Commentary & Opinion Archives - Page 33 of 85

January 25, 2019June 29, 2023

HR Leaders Need to Know How to Deal With New Bosses

Where are we at with <insert random request for information>?”

If you hear this type of question from a new boss as an HR leader, be alert. This question is not an invitation to list what’s been done. It’s a test.

Put on a helmet, kids, because I’m about to give you some tough love.

In the future, all of you reading this will get a new boss. Most of you will have five to 10 new bosses across the rest of your career, which is reflective of how chaotic work is for our generation and the general pace of change.

Some of those new bosses are going to have manageable expectations. But it’s important to note that many of them are going to expect new things out of you, and they generally won’t be that concerned with your feelings.

Many of the new bosses are going to expect you to be great in the way you do HR. The problem with that? Their definition of great is going to be different than yours, and their definition is the only one that counts.

Here’s how your interactions with a new boss who expects you to be great are going to go:

1. The new boss comes in and things appear fine. This is called the honeymoon period. All parties are getting to know each other, and your new boss is forming opinions of what he’s got related to talent on the team. There are lunches, light meetings and even some jokes!

2. You’re presented with a challenge, and you do what you do, and what you have always done. Let’s assume the challenge is about recruiting, and the boss asks you what you’re doing to recruit developers. You reply with what you’ve always done, which is to post far and wide and pray those postings are effective. Note that you didn’t do more than what you did in the past in this area. It was out of your comfort zone, and what you had always done had always been enough.

3. The new boss expresses on some level that you’ll need to think differently to meet expectations. How your new boss frames this request depends on the challenge, but it generally follows a “What else you got?”

4. The new boss doesn’t tell you what more looks like, but will tell you if they are impressed by what you’re doing. That’s why they’re the boss. If they have to tell you what to do, they’re not sure why they need you on the team. They won’t tell you what to do, but they will compliment you if you’re on the right track and if you keep them updated on progress.

5. Silence is dangerous. Long stretches of silence are generally accompanied by you being fired or someone else being hired above you. The most dangerous thing you can do with a new boss is not engage. If you accept silence and refuse to get in front of the relationship, that’s you doing what you’ve always done. Organizational change usually follows long periods of silence.

I know. Things were fine before the new boss came along. You’re not sure why you have to change, and it generally seems unfair.

Also read: How New Executives Can Mitigate Employee Resistance

I’m not here to argue with how you feel. I’m just here to tell you that most of us will have at least one new boss who acts like this. Your cadence with that new boss is going to feel almost exactly how I outlined above — if you look closely.

The danger is that you don’t make a move to get in front of it. When the new boss comes in and immediately wonders if you suck at HR, it’s not an automatic death sentence. You can adjust to the new expectation and perhaps even learn along the way.

To react to the new boss who has higher expectations, you’ll have to be assertive in changing your day-to-day routine. While that’s hard enough, it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Reinventing how you are doing HR also comes with confrontation of others — vendors, the people you manage on your HR team and the managers and employees in the client groups you support.

You’re on the clock with any new boss both as an HR leader and a line HR pro. Whether you report to a CEO as an HR leader or a new VP of HR as a line HR pro, you’re likely to be tested.

Also from Kris Dunn: Management According to the Leadership Book

You have to play offense. Don’t be fooled by long periods of silence, because low engagement from your new boss can represent an extended severance period, the kind where everyone knew but you.

Doing what you’ve always done is dangerous.

January 22, 2019June 29, 2023

The 4th Nominee for the “Worst Employer of 2019” is … the Flagrant Farmer

I’ll let the EEOC do the heavy lifting on today’s nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 (the 4th thus far):

A federal jury rendered a verdict … awarding $850,000 in compensatory and punitive damages to a female farmworker at Favorite Farms in Dover, Fla., who was raped by her supervisor and reported it to police and management that same day.…

The evidence at trial showed that management at Favorite Farms, which primarily grows strawberries, failed to properly investigate the complaint, and instead sent the victim home from work without pay the next work day. Favorite Farms took no action against the harasser, leaving him to supervise women in the fields, despite evidence that this was not the first complaint of sexual harassment. Instead, Favorite Farms continued retaliating against the victim and forced her to take a leave of absence.

If you permit a rapist to keep supervising your employees after an employee complains to you and the police that he raped her, and you further punish the complaining employee by suspending her without pay, you might be the worst employer of 2019.

Thanks to Eric Meyer for bringing the nominee to my attention.

Previous nominees:

The 1st Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 Is … the Philandering Pharmacist

The 2nd Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 Is … the Little Rascal Racist

The 3rd Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 is … the Barbarous Boss

January 22, 2019June 29, 2023

Labor Relations in the Public Sector, Part 2

Despite the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting that 10.7 percent of all wage and salary workers in the U.S. are union members in both the private and public sector, union membership of public sector employees at the federal, state and local levels is well above that at 34.4 percent.

Just in local government, the rate of union membership is 40.1 percent and includes teachers, police officers and firefighters. In contrast, only 6.5 percent of private sector employees belong to unions. That number is significant because average private sector compensation costs average $34.19 per hour, compared to an average of $49.23 per hour in state and local government — a 30 percent difference in private to public employment costs.

So how do public sector unions achieve such important gains when some of these same unions don’t have the ability to strike? First, let’s take a quick history lesson.

The New York state Legislature was one of the first states to pass labor laws protecting women and children. Labor unions continued to gain strength in the subsequent decades, resulting in the passage of the Railway Labor Act in 1926, allowing railroad employees to unionize, and the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which guaranteed basic rights of private sector employees to organize into labor unions and encourages collective bargaining — generally defined as the negotiation between an employer and a labor union on issues of wages, hours and working conditions.

Notably, the NLRA did not extend those protections to employees in the public sector for fear that public employees would strike, leading to paralysis of government until their demands were met. In 1943, the New York Supreme Court in Railway Mail Ass’n. v. Murphy, said, “Nothing is more dangerous to public welfare than to admit that hired servants of the state can dictate to the government the hours, the wages, and conditions under which they will carry on essential services vital to the welfare, safety and security of the citizen.”

Please read: Labor Relations in the Public Sector, Part 1

Today, most states have laws that formalize the bargaining process for some or all public employees, and some states permit only “meeting and conferring” on work-related issues. Only 11 states allow public employees to strike. Of those, most prohibit striking for essential employees and in cases where striking would endanger public health and safety.

For example, New York’s Taylor Law grants public employees the right to organize and elect union representatives, but also makes work stoppages punishable with fines and jail time. Some states prohibit collective bargaining for teachers while others prohibit all public sector collective bargaining.

The Power of Public Sector Unions

Without either limited or no ability to strike, public sector unions may try to leverage their power to help elect the very politicians who sit across from them at the bargaining table and influence legislation that affects public employees’ wages and availability of jobs. According to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, the California Teachers’ Association spent more than $211 million from 2000 to 2009 on political campaigning — more than any other donor in the state and as much as the pharmaceutical industry, the oil industry and the tobacco industry combined. In 2005 alone, the CTA spent $54 million to defeat initiatives intended to cap the growth of state spending and make it easier to fire underperforming teachers.

Politicians who attempt to limit the power of public sector unions and their lobbying arms need to come to the table prepared to make realistic changes. A case study of how not to negotiate with a public sector union is the Chicago Teachers’ Union strike in 2012, which was in response to some of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s initiatives. Emanuel campaigned to improve the education of Chicago schoolchildren and used his political might to pass an aggressive education-reform bill without consulting the teachers’ union.

The CTU brought other public unions to their cause and engaged in a 10-day strike. After an unsuccessful attempt to get a court order to force teachers back to work, both sides reached an agreement. While Emanuel did get a longer school day and longer school year, the teachers got an average raise of 17.6 percent over four years, health insurance increases, seniority pay increases and raises for additional education.

In jurisdictions where striking is prohibited, there are ways to reach final resolution of negotiations if parties disagree. These include arbitration, mediation, fact-finding and bargaining without a final resolution mechanism.

In arbitration, a neutral third party facilitates discussions, examines the facts and makes a binding determination. In mediation, the parties agree on a professional who facilitates discussions and proposes solutions that both parties can accept or decline. In mediation/arbitration, the parties jointly choose a mediator and if both parties fail to come to an agreement, the mediator becomes the arbitrator. Fact finding is a labor dispute resolution measure where an independent “fact finder” examines the arguments of both parties and offers a nonbinding resolution. In the public sector, as many state and local governments are in poor financial health, the fact finder generally sides with the employer and finds the unions’ proposals unreasonable to allow the employer to control costs.

Unions strive to secure good outcomes for the employees they represent during the initial stages of negotiations. Allowing a dispute to lead to arbitration takes the decision away from management and labor. Since arbitrators must adhere to certain standards, the awards are somewhat predictable. Generally, arbitrators reach decisions that neither labor nor management view as the best solution. In a world where labor-management cooperation has become so important, having someone with no vested interest in the outcome decide a union and agency’s fate is a poor outcome that can take years for the parties to repair.

It is encouraging to see that some state and local governments and unions are using tools borrowed from the private sector that help lead to voluntary agreements. The following are important methods that increase the likelihood of fair, voluntary agreements:

• Engage employees at the workplace.

• Use interest-based bargaining techniques in contract negotiations, where both sides declare their interests and then work together to draft agreements that align common interests and balance disparate interests.

• Share information and consult with unions on long-term strategies. Since most labor agreements are in effect for at least three years, a government’s labor relations strategy should align with its own short- and long-term financial planning and overall strategy. Given the repetitive nature of the bargaining process, successful labor-management relationships have management communicate with and involve stakeholders regularly, not just during negotiations.

Bargaining involves transparent communication between labor and management regarding terms and conditions of employment. Effective bargaining is usually measured by whether labor and management can reach an agreement without involving a third party. By demonstrating interest in building rapport, exploring alternatives, refusing to put limits on the number of topics for negotiation, and coming to the table with the goal of a solution, management can maximize the chance of a favorable outcome without compromising the operations of government.

January 17, 2019June 29, 2023

An Expensive Lesson on Religious Accommodations

A federal court jury in Miami has awarded a hotel dishwasher $21.5 million after concluding that her employer failed to honor her religious beliefs by repeatedly scheduling her on Sundays, and then firing her.The hotel argued that it had no idea that she was a missionary or had requested Sunday off. Her lawyer, however, disagreed. “There were letters in [her personnel] file and her pastor went down there.”

According to the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Marie Jean Pierre is a member of the Soldiers of Christ Church, a Catholic missionary group that helps the poor. She claimed that she hold her employer that she needed Sundays off for her missionary work. The hotel accommodate her for the first three years of her employment, but then began scheduling her on Sundays. After she advised that she would have to quit, the company again accommodated her scheduling request for another six years. Then, however, the hotel again changed her schedule to include Sundays. Pierre then provided a letter from her pastor explaining her religious need for the time off. The hotel, however, refused and ultimately fired her for unexcused absences.

Title VII requires an employer to reasonably accommodate an employee whose sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance conflicts with a work requirement, unless doing so would pose an undue hardship. An accommodation would pose an undue hardship if it would cause more than de minimis cost on the operation of the employer’s business. Factors relevant to undue hardship may include the type of workplace, the nature of the employee’s duties, the identifiable cost of the accommodation in relation to the size and operating costs of the employer, and the number of employees who will in fact need a particular accommodation.

Scheduling changes, voluntary substitutions, and shift swaps are all common accommodations for employees who need time off from work for a religious practice. It is typically considered an undue hardship to impose these changes on other employees involuntarily. However, the reasonable accommodation requirement can often be satisfied without undue hardship where a volunteer with substantially similar qualifications is available to cover.

In other words, permitting Pierre to take every Sunday off may have imposed an undue hardship, depending on the nature of her work performed and her job duties. Other employees could have agreed to move shifts around to cover for her, but employers cannot force such scheduling changes. In Pierre’s case, however, the fact that the hotel appears to have accommodated her for eight years would weigh heavily in favor of the reasonableness of the accommodation.

In plain English, there might be a way around granting time off for an employee to observe a religious practice, but do you want to risk the inevitable (and expensive) lawsuit?

Also read: 5.1 Million Reasons to Keep Religion Out of Your Workplace

Legalities aside, this issue asks a larger question. What kind of employer do you want to be? Do you want to be a company that promotes tolerance or fosters exclusion? The former will help create the type of environment that not only mitigates against religious discrimination, but spills over into the type of behavior that helps prevent unlawful harassment and other liability issues. If you can grant the accommodation, why not do so? And if you have granted it, why take it away?

January 17, 2019June 29, 2023

The 3rd Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 is … the Barbarous Boss

2019 is officially the year that my Worst Employer contest went international.

How do you motivate your employees to hit their sales goals? If you’re the Runfa Hair Salon in Wuxi, China, you abuse the hell out of ’em.

According to the Daily Mail, employees who failed to sell 3,000 to 4,000 yuan ($436 to $582) worth of hair products each day suffered harsh physical punishment.

How harsh?

Employees were forced, in meetings in front of co-workers, to slap themselves in the face 100 times. If their face wasn’t sufficiently reddened, they’d face a monetary fine of 500 yuan ($73).

Others were force-fed raw chili peppers, onions, and vinegar. And some were forced to complete 10-km run.

Anyone who complained was summarily fired.

All of a sudden your quota at work doesn’t seem so bad, does it?

Previous nominees:

The 1st Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 Is … the Philandering Pharmacist

The 2nd Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 Is … the Little Rascal Racist

January 16, 2019June 29, 2023

Gillette’s Toxic Masculinity Ad Isn’t the Problem; Toxic Masculinity Is the Problem

Gillette is facing a lot of praise, and a lot of backlash, over its recent ad slamming toxic masculinity culture.

The ad offers two views of men.

The first — a boy bullied and called a “sissy,” a man grabs at a woman’s behind, a businessman condescending to a female employee. During, a voice over notes that men make “the same old excuses”: Boys will be boys.

Then, vignettes of men doing better — intervening against sexual harassment, being attentive fathers to their daughters, promoting peace over violence.

The tagline: “Bullying. Harassment. Is this the best a man can get? It’s only by challenging ourselves to do more, that we can get closer to our best. To say the right thing, to act the right way.”

This message should not be controversial. But it has been. Very.

Fox News pundit Greg Gutfeld: “It’s almost as if the people who make products for men, hate men!”

Piers Morgan: “The subliminal message is clear: men, ALL men are bad, shameful people who need to be directed in how to be better people.”

A slew of folks on Twitter who are calling for people to #BoycottGillette.

Here’s the thing. Gillette’s add calling for an end to toxic masculinity isn’t the problem. Toxic masculinity is the problem.

We men can, should, and must do better. #MeToo isn’t a catchphrase, it’s a philosophy. Equality should not be controversial.

And yet, it is. Until we men do better — until we stop bullying those we see as weak or un-masculine, until we stop grabbing and groping, until we stop condescending to those who we view as different or weaker, and start treating women as equals, intervening to stop harassment, and being better role models — harassment and discrimination will continue to plague our society and our workplaces.

I fully recognize that a sizable portion of my readers will take issue with my stance on this commercial and this issue. And that’s OK.

The ad is designed to spark debate. So let’s have a debate. Defend your position that the ad insults men. Without debate nothing will change.

And on issues of gender equality and sexual harassment, change is long overdue.

January 9, 2019June 29, 2023

What Does It Mean for Jobs to be “Substantially Equal” Under the Equal Pay Act?

The Equal Pay Act requires that an employer pay its male and female employees equal pay for equal work. The jobs need not be identical, but they must be substantially equal. Substantial equality is measured by job content, not job titles.

The Act is a strict liability law, which means that intent does not matter. If a women is paid less than male for substantially similar work, then the law has been violated, regardless of the employer’s intent.

This strict liability, however, does not mean that pay disparities always equal liability. The EPA has several built-in defenses, including seniority, merit, quantity or quality of production, or any other factor other than sex.

A recently filed case out of Boston delves into these issues.

According to CBS News, Elizabeth Rowe, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s principal flutist, claims that her employer unlawfully pays the principal oboist (a man) about $70,000 more per year.

According to the lawsuit, “Both the principal oboe and principal flute are leaders of their woodwind sections, they are seated adjacent to each other, they each play with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, and are both leaders of the orchestra in similarly demanding artistic roles.”

How did the oboist end up earning more? According to the lawsuit, the orchestra lured him away from the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra with the promise of higher pay. Rowe claims that she should be paid equally for similar work, regardless of the circumstances of his recruiting.

The orchestra claims that gender plays no role in how it sets salaries, which instead are determined by a variety of non-discriminatory factors, such as the difficulty of the oboe and its smaller pool of musicians.

What does it mean for two positions to be “substantially equal?’” According to the EEOC, employers should balance these five factors:

Skill: Measured by factors such as the experience, ability, education, and training required to perform the job. The issue is what skills are required for the job, not what skills the individual employees may have. For example, two bookkeeping jobs could be considered equal under the EPA even if one of the job holders has a master’s degree in physics, since that degree would not be required for the job.

Effort: The amount of physical or mental exertion needed to perform the job. For example, suppose that men and women work side by side on a line assembling machine parts. The person at the end of the line must also lift the assembled product as he or she completes the work and place it on a board. That job requires more effort than the other assembly line jobs if the extra effort of lifting the assembled product off the line is substantial and is a regular part of the job. As a result, it would not be a violation to pay that person more, regardless of whether the job is held by a man or a woman.

Responsibility: The degree of accountability required in performing the job. For example, a salesperson who is delegated the duty of determining whether to accept customers’ personal checks has more responsibility than other salespeople. On the other hand, a minor difference in responsibility, such as turning out the lights at the end of the day, would not justify a pay differential.

Working Conditions: This encompasses two factors: (1) physical surroundings; and (2) hazards.

Establishment: The prohibition against compensation discrimination under the EPA applies only to jobs within an establishment. An establishment is a distinct physical place of business rather than an entire business or enterprise consisting of several places of business. In some circumstances, physically separate places of business may be treated as one establishment. For example, if a central administrative unit hires employees, sets their compensation, and assigns them to separate work locations, the separate work sites can be considered part of one establishment.

I don’t enough about symphony orchestras to know how these factors all shake out in Boston. It seems to me, however, that a recruiting bump to lure someone from another employer is a solid “factor other than sex.”

Also read: Your 2019 Employment Law Compliance Checklist

If you have concerns that men and women in your workplace are being paid differently for similar work, you should audit you pay practices, and, if necessary, even them out, before the government or a plaintiff comes calling.

January 9, 2019June 29, 2023

Meet America’s Worst Employers of 2018

Throughout 2018 I tracked the worst behavior America’s employers offered up to their workforces.

I found each of the examples I tracked in actual court filings or in news stories. These are actual employers doing actual awful things to their employees.

How truly awful does one need to be to be named the 2018 Worst Employer of the Year? Consider that the following bad bosses did not make the cut in our online poll:

The Pregnancy Provoker: A supervisor compared an employee’s pregnancy to a tumor, expressed hope that she’d miscarry so that she wouldn’t miss work and told her to keep her legs crossed to delay childbirth so she could keep working.

The Soulless Supervisor: A supervisor fired an employee via text message while she was bedside with her son on life support.

The HR Pimp: A human resources chief hired women as possible sexual partners to men working for his government agency.

The Camera Creep: An employer ignored complaints that its general counsel had installed a hidden camera in the women’s locker room and had videos of nude and partially clothed female employees on his computer.

The Sadistic Sergeant: A police sergeant held a gun to an applicant’s head and threatened to shoot him if he made a mistake on his job application.

The Hedonistic Harasser: A company ignored complaints about genital grabbing and pantomimed rape, and further ignored complaints about threats of violence after the victim complained.

And if you think those were bad, here are the four worst, according to our online readers who voted on their favorite (or perhaps in this case, least favorite) bad bosses of 2018.

The Sexist, Racist, Xenophobic, Oh My!: A plant manager used racial slurs toward his employees, such as calling foreign-born employees “terrorists” and telling the company’s only African-American employee that her husband should work in a cotton field with a rope around his neck. The same plant manager also complained that he was “sick” of immigrants stealing jobs from Americans and not speaking English, forbade employees from speaking foreign languages and urged immigrant employees to leave America. Female employees did not fare much better, with the plant manager calling them “bitches,” and told one female employee that she was too “fat and disgusting” to have sex with her husband. When employees complained to the company’s owner, he not only did nothing to stop the harassment, he also became an active participant.

The Supervisor Supremacist: A supervisor made numerous racist remarks to his lone African-American employee, including “white power,” “if you’re not white, you’re not right,” telling him to leave because the other employees were having a Klan meeting, and using the N-word. He also started his morning meetings by saying “white power” and giving the Nazi salute. The supervisor placed a jockey statue on the employee’s desk, affixed a whip in the jockey’s hand, tied the whip around the horse’s neck in a noose, and labeled the statue with the name of the African-American employee. Finally, someone painted a troll doll black and hanged it in the plant labeled with the name of the African-American employee.

The Tasering Torturer: A car salesman alleged that the dealership’s owner engaged in a continuous and unrelenting campaign of verbal and physical abuse and harassment, including: repeatedly demeaning him based on his large size with names such as “Tiny,” “Fat Ass,” and “handicapped”; pointing the red laser-sight of a handgun at him; placing the handgun to his chest while telling him not to make any sudden moves; holding knives or other sharp objects to his throat while demanding that he not make any sudden movements; telling him he could “slit [his] throat and sleep just fine at night”; striking his surgically repaired leg; lighting fires near him; and finally, repeatedly shocking him with a taser.

My vote, however, for the Worst Employer of 2018 goes to the owner of a Cleveland area convenience store who (allegedly) hired two men to rough up a handyman who was not performing up to standards. They went too far, however, which resulted in the handyman’s death. Criminal charges are pending. If you (allegedly) cause the death of an employee by (allegedly) hiring two men to rough him up as a workplace motivational tool, you’ve earned my vote for the Worst Employer of 2018.

While we can all cringe at how truly awful these employers are, there are basic lessons about harassment, sexism, racism, bullying and abuse undercutting each of these examples. So, employers, here is your goal for the new year, and it’s relatively simple to achieve: Do not end up on this list in 2019!

January 8, 2019June 29, 2023

Beware Pre-Shift and Post-Shift Workplace Activities

In Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk, the Supreme Court held that the FLSA only requires employers to compensate employees for time spent performing pre-shift (preliminary) and post-shift (postliminary) activities that are “integral and indispensable” to an employee’s principal activities.

What are “integral and indispensable?” Those activities that are (1) “necessary to the principal work performed” and (2) “done for the benefit of the employer.”

In Busk, for example, the court held that post-shift security screenings were not “integral and indispensable” for an Amazon warehouse employee, because such screenings are not “an intrinsic element of retrieving products from warehouse shelves or packaging them for shipment,” and the employer “could have eliminated the screenings altogether without impairing the employees’ ability to complete their work.”

In light of these standards, consider Mireles v. Hooters of Am., LLC, filed late last year in a Houston federal court. A Hooters waitress claims that her employer unlawfully withholds pay for “postliminary” activities.

According to the lawsuit, Hooters requires its “Girls” to be “approachable, upbeat, and attentive to the needs of the guests as she socially engages with and entertains each individual guest at the front door and on the floor.” Accordingly, it requires that they spend substantial post-shift time “conversing with customers about topics unrelated to Defendants’ food and beverage offerings or local attractions, and spending substantial time waiting for managers to reconcile their sales receipts and tips towards the end of each shift.”

Are these waitresses entitled to be paid? Who knows. The point to be made runs much deeper.

There is a fine line between what is “integral and indispensable.” If the waitresses are required to be “attentive to the needs of the guests” and “socially engaging,” then I can craft an argument that time spent schmoozing post-shift should be compensated, just as I can make the point that such activities have nothing to do with the principal work of serving wings and beer. These off-the-clock cases are difficult, expensive and risky. If you lose, you’re not just paying your lawyer, but also the plaintiffs’ lawyer.

In other words, before you decide that your employees’ pre-shift and post-shift time is non-compensible, stop, take a deep breath, and call your employment lawyer.

January 7, 2019June 29, 2023

Your 2019 Employment Law Compliance Checklist

Today is the start of the first full week of 2019. Which means it’s a perfect time to take a step back and review your efforts at HR and employment law compliance for the coming year.

This list is not mean to be complete or exhaustive, but should provide a high level look at the top 20 issues that you should be reviewing this year, and every year for your business.

☑️ How many employees do you have (15 / 20 / 50)?

☑️ When is the last time your handbook has been reviewed and updated?

☑️ When was your last harassment / respectful workplace training?

☑️ Do you require restrictive covenants for key employees?

☑️ Do you have employees that work in states in which marijuana is legal?

☑️ Do you have federal contracts?

☑️ Are your employment law posters up to date?

☑️ Has your state or local minimum wage increased?

☑️ How are you calculating and paying overtime to non-exempt employees?

☑️ When did you last analyze your exempt employees?

☑️ Do you have independent contractors?

☑️ Is all of your workplace OSHA compliant?

☑️ Are your OSHA 300 logs up to date and your 300A form posted?

☑️ Are your FMLA forms up to date?

☑️ Are you managers trained on the ADA interactive process?

☑️ Are you job applications and workplace accessible for the disabled?

☑️ Do you know what devices are accessing your network?

☑️ Have you tested your network for security?

☑️ Are employees trained on cybersecurity compliance?

☑️ Do you have necessary and appropriate insurance (EPLI / Cyber / D&O)?

Questions about how to execute this list in your business? Call your employment counsel.

Also read: EEOC Offers Sage Advice on Following Checklists for Harassment Compliance

Also read: Workplace Compliance By Carrot Trumps Compliance By Stick