It is the call that most managers and business owners dread. “Hi,” it starts. “I’m calling to check on a reference for someone who used to work for you.”
In this litigious age, that call almost always meant trouble.
The biggest headache for any manager is a bad employee. The cost to morale, to productivity, to employee churn is enormous. No one wants a bad worker foisted off on them, and few are so callous as to want to mislead a compatriot asking for help.
But if the worker was not good, saying so was an invitation to a lawsuit. But so was refusing to say anything bad for underperformers, while freely praising good employees, because the omission was a clear signal. So companies and managers resorted to the bland, but safe, practice of merely confirming dates of employment and job titles. Thus, the useful system of job references became no system at all.
In Connecticut, all that changed last week with a new ruling from the state Supreme Court. In an opinioned authored by Justice David Borden, the court made it clear that employers need to be able to exchange references, good or bad. “It…would encourage a ‘culture of silence’ not to afford a qualified privilege to employment references that are made in good faith and without improper motive,” Borden noted.
The court said, too, that “we believe that the integrity of employment references not only is essential to prospective employers, but also to prospective employees, who stand to benefit from the credibility of positive recommendations.”
In making its ruling in Miron v. The University of New Haven, the court brings Connecticut into line with nearly a score of other states, from Alabama to Texas, that have come to similar conclusions.
The opinion doesn’t give employers carte blanche to badmouth former workers. For one thing, the privilege to talk freely only exists if the worker has consented (preferably in writing) to have prior employers contacted regarding qualifications and work performance. And then there’s the “good faith” issue: employers would be wise to have fully-documented performance reviews to backup their assertions that they weren’t just willy-nilly defaming someone.
But both of those criteria should be standard operating procedure already.
That’s the kind of candor we all need. And it will make it a lot easier for managers when the phone rings with what is no longer a dreaded question.
