What can Employers Learn from the Agriculture Department and the NAACP?
Knee-jerk reactions can lead to embarrassing mistakes, and can generate a firestorm of negative press coverage. This can be seen in the recent misstep where senior employee Shirley Sherrod was condemned by the NAACP, and ousted from her job by the Secretary of Agriculture. Neither the NAACP nor the Obama Administration conducted an investigation prior to their now infamous knee-jerk reactions.
NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous has since retracted the organization’s previous statement about Sherrod, and claimed they were “...snookered into believing that Sherrod expressed racist sentiments at a local NAACP meeting in Georgia earlier this year.” They weren’t snookered, they jumped to conclusions without taking the time to collect and review all of the evidence.
Similarly, the Obama Administration is reconsidering a reversal on her future employment, just hours after her forced resignation. MSNBC reports, Sherrod is not sure she would take her job back even if it was offered.
An employer’s obligation to conduct a full, fair, and thorough workplace investigation should never be compromised, or rushed to conclusion without careful review of all of the facts. Shame on both the NAACP and the Obama Administration! They were too quick to cast Ms. Sherrod’s character and integrity into the shark pool, without taking the necessary time to conduct a proper investigation.
Allegations of workplace misconduct warrant taking the necessary time and effort to determine if in fact the alleged misconduct occurred. I have blogged in the past about serious errors employers make when investigating employee misconduct, and how to avoid them. Jumping to conclusions seemed almost too simple to add to my list of employer don’ts; that is until today.
