What Michigan Law Says About "At-Will" Employment Status
In Michigan, employees are by default employed on an "At-Will" basis. "At-Will" employees can be terminated for a good reason, bad reason, or no reason at all. In other words, you don't need a "just cause" to terminate an "At-Will" employee. However, it is surprisingly easy to have an employee's "At-Will" status changed into a "just cause" employment status.
Michigan courts have ruled that if an employer does something to create an expectation on an employee's part that they will be fired only if there is "just cause" for doing so, the employer's actions can convert that employee's status from "At-Will" to "just cause". This is true even if the employer did not intend to convert the employee's status. The conversion can happen inadvertently. For example, if a company's manager is pleased with an employee's performance and says something like "Keep up work like that and you'll always have a job here," that manager may very well have changed that employee's employment status to "just cause."
Managers and supervisors can be trained to protect the company's rights. They can be warned against making statements guaranteeing lifetime employment, promising promotions, or giving "inflated" employee evaluations. Careless statements made by managers and supervisors during hiring interviews and performance evaluations can be used against the company when a discharged employee claims that termination was unfair and illegal.
Guarding the "At-Will" employment status of a company's employees is one of the most important things management can do to protect a business against unwarranted, costly, and time-consuming employment litigation. But, "At-Will" employment status can be "easy come, easy go." Businesses must be vigilent that their practices and procedures are not undermining this important protection.
