Business owners, especially small business owners, are constantly concerned about keeping costs down—and rightfully so. But there are some scenarios in which culture and costs clash—and employee departures is one such area.
If you have too many unemployment claims, your cost as a business goes up. As a result, many businesses go to great lengths to ensure that employees do not win their unemployment claims. For instance, instead of firing employees, companies place heavy pressure on employees to resign, making them ineligible for unemployment.
Is this an effective strategy as a small business? Should you try to save money by forcing resignations, instead of terminating an employee? Should you challenge every unemployment claim in order to keep your costs down?
No, no and no. After years of experience in the HR industry, I feel confident saying you should rarely oppose an unemployment claim.
To keep reading, click here: Why You Should Rarely Fight an Unemployment Claim
Wrong, wrong, incredibly wrong. You suggest your “years” in human resources qualify for this absurd advice. It appears you may have been a lower level functionary and your “years” were so many years ago they are hardly relevant. Advice such as “never” dispute an unemployment claim seems to indicate your liberal Swiss mindset. Advice such as this echoes the complaint of many top managers: “HR people just don’t understand how a business is run.” Time to come back the real workforce in the USofA, time to consult a real attorney, time to advise HR people to recognize their job isn’t making “nice” to the employees. There is a cost, a big cost, to jacking up your experience rating. That mean less profit, but also means less money to spend on your employee wages, benefits, improvements, rewards, etc. You really think your remaining employees will applaud efforts to reward a bad employee with unemployment? They will laugh at you at best. At worst, your poor employees will realize there is an opportunity to quit or get fired and still get paid. And you would do a disservice to every employer in the area, setting the tone that bad performance is acceptable. Please stick to writing about Swiss nursery schools, growing Alpine vegetables, school trips, let you seem to have some expertise in. Bad Bad Bad Advice again.
She didn’t say “never” dispute it, she said “rarely.”
If you missed something as basic as actually reading what you’re replying to, I find your entire reply of no real use.
Sadly, I have no idea how to grow Alpine vegetables, but as soon as I get a house with a garden, I shall try.
Otherwise, you’re free not to take this advice, but the employment attorneys are on my side.
http://www.ohioemployerlawblog.com/2010/07/why-employees-sue.html
http://www.employmentandlaborinsider.com/safety/employment-law-advice-you-should-never-follow/
Parker — First, I am so grateful I don’t work in your company.
I have been practicing employer-side employment law for over 30 years. Fortunately, one of the conferences I attended as a young attorney featured an employee-side lawyer, aka a plaintiff’s lawyer. To a room full of defense lawyers, he said “Why do you always fight unemployment claims? You know that’s what brings people to my office, don’t you? So I guess I should say thank you.”
And, Parker, Suzanne said “rarely,” not “never.” There are times I advise HR Mangers to contest unemployment claims, but it is rare and I trust them to do it thoughtfully.
Oh, and I have only practiced law in the USofA.
Ha, Parker pwned!
I own a small business and when I fire someone it is for GOOD cause, saying rarely fight unemployment is like saying reward crackheads with more money for crack. If you rarely pay unemployment than you are running your business wrong. Seriously. Maybe if you fire them for no reason… but that would mean you don’t know what you are doing in the first place. You should ALWAYS fight claims. I have to agree.
I agree with you Suzanne, and often advise my managers of just this. Unless the individual was fired for a pretty awful reason, it’s usually just not worth the effort. And I can point to A LOT of wasted time fighting these losing battles. I would rather have managers spending time with their current employees then wasting it on unemployment hearings.
In fact, we are fighting one now, that I was !00% in favor of fighting because the employee was terrible. Six+months of fighting appeals, taking calls, and attending hearings and it still isn’t resolved. Would it be worth all this for your run of the mill termination? Absolutely not. And every business owner I have ever worked with would agree (I have been lucky to have good ones).
Wow, I wonder if different states have different levels of efficiency in handling these claims. We rarely spend much time on these. We always have to fill out the initial form, regardless of whether we agree that the employee should receive unemployment or not, and I’m honest about the employee’s reason for leaving (and salary, etc.). If the employee disputes the department’s findings after that, the unemployment department calls us and sets up a phone hearing. I think it’s only come to that point a couple of times in my tenure with the company, and both times, my boss thought it was worth the time spent to fight the claim (one, and employee had been a no-call-no-show, in the other the employee had stolen from the company), and spent a half hour or so on the phone to answer the unemployment folks’ questions and give his side of the story. And that was it. One of those two cases was resolved in our favor and the other not, but they took the same amount of time–a bit of time to fill out a form that we would have had to do whether we disputed it or not, and then some time on the phone since we were disputing it. Not a huge time suck. That’s horrible that it’s so onerous in your state.
It’s really that the employee that just keeps fighting the claims. The state has found in our favor on each appeal, but he keeps on appealing.
He quit, stated he quit (in a very hostile manner) and then proceeded to tell unemployment we laid him off. Worst one I have ever dealt with.
Suzanne,
I agree with your article.
We do not fight unemployment claims. We also don’t have very many either.
I think this must greatly vary by industry. I work for a tiny company in manufacturing. Most, I’d say the vast majority, of our unemployment claims are from folks who actually left of their own accord, either as a no-call-no-show, or sometimes even by actually quitting with notice. I always fill out the forms honestly, and sometimes they’re just getting salary history from us to be used in an unemployment claim from a subsequent separation and not ours, so it’s not like we spend a ton of effort “fighting” them, but if the employee left voluntarily, I will say so on the form. There have only been a few that were pursued beyond that, and in those cases, we the company felt we were in the right, and my boss pursued the claim to a phone hearing. One was an employee fired for stealing, so again, we felt pretty justified.
Unrelated to unemployment claims, but we also had an employee who had been with us all of a week file for workers comp after he left, without having reported an injury to us. Camera footage and the fact that he walked (jogged really, based on how long it took him to get there and back) to the drug test and back on the day he supposedly couldn’t come to work because of an injured ankle, all supported us and his claim was denied. He claimed he was going to file a “class action” lawsuit against us and all the other employers who had been treating him so unjustly. We’re still waiting…