This time of year, I spend a lot of time coaching and watching my kids play baseball. It’s great exercise, team-building, and family bonding for us. But I thought I would go further and use baseball as a vehicle for explaining what I see as an employment lawyer.
So, here are 7 ways employment law is like youth baseball:
1. Team Sport
Baseball, of course, is a team sport. Each team has a lineup and the players have different positions. In youth baseball, players often get to try out different positions. Both on the field and in the dugout, players are encouraged to cheer on their teammates. Good coaches promote fair play above winning at all costs.
All of these points carry over to the average workplace. More is accomplished when everyone works together and plays nice. When individuals put their own interests above those of the team, problems develop. A bad team atmosphere may even lead to a hostile work environment, which can lead to discrimination complaints. Even if not unlawful, break downs in team chemistry lead to morale issues and loss of productivity.
Be leery of the superstar who always insists on being the pitcher. Would you be better off with a group of loyal workers who will fill in wherever needed?
2. Three Strikes and You’re Out
This is almost always true at higher levels of baseball (ignoring the relatively rare reaching base on an uncaught third strike). But, it’s not necessarily true for the youngest players. At tee ball and coach pitch levels (around 8 and under in our league), players may get more than 3 strikes. In some cases, they get to keep trying until they put the ball into play. Usually, you’re not keeping score at this level, and the focus is learning how to hit. In business, however, the stakes are higher.
Although the magic number may not be three, employees can’t get an unlimited number of strikes before you move on. At some point, letting someone swing forever slows down the rest of the team too much. In general, repeatedly accepting poor performance or misconduct sets the bar too low. Moreover, by tolerating unproductive conduct, it may become riskier to take action in the future.
All employers should have reasonable expectations and insist that they are met. If they are not, then take appropriate action. One strike may be a warning. Two strikes might be a performance improvement plan. Strike three and, well, you may be out!
(Read: 5 Tips for Firing Problem Employees)
3. Keeping Score
It’s really not worth keeping score when 4-year-olds are playing tee ball. Virtually no one can catch, everyone gets on base, and the kids may not yet know how to count anyway. Eventually, however, the kids do start counting and they think they know who wins even if there is no scorebook involved.
The same principles seem to pop up at work. Sometimes there are numbers involved that allow employees to directly compare themselves to one another. Other times, the measurements are more subjective and less visible.
Take the annual performance reviews, for example. They may affect compensation and promotions. Different employees may have different supervisors and hence different “scorekeepers.” What happens when Employee A feels he outperformed Employee B, but Employee B gets a bigger raise? Employee B may feel they are being discriminating against. Their morale may drop. They may hold a grudge against their supervisor. They may seek a transfer to work for Employee A’s boss. The possibilities are endless.
To the extent practicle, you want consistency in evaluating employees. Otherwise, you may find yourself Responding to Employment Discrimination Complaints.
4. Umpires Aren’t Perfect
In youth baseball, the umpires are often kids themselves. They may be as young as 12-13 or just learning some of the rules of the game. Even if they are adults, they can’t be expected to be as good as professionals or they would be umpiring on larger diamonds, right?
Now let’s say that you, as an employer, are unfortunate enough to receive some sort of complaint from an employee that goes outside your organization. You will likely end up before either a government agency, a court, or an arbitrator. In every case, there is someone who ultimately makes the calls whether your employee has a valid claim or not. Here’s the truth: even if you didn’t do anything wrong, some of these people are going to disagree. If nothing else, your employee who just lost their job after 20 years may be more sympathetic than your multi-million-dollar company. This is one reason why it may make sense to settle a claim even though it has no merit. That won’t be every case, though. Sometimes you have to just play the game as well as possible and hope the calls do go your way.
5. Coaches Aren’t Either
Like the umpires, youth baseball coaches aren’t professionals. They’re almost always volunteering, usually because they have a child on the team. If you’re lucky, they may know a lot about baseball. For example, I’ve played/watched/coached baseball in various forms for more than 30 years. I can help kids play the game better than they could on their own. But, I don’t know the right way to do everything on the field. Mostly, I just want the children to have fun and learn something!
At work, supervisors, management, owners–YOU–don’t know all the rules or best techniques either. With over a decade of experience practicing labor & employment law, I can confidently say that you don’t have a perfect understanding of all the laws, rules, regulations, etc., that you’re expected to comply with. But hopefully you’re doing your best to treat people right. Even if so, you might eventually get caught up on some technicalities or disputes largely beyond your control. And, yes, the employee might be right and the employer may have done something wrong. That’s very seldom the end of the world. Learn from your mistakes, fix them, and move on.
6. Everyone Wants To Get Home
There are plenty of parodies of kids playing baseball where everyone yells “go home!” and the child literally heads off the field to find his house. I’m here to tell you . . . that really happens! But eventually they learn what it means and focus on actually scoring runs.
You’re kidding yourself if you think the same phenomenon isn’t at play in the workplace. Some meaningful percentage of the time, every employee would rather be somewhere else (home would usually suffice) than at work.
For some, a 5-day workweek goes like this: Monday is recovery from the weekend. Tuesday is gearing up to get some work done. Wednesday is partly productive and partly bemoaning that the week is only half over. Thursday is slightly productive, mostly looking forward to Friday. And Friday is filled with dreams of the weekend. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
You have better employees than this. Let’s say, 20% of the time they really want to be at work. (Too optimistic?) There is obvious value in increasing that number. Better engagement equals higher productivity and fewer problems.
Today, many employers are considering or being asked to consider work-from-home arrangements. Sure, that does raise logistical concerns: time tracking, performance monitoring, equipment, system security . . . . Other solutions include flexible scheduling, part-time work, contract work, etc. All of these raise peculiar employment law issues, I’m afraid. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look into them. It might be better than having a bunch of people in the office, taking up space and drinking your coffee, but not really doing what they’re being paid to do.
7. Infield Fly Rule
“Pop” quiz (pun intended): do you know the details of baseball’s infield fly rule? Probably not.
If you do, you might be interested in this paper on “The Economics of the Infield Fly Rule”. If not, you may just be perplexed that someone actually wrote that. Regardless, now back to your regularly scheduled blog post:
Based on recent personal experience, the infield fly rule doesn’t always get called properly in youth baseball. I don’t even know if it’s because the rule is intentionally omitted or just no one understands it. Or, for that matter, maybe it’s just because there is no assumption that the players can catch a fly ball in the first place.
So, what’s my point? Misunderstanding and inconsistency are two of the biggest employment law concerns. Employees who don’t understand what their employer expects of them are more likely to feel wronged. Employees who feel like they are being treated differently from co-workers are more likely to complain. And if employees are confused and aren’t being treated fairly based on legitimate non-discriminatory business factors, then you may have a legal problem.
I don’t want you to have legal problems. I want you to have legal solutions, primarily by being proactive and fostering a happy, productive workforce. Please contact me if you think I can help. (And, yes, I can explain the infield fly rule too.)