Employers’ Top Four New Year’s Resolutions to Keep
By: Lisanne L. Mikula, Esquire
[email protected]
Whether you believe in resolutions or not, making a list of key action items and then getting them done can help protect your business from employment-related claims and misconduct in 2016. Here’re the top four action items for your 2016 to-do list:
1. Identify and evaluate significant employment-related incidents that occurred in 2015.
Make a list of all significant personnel issues that you faced over the past year, or if you were already tracking those issues, carefully evaluate them. Not only is this an effective way to catch whether there are any outstanding issues that still need to be resolved, it will also provide you with a snapshot of what worked—and what may need some revamping—when it comes to effective management, building and maintaining the right team, and ensuring that your policies, practices and procedures adequately and properly address the personnel challenges you faced in the past year.
2. Review all employee handbooks and written policies.
If you don’t have an employee handbook or written policies, why not? For many small businesses, the knee-jerk answer may be that “we’re too small” to justify the time required to commit policies to writing. While a small business may not need as extensive a handbook as a Fortune 100 company, making sure that your expectations are clearly articulated is a critical step toward avoiding personnel headaches, ineffective and inefficient “as you go” troubleshooting, and potential legal liability. For example, in Pennsylvania, any employer of four or more persons is covered under the state’s anti-discrimination laws. “Off the cuff” personnel decisions can result in unequal treatment of employees—fertile ground for potential claims of discrimination.
If you do have an employee handbook, review it thoroughly and carefully. Examples of some questions you should consider are:
• Are there any policies which seem outdated?
• Are the policies adequate to address the issues that have arisen in the workplace?
• Have all of your employees been provided with copies and acknowledged in writing that they’ve received those policies and understand that they are responsible for reading and adhering to those policies?
• Have there been changes to the workplace which might require new or revised policies, such as, for example, the issuance of smart phones to employees or allowing certain employees to telecommute?
• Has your business added personnel, raising your employee count above the threshold for certain laws under which the employer was not previously covered?
• Have there been changes in the law which may require revisions or additions to your policies?
And if you can’t remember the last time your handbook was thoroughly and carefully reviewed and updated, then it’s been too long.
3. Review your insurance policies relating to employee claims and conduct.
If you have employment practices liability insurance (EPLI) that covers employment-related claims asserted against you by former and current employees, this is a good time to review that policy to ensure that it still meets your needs. Some employers conclude that the cost of EPLI outweighs the potential benefit to them. If your business doesn’t carry EPLI, you should perform a cost/benefit analysis to determine whether you should reconsider that decision. A good insurance broker can help.
You should also consider whether your company is adequately protected in the event of employee misconduct. While employers strive to hire trustworthy workers, theft of employers’ funds or misappropriation of customer information can devastate a small business, so it is worthwhile to review your current insurance to see what protection you have in the unfortunate event that you or your customers become victims of employee misconduct.
4. Review your computer systems and handling of electronically-stored information.
If you maintain business records electronically, examine the extent to which this information is accessible by your employees and whether too much information is easily available. For example, just as the paper copy of a doctor’s note relating to an employee’s request for medical leave should be secured in a location where only those who “need to know” that information can access it, the electronic version of that doctor’s note should be similarly protected. Social security numbers, credit card numbers, and bank account routing numbers are further examples of information which should never be generally accessible to employees using the company’s database.
If you don’t regularly back up your electronic records, you may want to place that task toward the top of your list of New Year’s resolutions—loss of records is not only disruptive and expensive, but could result in your inadvertent loss of documents that the law requires employers to maintain about their employees.
We wish all of you a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year!
The attorneys at DiOrio & Sereni, LLP are available to help you with all of your employment law-related needs. Contact Lisanne L. Mikula, Esquire at 610-565-5700, or send her an e-mail at [email protected].
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