Most employers are aware that there are prohibitions against discrimination in the workplace. However, a general understanding is not enough to protect oneself against potentially costly claims of discrimination. In fiscal year 2014, the EEOC secured $296.1 million in monetary relief for victims of employment discrimination through mediation, conciliation and other administrative enforcement. The EEOC also secured $22.5 million in monetary relief for charging parties through litigation, and $74 million in monetary relief for federal employees and applicants. These figures do not include the vast amount of claims not handled by the EEOC, such as those settled prior to litigation and those brought by individuals.
Comprehensive anti-discrimination training is crucial for employers to prevent discrimination in the workplace and address it, should it occur. Our workshops and trainings are designed to provide participants with a working knowledge of anti-discrimination laws and the reasonable accommodation process. In an easy to understand, interactive format, participants learn effective and relatively simple strategies for preventing and addressing discrimination in the workplace. The presenters, both practicing attorneys, describe real-life scenarios where these techniques have been successful and provide examples of situations where utilizing our techniques could have avoided discrimination claims. Participants are encouraged to ask questions and pose hypotheticals of the presenters.
All of our workshops and trainings are specifically tailored to meet your needs. In an effort to enhance the understanding of all participants, our trainings utilize a combination of instructional methodologies. We begin by addressing the applicable provisions of statutes and regulations, as well as EEOC guidance. Participants’ understandings are then increased through a discussion of the substantive legal issues that have been clarified through court decisions and recent trends in the law. We further enhance participants’ knowledge by sharing anecdotal information from our private legal practices, where the presenters represent both employers and employees. Throughout the workshops, participants are presented a series of hypothetical situations to encourage collaboration and provide a working knowledge of anti-discrimination law.
Benjamin E. Wick and Holly V. Franson are the founding members of the Wick Law Office’s the Reasonable Accommodation Training Group (TRAT). As members of TRAT, Mr. Wick and Ms. Franson focus on providing training on the Americans with Disabilities Act, Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act, and Rehabilitation Act. Mr. Wick and Ms. Franson are educators and active litigating attorneys. As such, they continuously track issues relating to disability law and review new cases addressing reasonable accommodations, as well as actively pursuing advancements in disability law on behalf of their clients. TRAT has presented before the Colorado Bar Association, at the University of Hawaii’s Pacific Rim International Conference on Disability and Diversity, at the Ohio State’s Multiple Perspectives on Access, Inclusion, and Disability Conference, for the Colorado Cross Disability Coalition, and at the Southwest Conference on Disability. They have also drafted articles for the Colorado Bar Association’s magazine, Colorado Lawyer on Alternative Dispute Resolution, Overcoming Impasse at Mediation and for the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association’s magazine, Trial Talk, titled Recognizing Reasonable Accommodation Claims: An Overview of Reasonable Accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Arising in Workers’ Compensation and Family Medical Leave Act Claims. TRAT is an author for the Lexis Practice Advisor and of the Federal Sector Equal Employment Practice Guide, which is published by LexisNexis.