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A Colorado jury awarded $11.5 million to a former Society for Human Resource Management employee on race-discrimination and retaliation claims. Employers do not need to take a side to learn from what happened. The themes in this case surface in workplaces of every size.

As an HR professional, you know employers can’t ask job candidates questions that reflect sex-based bias or block them from jobs because of their sex. And you know it’s your responsibility to tell hiring managers and supervisors exactly that. But what happens if your organization ignores your expert advice?

You can be charged with retaliation even if the past protected activity had nothing to do with your organization.

Do you have employees who are always tattling on co-workers about minor rulebreaking? If so, don’t worry too much that the complaining employee can spin that into protected activity under whistleblowing provisions.

Employees are protected from retaliation for reporting discrimination or complaining about other Title VII violations. That’s true even if the employee doesn’t specifically state what kind of discrimination she’s charging, if she has generally been complaining about it over some time.

Employees who file internal discrimination or whistleblowing claims are protected from retaliation for doing so. To prove retaliation, they must show that the employer took some form of adverse action against them after they complained. That’s one reason employers must document all personnel decisions.

When it comes to incriminating evidence, there’s literally almost nothing that beats a damning email—especially when it tips off efforts to retaliate against an employee.

To protect the public from unlawful conduct, whistleblower laws make it illegal to retaliate against employees who complain to public agencies about employer actions that endanger the public or break the law.

“Can’t we sue them for this?” That’s the sentiment many employers express after being on the receiving end of a lawsuit that they think is based on untrue facts. Although it is never satisfying to be told “that wouldn’t be a good idea,” this is generally the right answer for various reasons.

Want to know why retaliation claims turn out so well, so often, for angry employees? Look no further than basic human psychology. Most of us have never actually felt the full emotional brunt of an overt act of racial, sexual or age discrimination at work. But we can all quickly identify with the feeling of being persecuted for something we’ve said or done.