Articles Posted in Corporations

As always, be careful when dealing with employees. I recently was contacted by a small business owner in Sunnyvale who was irate because her previous business attorney assisted her with a new alternative workweek schedule and all the employees agreed. Then, years later, they had to lay off some employees and the terminated employees just made a claim for overtime for all the hours worked over eight in a day. Because the alternative workweek was not agreed to in a secret ballot, it was not upheld by the Labor Board and her company had to pay significant amounts to several ex-employees.

In the past few years, I’ve noticed that more and more small businesses and corporations in San Jose and throughout Santa Clara County have moved a portion, or all, of their employees from a standard five day, eight hours a day workweek to a four day, ten hours a day workweek. A company that is interested in implementing this type of alternative workweek schedule must go through the proper process for implementing the schedule, or the company may risk misclassifying employee hours worked and end up paying penalties and fines for the misclassification. If an alternative workweek schedule is implemented correctly, an employer may be exempt from paying overtime to employees working up to ten hours a day, four days a week. Alternative workweek schedules can be proposed for an entire work unit or as a part of a menu of options for a work unit.

In California, there are several actions that must be taken before an alternative workweek schedule can be adopted by a company. A company cannot simply impose the new schedule on its workforce. One required action is for the company to hold a meeting with employees who would be affected by an alternative workweek schedule. The meeting is held so that the employer can discuss the effects of the alternative workweek on the affected employees and the employees can vote on the proposed schedule.

The following are some steps that should be taken before the vote can take place:

• The employer must first provide a written notice to the affected employees. The notice will inform the employees that the company would like to adopt an alternative workweek schedule, and invite them to attend a meeting to discuss the effects of the alternative workweek and vote on the proposal. The written notice, which must be provided 14 days before the actual vote, should disclose the effects of the proposed arrangement on employees’ wages, hours and benefits, and include meeting logistics.

• The proposed alternative workweek schedule must be adopted in a secret ballot election by at least two-thirds of the affected employees in the work unit. The secret ballot election must be held during regular working hours at the employees’ work site.

• Ballots for the election can only be cast by the affected employees.

• The results of the election must be reported by the employer to the Division of Labor Statistics and Research within 30 days after the results of the vote are final. The report must be given in letter format and must include the date of the election, a final tally of the vote (number of “yes” and “no” votes), the size of the unit considering the change to an alternative workweek, the nature of the employer’s business, contact name and phone number. This information becomes public record.

• The letter must be sent to the following address:
Division of Labor Statistics and Research
455 Golden Gate Avenue, 9th Floor
San Francisco, California 94102

• If a work unit votes in favor of an alternative workweek schedule, employees who are affected by the change may not be required to work those new work hours for at least 30 days after the announcement of the final results of the election.

If an employer adopts an alternative workweek schedule consisting of four, ten hour days, the employer must still pay overtime pay of 1½ times the hourly rate for any hours worked in excess of ten hours per day up to twelve hours, and double time for any hours worked over twelve. The employer must also have a standard five days, eight hours schedule available for employees who are unable to work the four day schedule.

If you have any questions about implementing an alternative workweek, talk to a professional with experience in this area and don’t assume that if all the employees agree everything will be fine.

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This blog focuses on an employer’s rights to monitor electronic communications.

One of my Mountain View clients recently had an employee leave and wipe out all of his e-mails before he signed off for the last time. The employer immediately had its IT group recover the e-mails, and a corporate officer read through them. They found several emails where the employee was corresponding with others in the company about leaving and forming a competitive company. They called to ask me, after the fact, whether it was okay for them to read the employee’s emails and what rights they have now to act on the information.

There are a number of laws that affect access to another person’s emails. One of these, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (the “ECPA”) prohibits unauthorized persons to access electronic communications, including wire taps and stored communications like e-mails. If you violate the ECPA, you could be subject to fines and prison terms up to one year, as well as civil damages and attorneys fees. However, there are three exceptions which may allow employers to monitor employee communications.

Silicon Valley employers expect a hiring boom in technology jobs in the next two years, especially in the areas of social networking, cloud computing, and mobile technology, according to a recent study headed by NOVA, a nonprofit, federally funded employment and training agency in Sunnyvale. As a result, many companies will face basic employment issues, such as recruiting qualified employees, performing reference checks on potential candidates, and having solid employment agreements in place. In my last blog I discussed when you should consider using an employment agreement rather than just a simple offer letter for a new employee. Generally employment agreements are used for top executives and high level managers. Here is a brief summary of some of the terms you should have in those high-level employment agreements.

Position

o This can be either a general description for higher executives, or a list of tasks, authority level and who the person reports to for other employees.

Most businesses have to deal with filling opened positions at their company at one time or another. In my continuing series on basic employment concerns for employers I have so far discussed searching for new employees, evaluating potential applicants, and doing and responding to reference checks. This blog discusses what you do once you have found someone you would like to hire.

When you have found someone you want to hire, you should always make the offer in writing. Your offer letter should, at a minimum, include their name, the position, the pay (and whether it is salary or hourly), where and when the work will be performed, what benefits are offered by your company, and that the employment is “at-will.” As I discussed in my previous blog, you can condition employment on a medical examination to confirm that the potential employee is physically able to do the job, or determine if any physical limitations exist, and establish a record of medical conditions.

I also recommend conditioning employment on confirmation of the employee’s identity, the results of a background check and confirmation that the employee can legally work in the U.S. Under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, employers are required to verify employment eligibility and identity. Because national origin and citizenship status could be used to discriminate against potential applicants, it is better to ask for this information only after you have made the job offer. After you confirm the employee’s identity and eligibility by reviewing the various identification documents the employee provides, you must have the employee complete an INS Form I-9, and you must complete the employer’s part of the I-9 within three business days of hiring the employee.

Employment Agreements

For most employees, an offer letter stating the terms of their employment is sufficient. However, for certain managers and executives and for employees that will have access to confidential information and trade secrets of your company, you will want them to sign a confidentiality and nondisclosure agreement as well as an Inventions Assignment Agreement. For top executives, they may require specific terms that should be set forth in an employment agreement. Employment agreements, if not drafted correctly, can cause a lot of liability for a company, so I definitely recommend you have your company’s employment agreement drafted by an attorney or HR person who is very well informed in this area. For many of the companies I work with, I will provide them with a form of offer letter and a form of employment agreement suited for their needs, and then they can complete it for new hires and just have me review any significant changes or additions.

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Whether you are a startup company in Sunnyvale or a family owned business in San Jose, as an employer, you will have some basic employment concerns. In my previous two blogs, I discussed risks in looking for employees and evaluating potential applicants. This blog focuses on reference checks, both for potential employees and when another business owner calls you with regards to an ex-employee of yours.

When you are interested in an applicant, a reference check is always a good idea. In particular, checking references may be crucial to avoiding a claim of negligent hiring. This is very important when your employee will be working with young children, like a daycare teacher, or entering homes or businesses, such as an installer or a janitorial worker. However, reference checks can be a concern both when you are the potential employer and when you are the previous employer. Any information you ask and any information you give to a potential employer must not be discriminatory or retaliatory.

Often, a good strategy as the previous employer is to have a strict policy of only providing very basic information such as confirming that the employee did work for you, dates of employment, and position.

In my previous blog, I discussed the risks faced by companies that are looking to hire new employees. This blog focuses on issues employers need to be concerned with once they have found some candidates and need to choose between them.

Once you are ready to interview candidates, you still need to be wary of a discrimination claim for the questions you ask and the information you gather, even if the information is crucial to determining whether the person would be a good fit for your company. So, you have to be very careful about how you obtain information and decide between candidates. Looking up candidates on the web through social networks is the subject of many articles itself. This blog just deals with the old fashioned methods of considering job applicants.

If you require potential applicants to complete a job application, don’t just download a form from the web and think you are safe. The questions you ask must be relevant to the position you are trying to fill. This means that even within your company one application may not be appropriate for all positions. Avoid asking questions about age (including requesting date of birth!), race, religion, nationality, disabilities, gender, marital status and whether or not the applicant has kids, is a single parent, etc. When it comes time for an interview, be prepared with a list of potential questions to ask as well as ones to avoid, and have each interviewer review these questions before an interview. I strongly recommend for employees who have never been the interviewer to go through a practice interview so that he or she can rehearse the role and responses to various questions. Questions should be geared towards a candidate’s past job performance and qualifications, and careful emphasis should be placed on returning the conversation to an appropriate line of questions if the applicant volunteers information that may be considered discriminatory if asked.

Silicon Valley’s job market heats up even as national employment stalls, thanks to an increase in venture capital and personal investing. Large corporations are competing with small businesses and start-ups for talent. Although some of my business clients are start-up companies where the founders are the only employees, more and more of my clients are operating businesses with day to day concerns, the most common of which is employee issues. A growing business that is hiring may need employment contracts and possibly a stock option plan in place. All businesses need employment policies and possibly an employee handbook. And almost all businesses at some time or other will need to deal with employee complaints, discipline and even terminating employees. This is the start of a series of blogs on some of the basics you should know as an employer, whether here in Santa Clara County or elsewhere. Keep in mind that every situation and every employee is different and the laws of other states may be different than California. This is not a substitute for calling your company’s lawyer, but more of a guide to help you spot issues and know when you need to ask for help.

Looking for New Hires:

The first rule of hiring is to be wary of discrimination. You can hire anyone you want, as long as you don’t discriminate based on age, race, nationality, gender, disability or any other protected class. Discrimination can show up or be inferred from many situations where it may not have been intended. For example, I represent a janitorial company in Santa Clara that employed many people from one religion and those employees often referred their friends and family when positions opened up. When looking for new hires, the company has to be very careful to ask all their employees for referrals and not just that group of employees, or the company could be found to be discriminating against people who are not part of that religion.

Anyone that represents your company in recruiting new employees should be well trained in employment laws. Be careful about how you write your employment ads so they don’t exclude any class of potential employees, and make sure to include a statement that your company is an Equal Opportunity Employer in each ad. Be careful about where you advertise. For example, I represent a bilingual English/Chinese preschool in Sunnyvale. Although it may be okay for the school to advertise in an all-Chinese newspaper when they are looking to hire Chinese teachers, it may be considered discriminatory against non-Chinese speakers when they are looking to fill any position that does not require Chinese language capabilities.

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