At Rudner Law, we know how crucial the hiring process is in establishing a strategic legal relationship between you and your new employee. However, do it wrong and you can expose yourself to a world of discrimination claims. This makes the hiring process fraught with risk for the employer.
As we discussed on the contracts page, every employee in Canada has a contract of employment. However, in many cases, the contract is verbal and includes many terms that are implied by law and are there for the benefit of the employee. The best time for an employer to protect their rights is when they make an offer of employment. Done properly, a contract can be used to increase flexibility while also reducing costs and obligations.
However, even the organizations that choose to implement contracts of employment often do it badly and end up with a contract that is not worth the paper it is printed on. We can help you through this process to ensure that your contracts are enforceable and strategic.
At the same time, employers often inadvertently expose themselves to liability for human rights claims by making, or appearing to make, decisions based upon grounds that are prohibited by human rights legislation. For example, they might learn that a candidate is undergoing cancer treatment, or trying to have children. If they subsequently choose another candidate for perfectly legitimate reasons, the unsuccessful candidate can make an allegation that the real reason for the decision was a prohibited ground, and the onus then falls on the organization to disprove that, which can be quite difficult. Savvy individuals also realize that it costs little or nothing to file a human rights complaint, and that even if they are unsuccessful, the organization will not recoup its legal fees. As a result, organizations often choose to pay some money to settle rather than incur the costs of defending a non-meritorious claim.
How we can help you with the hiring of employees
We love to talk about Strategic HR, and much of that starts at the hiring stage. We can work with you to establish a process that will set you up for success and insulate you from claims.
We want to be your Trusted Advisor, your Chief HR Law Officer, your business partner. Let us be part of your team, so that we can look after your employment law issues, and you can focus on your business.
In this FREE whitepaper, we discuss key legal considerations for hiring and Firing Canadian employees and offer solutions and best practices in this.
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