Instructor Profile

Badly worded documentation and suspiciously timed administration are at a minimum problematic and at worst, hard to justify in employment claims. Inconsistent documentation, which may be just bad management practices, can cause employment claims from suspicious employees.

Considering that writing ill-suited documentation and administering inconsistent discipline is generally carried out by managers who practice a host of other bad management habits; taken together the factors create a situation akin to a compliance powder keg waiting to explode.

This webinar aims to emphasize the significance of an employee handbook or employment policy manual in effectively communicating an organization's policies and culture. It can play a crucial role in establishing the tone of the employment relationship and serve as the initial layer of protection in case of an employment lawsuit or investigation. In case your company lacks a policy, or manual or hasn't reviewed it in the last year, this webinar will provide an in-depth analysis of the essential policies that your handbook should include and the critical factors to consider while drafting them.

In this practical webinar, we will discuss best practices for writing policies, procedures, and supporting documentation to help you develop logical and easy-to-understand documents. We will also explore tips for writing proper policies, and traps to be avoided in your policy manuals and assuring that organization-wide policies and practices are uniformly enforced.

In this webinar, we will discuss how employers should maintain and organize employment records and files. The main reasons why proper record keeping is a requirement for employers are:

• It makes good business sense to have accurate information handy and organized when you want to use it.
• Most business owners and managers will eventually encounter the need to produce documentation about employee performance and work history. Having the proper records to retrieve is vital when the need presents itself.
• Some employee records are required by federal or state governments and must be kept somewhere. Organizing them by employee name makes access easy.

Many federal and state authorities have employment laws and regulations about records management training and record retention, including specific HR record-keeping requirements and document retention periods for both paper and electronic records, you definitely must know the HR record retention rules.

And because they are laws, you need to be absolutely confident that all of your employee records, personnel files, and documents - from pre-hire through termination - are legally prepared to defend you.

The constantly changing nature of HR management demands that HR professionals participate and contribute fully to their organizations as true strategic business partners. An audit helps an organization understand whether its HR practices help, hinder, or have little impact on its business goals. 

The audit also helps quantify the results of the department's initiatives and provides a road map for necessary changes. Audits can also help the organization achieve and maintain world-class HR practices.

A systematic formal process like any other audit, the HR audit is designed to objectively review and evaluate the strategies, policies, processes and procedures, structure, systems, and documents of the organization’s human resource management in view of enhancing organizational performance.  

It does so by:
• Ensuring that legal compliance and governance requirements are being met
• Confirming that business and talent management objectives are achieved
• Identifying, assessing, and managing human resources management risks
• Warranting the organization’s human resources add value

The HR audit is based on the principle that HR processes are dynamic and have to be re-addressed and refreshed constantly if they are to keep on being quick to respond to needs that are changing all the time.

HR audit, thus, contributes towards the best possible use of internal resources and maximizing the effectiveness of human capital in the organization. At the same time, it is useful in streamlining the HR processes and practices with the industry's best practices and standards.

One of the most complex jobs for HR professionals is administering employee leaves while remaining in compliance with a myriad of laws. In fact, many HR professionals refer to the interplay of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and Workers’ Compensation as the Bermuda Triangle of Employment Law because of the perils involved in navigating the interplay between these complicated laws.

When dealing with employee absenteeism, employers need to carefully navigate the “Bermuda Triangle” of leave laws. This confusing and potentially costly place is created by the intersection of the Oregon and federal family leave laws, the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), and the workers’ compensation laws. An employee with frequent or unreliable absences will often have protection under these laws.

Many HR professionals and employers feel a sense of dread when navigating “the Bermuda Triangle of leave laws.” This session will focus on the interplay between the various laws dealing with employee leaves and provide practical guidance on how to steer clear of stinging jellyfish in the form of the DOL, the EEOC, and state and local administrative investigative agencies looking to make examples of employers that fail to comply.

When employers consider all elements while managing an employee leave or claim, the overlapping processes of ADA, FMLA, and workers’ compensation run more smoothly. Because the ADA interacts significantly with the other two, the ADA interactive process is key to helping employers avoid being sucked into the Bermuda Triangle of HR law.

Participating in this webinar will provide participants with a clear understanding of each of these laws and how they interact with each other, incorporating that information into company policies, and the ability to communicate those policies to employees.

It is extremely important for employers to ensure that their employees are not improperly classified as exempt when they are really nonexempt. In the event of an employee lawsuit or an audit by the DOL, employers will be required to substantiate their reasons for classifying a particular employee or employees as exempt. The burden of proof will be on the employer to establish exempt status, not on the employees or the DOL to prove that employees are not exempt. 

Many employers have learned this lesson the hard way. In addition to enforcement action by federal and state departments of labor, improper classifications have resulted in many collective action lawsuits by groups of employees, many of which have resulted in multimillion-dollar settlements.

The purpose of this webinar is to assist HR professionals in determining whether employees qualify for any of the exemptions from the FLSA's overtime and/or minimum wage requirements.