Are you running a business in California? As an employer, you must be aware of the laws and policies to comply with the employment laws. Apart from that, you need to keep updated with the new laws related to employment to avoid any disputes. Maintaining legal compliance at workplace is very important for an employer.
If you are running a firm or company in California, you need to be very careful about the employment norms and policies. This will help you to maintain a healthy workplace as well as prevent you from any potential lawsuits.
Legal Advice for California Employers
Here you will find the top five legal advice to prevent your company from legal disputes. Well, if you need any legal services you can consult a California employment attorney.
- Empower Human Resource Professionals
The first thing that every employer must take into consideration is to empower their human resource professionals to maintain a healthy workplace. The HR professionals must help the employees and solve their problems.
Because the HR team is to help the employees when they have any problem. So you need to empower your HR professionals to solve their problem to create a healthy workplace in your company. Again, the HR team should never compromise their professional standards in case of any investigations.
According to Jean Hymans, most of the employers have to face a lawsuit when their HR professionals are unable to fix the problems of the employees. So the first advice is to empower your human resource team.
- Don’t Terminate Your Employees Abruptly
Another most important thing to keep in mind that you need to be kind, respectful, and honest while terminating any of your employees. Because when you terminate your employee abruptly and if the employee feels that he or she is treated harshly then you might be in trouble.
Although, there is no such particular law about how the process of termination hampered their career. But if your behavior and process of termination are not fair then a hardworking and honest employee may drag you to the court.
As a consequence, your company may face unnecessary legal disputes and other factors may come to the light. So this is a crucial thing to keep in mind that, treat your employees well even when you are terminating them for any reason.
- Provide Unemployment Benefits
Unless you fire someone in your business and the person is the only beneficiary member of your family, then you will consider receiving unemployment insurance. For example, if an employee has a single parent, or has a child, or a spouse at home with a disability, and is the only beneficiary, then it would be an act of cruelty if you don’t provide the employment benefits.
- Approve Additional Leave in Case of FMLA and CFRA
When your employee is unable to join the company after the 12-weeks leave for medical reasons, then approve additional leave. If the employee applies for additional leave under the FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) or the CFRA ( California Family Rights Act) beforehand, you can’t simply fire them for not joining on time. In such case, you can communicate with the employee for the extension or any other form of accommodation to provide a fair decision.
- Respond Properly to Employee Complaints
If an employee complains regarding some problem, it is your duty as an employer to investigate the matter properly. Otherwise, it could lead to a lawsuit and have a negative impact. So try to settle the employee’s concern through the best possible means of making a fair decision.
Final Words
Finally, when a complaint is filed by an employee to the HR team for any matter, the first thing to investigate the claim with a practical approach without accusing anyone about the matter.
