciplined, exposing the employer to charges of pretext.
We have designed the "job plan", or "compact", drafted at the beginning of the employment relationship, to take the place of both the job description and performance appraisal. It is quasi-contractual in nature, but does not forfeit any of the employer’s prerogatives with respect to employee direction. It focuses, indeed requires, the employee’s participation in the design of objectives and criteria of success. The compact also enhances the employer’s legal position; employers can require greater accountability from employees who are held to defined responsibilities.
Another area of the Center’s work deals with the problem employee, the one who shows his or her greatest creativity in designing ways to remain on leave, paid and unpaid. Employers usually refrain from terminating such employees out of fear of being sued. At the Center, we examine the assumptions underlying these fears, often exaggerated by lawyers, and we assess the costs, in productivity terms, of retaining such poor performers. We have devised a program of "buying out" the problem performer.
We also design alternatives to the traditional handbook, a document which is rarely read, difficult to keep current, loaded with useless or obvious information and shrouded in the de-motivating and threatening language of the disclaimer. We also examine hiring practices, discipline, reference policies, communication procedures, and resolution of disputes; our goal is simple: exposing weaknesses of current practices that managers tend to perform with little enthusiasm and disappointing results.
The Center believes that redesigning employment relations does not have to be a gigantic undertaking driven by consultants from expensive firms. Large scale change is all too often a poor substitute for more imaginative but modest innovation.
Our work starts with a preliminary consultation conducted by Stuart H. Brody, lasting four to eight hours. We get to know your work and your challenges. Clients usually leave that encounter with several practical steps to implement. As part of the initial fee, a plan is designed that outlines wider changes, if necessary. This may, but does not necessarily, involve other specialists in areas of organizational design, executive counseling and training.
Affiliates of the Center all possess successful careers in Human Resources and or law, as general counsel, directors of HR, consultants and scholars. The Center’s lawyers also perform the full range of traditional labor and employment law services.
If you’d like to discuss an initial consultation with us, call
Stuart H. Brody directly at 212 705 9807 or 518 963 7479.
Center for Advanced Workplace Practices
West Coast
PO Box 972
52 Circulo Montana
Patagonia, AZ 85624
520-287-3575
Stuart H. Brody, Esq., Director
Suite 2000
665 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10022
212-705-9807
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