leadership matters
TOP 10 MOST COMMON
HR LAW MISTAKES
Rank Mistake
Percentage of
total incidents
1 Termination pay, termination notice, termination
with or without cause and pay in lieu of notice
70%
2 Mental health or physical disabilities that deal
with the duty to accommodate
55%
3 Contracts and employment agreements 45%
4 Discriminatory grounds such as family status,
age, marital status, etc… that deal with the
duty to accommodate
32%
5 Forgetting that common law principles also apply 32%
6 Dealing with harassment and violence in
the workplace
26%
7 How to properly interpret the
Employment Standards Act, 2000
21%
8 Severance pay entitlements 19%
9 Vacation time, vacation pay and bonuses 19%
10 Continuation of benefits to
employee after termination
19%
Source: 2015 HRPA survey, “Where employment lawyers believe HR professionals
make the most mistakes in applying employment and workplace law”
HRPA JURISPRUDENCE EXAMS
As you can see, there’s much at stake when
employment law errors are made. With the
passage of the Registered Human Resources
Professionals Act, 2013, the Human
Resources Professionals Association
(HRPA) has a higher duty of care and
will do what is necessary to ensure that its
members are competent – including the
proper application of employment law.
This is one of the key reasons why
HRPA is adding jurisprudence exams to
its CHRP and CHRL designation requirements
starting in Fall 2016. The
exams ( Jurisprudence 1 for CHRPs and
Jurisprudence 2 for CHRLs) test the
ability to correctly apply knowledge of
employment and workplace law to situations
calling for such application. The
80-question exams, which will eventually
be administered online, will be a multiplechoice,
scenario item format with only one
correct answer.
Amazingly, up to now, HR law knowledge
has never been part of the certification
process at HRPA or any other Canadian
HR association. A big part of that omission
was because the CHRP was a national
designation and employment legislation is
created by the provinces (apart from federally
regulated industries). However, with
the proper application of employment law
so vital to HR practice, it just made sense
for HRPA to start testing applied knowledge
in this area.
Testing and certifying employment law
knowledge will not only help to build a
stronger and more capable HR profession
(not to mention reducing the risks and
costs of HR law errors for organizations),
but it will go far to meeting HRPA’s new
regulatory mandate of protecting the public
– safeguarding Ontario workers from
wrongly applied employment law. n
Brenda Clark, CHRE, is the chair of the
Board of Directors for the Human Resources
Professionals Association (HRPA).
Sergey Nivens/Shutterstock.com
10 ❚ MARCH/APRIL 2016 ❚ HR PROFESSIONAL
