Employment Issues

April 13, 2006

	Visited: 233
	Not rated
	Rate:

Suppose your only employee decides to charge you with sexual harassment. The employee you should have hired, but didn't, sues you for age discrimination. Do you have formal hiring policies to protect you from unfounded claims should they arise?

If your decorative palm falls on your secretary, your insurance will cover her grievous injuries but it won't pay for a replacement when she takes a week off to recover. If you comply with basic safety standards for your workplace you won't have to deal with this kind of problem.

Doing a background check on candidates for employment is tricky but necessary. You can avoid a lot of pitfalls by following through with this process.

Employee discipline is a minefield of perils. Set your rules for your workers and apply them even-handedly.

Firing an employee is an art as well as a science. Take advantage of the downloadable tools to guide you on the legal and prudent path for termination of an employee.

In the Business Tools area is a termination package that will help you with employee terminations.

Don't get tangled up with your payroll tax obligations. The state and federal governments grant no leeway for timely deposits of these funds.

As your business grows, employee turnover can be a costly problem. Try to minimize this by thoroughly screening candidates before you hire them.

Family employees. There's an old saying that goes "family business is to business what military music is to music." Family business is the original oxymoron. Hiring family members to work in your business can be both a blessing and a curse. The benefits of working with family members will be obvious to you but the detriments of nepotism may surface down the road and you'll need to be prepared to deal with them. Unfortunately, there's no solution to these problems once they arise. You must develop coping strategies to just manage around the periodic flare ups of jealousy and insubordination. A local networking group of other family business members would be helpful just to let you know you're not unique.