Your employees can make or break your business. Smart management of your personnel relationships is crucial to your success. But an increasingly complex array of state and federal laws have made this area a minefield for employers. Even companies who work hard to do the right thing by their employees can find themselves in trouble by unwittingly running afoul of any of the myriad laws that govern the employment relationship.

Growing businesses face special challenges.   For many small companies, employment law problems sometimes seem to solve themselves -- everyone knows everyone else and all have a common understanding about expectations.  But as your workforce grows, communication becomes more difficult and it becomes necessary to more actively manage employment relationships.  Often, that entails implementing company-wide employment policies and procedures for the first time, while at the same time trying to maintain the culture that has been such a big part of your company’s success. In addition, the company’s employment law obligations grow right along with its workforce. New statutes begin to apply to employers as the number of employees crosses certain thresholds, and each one imposes new obligations and poses greater liability risks.  It is particularly important for growing businesses to have skilled and informed guidance as they negotiate this difficult passage.

Our lawyers have worked with a broad range of employers, including manufacturers, agricultural companies, brokerage firms, medical practices, property development and management companies, hotels, financial services firms, technology and software companies, design firms, and retailers. We understand that every business is unique. We work closely with you to understand your industry, your business, your workforce and the particular risks and challenges you face. 

The best way to deal with employment law problems is to keep them from occurring. Our lawyers will help you develop and implement strategies for administering your personnel relationships in order to head off problems before they arise.  Here are some of the elements of those strategies.

Several elements make up that strategy. We can audit your current compliance policies to find areas that may be out of date or need improvement. For instance:

• Has your business grown so much that you are now subject to the Family and Medical Leave Act and need to implement a leave policy? 
• Does your harassment policy take into account the Supreme Court’s most recent decisions on employer liability? 
• Have you incorrectly classified secretarial employees as exempt from the overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act, so that you could be liable for a large award for back overtime pay?  
• Do you mistakenly believe that you don’t need an I-9 employment eligibility verification compliance program?

Any of these mistakes could be costly—not just in terms of money, but also in terms of the time and effort you and your managers will have to spend in dealing with them. We can help you avoid them. 

In addition, we can work with you to develop personnel policies that reduce your risk of employment-related claims and lawsuits. We can review and revise your existing policies and procedures, or create a new employee handbook for your company from scratch, to address address such issues as:

• Equal Employment Opportunity
• Disability Accommodation
• Drug and Alcohol Testing
• Anti-Harassment Policies
• Overtime Pay
• Workplace Violence
• E-Mail Monitoring
• Leaves of Absence

We can also help you and your managers implement your policies. We will come to your facility to meet with your managers and provide training about the law’s requirements and how to apply your policies. Our lawyers are also available by telephone to help with day-to-day issues and questions that arise, such as:

• Hiring decisions
• Reorganizations and downsizings
• Employee evaluations
• Disciplinary action
• Employment termination
• Employee grievances
• Harassment and discrimination complaints
• FMLA leave requests
• On the job injuries
• Social Security Administration “Mis-Match” letters
• Record keeping and documentation

By providing advice before you act, we can often keep these questions from mushrooming into full-blown problems.

In today’s environment, however, even the best-prepared employer may face an employment-related claim or lawsuit.  If this occurs, our lawyers will step in to defend your rights. We have extensive experience representing employers in complaint investigations and administrative proceedings by state and federal agencies such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the US and North Carolina Departments of Labor. 

We also defend businesses against employment-related claims in state and federal courts, as well as employment-related arbitrations conducted under the American Arbitration Association’s Rules for Resolution of Employment Disputes. We have experience in dealing with a wide variety of claims, including:

• Common law wrongful discharge and discharge in violation of public policy
• Discrimination based on gender, race, age, religion, national origin, disability status
• Interference with FMLA rights
• ERISA claims
• Intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress
• Claims for unemployment benefits
• Defamation claims
• Claims for retaliatory discharge

Finally, we can help you protect what you’ve built by drafting employment, non-competition, non-solicitation, confidentiality and separation agreements that treat your employees fairly, but minimize their ability to harm your business through unfair competition when they leave your employ. We experience enforcing such agreements either through injunctive relief granted by the courts or by negotiated settlement. We have also been successful in freeing employees who wish to go to work for others or start their own businesses from overreaching and unreasonable non-compete or non-solicitation agreements.

Employment Practice Area Contact lawyers: Michael T. Medford, Kristen G. Lingo