Florida Executive Search Employment Solutions

Author: Kevin Muir

If you’re not sure whether you are an at will employer it can be helpful to find out. The basic idea of at will employment allows an employee to quit a job without advance notice and without worrying about breach of contract. So it also allows employers to hire as well as fire employees for any reason - at least as long as you’re not violating any other laws in doing so.

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), employees file more than 80,000 complaints each year based on discrimination. And, each year, these complaints resulted in more than $230 million in monetary relief. While race discrimination accounted for the largest portion of complaints, many others were on retaliation, age, sex and disability.

And, many of these were from termination complaints.

Now what does this mean for you?

Considering the large number of complaints filed each year and the percentage which result in monetary benefits, it is important to understand the area of at will employment and how it affects employers.

Does At Will Employment Allow You To Hire Or Fire For No Reason?

The answer to this is twofold. As long as you are acting within the letter of the law, then yes you can hire or fire for no reason at all within the scope of at will employment. This means you can choose not to hire someone because you believe they may not be a good fit in your company - as long as your decision does not violate any employment laws. (And, there are many!!!)

You can also choose to fire someone because they are not meeting performance expectations or even if they have a bad attitude.

At will employment; however, does not allow you to fire someone because they are disabled. And you also cannot legally elect to pass over a job candidate because they are female or Hispanic and so on.

The bottom line is you cannot use at will employment as justification to fire based on reasoning that is illegal. As long as your decision is job related, lawful and nondiscriminatory, you can still justify it under at will employment.

Therefore, you can fire an at will employee for any reason … except for illegal reasons. But be careful, because there are over usually over 40 to 60 employment laws (depending on your state) that protect the employee in some way. This is why it’s so hard to terminate an employee based on “at will” alone.

Does At Will Employment Need Justification Of Hiring Or Firing Decisions?

Considering the large number of suits that employees file each year, it is important for you to document thoroughly all decisions. Therefore, if an employee and his attorney file a discrimination claim, you can prove your decision was lawful and nondiscriminatory in nature.

This requires excellent written documentation. Make all efforts to keep your documentation factual, objective and accurate. It should also be specific. Training all managers and supervisors in the accurate and fair evaluation of staff will ensure that you will avoid the problems coming from illegal terminations.

Author: Kris

It’s a familiar dilemma with any sort of professional training or education: How does one translate what they’ve learned into actual employment and experience in the field? When people talk about the ?Catch-22″ of employment and experience, it is precisely this that they are referring to. It can be a frustrating affair knowing that you are as qualified for employment as anybody else in the industry and yet being unable to procure steady employment.

While this problem exists even in the construction industry, we at the National Heavy Equipment Operators School take every possible step to assure you that you will not have to succumb to it. For starters, the training program at National is second to none; ours is a comprehensive two-part course that covers a wide variety of heavy equipment models and gives you the preparation and knowledge to operate them effectively. Additionally, National is the only accredited heavy equipment training facility in the United States. This means that a certificate of completion from National carries with it a certain weight; employers are familiar with and respectful of the heavy equipment training that National provides.

National is also intricately involved in the construction and heavy equipment industry, and thus we are able to assist our graduates in finding immediate employment far more effectively than other agencies or programs. Upon starting the resident portion of our heavy equipment-training program, students fill out pre-hire applications and have them distributed to their employers of choice while they are still training. Construction opportunities are abundant throughout the nation, from urban construction to rural highway renovation. National has ties to numerous companies and agencies across the United States, and we can help you find the best employment fit once you complete your training.

Once National helps you to get your foot in the door in the construction industry, you can rest assured that employment opportunities will be steady for the foreseeable future. Conservative estimates have the visible construction boom holding steady until at least 2012, and given the seemingly endless number of construction projects visible throughout any metropolitan or rural area, it is likely to persist for much longer. When you consider that heavy equipment operators accounted for roughly ten percent of the approximately 6.7 million construction-related jobs in 2002, the importance of adequate training and job placement becomes even more evident. The program at National Heavy Equipment Operators School is just what you need to assure you of your future financial stability.