Do you have employees under the age of 35? If so, the odds are that they communicate with each other with text messages on their mobile devices. If you've ever texted, you know the evils of auto-correct. For the uninitiated, auto-correct is a function of today's smartphones that automatically changes an unrecognized word to its closest match.
Sometimes, these auto-corrects have hilarious results.
Of course, one employee's hilarious is another's offensive, which brings us to today's human resources lesson.
When you hold your annual harassment training (you hold annual harassment training, right?) you might want to consider mentioning the evils of autocorrect. You will never succeed in having the Gen-Y'ers and Gen-Z'ers exchange their iDevices for more face-to-face conversations. You may succeed, however, in educating on the importance of proofreading messages before they are sent, which, in turn, could save you the time and expense of an internal harassment investigation, or, worse, defending a lawsuit.
Written by Jon Hyman, a partner in the Labor & Employment group of Kohrman Jackson & Krantz. For more information, contact Jon at (216) 736-7226 or jth@kjk.com.
