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Excalibur,

I manage risk for a company operating in over 25 states. After discussion with "C"-level executives, we set the policy to be all "illegal" weapons are prohibited and open carry is prohibited. Legal concealed carry is implicitly allowed. Legality, of course, varies by state.

To your 3 examples, I would add a 4th nightmare example as a variation on #2.

Do not fire a favored employee by looking the other way when a company policy violation occurs. Now have someone else discovered for whatever reason with a firearm. Fire that person. For "wrongful termination bonus points", ensure the fired employee was a federally-defined protected class (race, gender, ethnic origin, religion, etc).

When I'm advising clients I always remind them whatever the policy, consistency in application is key. So don't put a policy in place you do not intend to apply consistently across the board regardless of level, position, status, favor or other characteristic. This includes weapons, discipline, drug, vacation policies etc. When you start picking and choosing how you are going to apply policies, you are going to end up in court.

mojo84 wrote:... When you start picking and choosing how you are going to apply policies, you are going to end up in court.

I've got a few of those t-shirts sitting around somewhere!

Jumping Frog wrote:Excalibur,

I manage risk for a company operating in over 25 states. After discussion with "C"-level executives, we set the policy to be all "illegal" weapons are prohibited and open carry is prohibited. Legal concealed carry is implicitly allowed. Legality, of course, varies by state.

To your 3 examples, I would add a 4th nightmare example as a variation on #2.

Do not fire a favored employee by looking the other way when a company policy violation occurs. Now have someone else discovered for whatever reason with a firearm. Fire that person. For "wrongful termination bonus points", ensure the fired employee was a federally-defined protected class (race, gender, ethnic origin, religion, etc).

That is exactly where I take the discussion when someone advocates making one off situational exceptions that are outright contradictions to policy. That option leads very quickly to blank check turnover time.

mojo84 wrote:When I'm advising clients I always remind them whatever the policy, consistency in application is key. So don't put a policy in place you do not intend to apply consistently across the board regardless of level, position, status, favor or other characteristic. This includes weapons, discipline, drug, vacation policies etc. When you start picking and choosing how you are going to apply policies, you are going to end up in court.

I also advise clients not to have their policies written by people who are completely unfamiliar with the issues that surround the subject of the policy and who have never successfully managed those issues themselves.

You'd be surprised how many companies have emergency action and active shooter response plans written by people who have never managed an emergency of any type.

Do you guys find that many companies use consultants or computer software packages that just take boilerplate policy manuals and tweak them some? I find that to be the case many times and they just assume most of the policies are best as written. In many of those cases, the policies are not very well thought out with regard to that particular companies situation.

mojo84 wrote:Do you guys find that many companies use consultants or computer software packages that just take boilerplate policy manuals and tweak them some? I find that to be the case many times and they just assume most of the policies are best as written. In many of those cases, the policies are not very well thought out with regard to that particular companies situation.

Yes. Another frequent find is that they simply copy a policy from another company which usually had a poor version to begin with.

A request I get frequently is: "Give us a benchmark on what other companies like us are doing." Their instinct is to stay in the middle of the herd.

My return question is: "If most of them are doing it wrong, are you OK with emulating that?"

What was stressed in most of the management and business classes I had in college was the best policy was no policy (within limitations of course.) With no policy in writing, management is free to decide on a case by case basis and can adapt to changing conditions.

johncanfield wrote:What was stressed in most of the management and business classes I had in college was the best policy was no policy (within limitations of course.) With no policy in writing, management is free to decide on a case by case basis and can adapt to changing conditions.

That works until you are giving depositions or testifying and responding to questions about why the company is so grossly negligent as to fail to have policies covering readily foreseeable issues. For example, try being a trucking company that hires a truck driver with 4 previous DUI's and see how a lack of policy helps defend a wrongful death case.

Note that finding the company grossly negligent also opens the door to punitive damages . . . the nuclear bomb of the tort world.

Jumping Frog wrote:

johncanfield wrote:What was stressed in most of the management and business classes I had in college was the best policy was no policy (within limitations of course.) With no policy in writing, management is free to decide on a case by case basis and can adapt to changing conditions.

That works until you are giving depositions or testifying and responding to questions about why the company is so grossly negligent as to fail to have policies covering readily foreseeable issues. For example, try being a trucking company that hires a truck driver with 4 previous DUI's and see how a lack of policy helps defend a wrongful death case.

Note that finding the company grossly negligent also opens the door to punitive damages . . . the nuclear bomb of the tort world.

That's why I said no policy is the best policy "within limitations".

johncanfield wrote:That's why I said no policy is the best policy "within limitations".

I'm confused.

Please clarify what those limitations might be.