News

Why “dead-naming” a transgender employee and assigning undesirable tasks only to minorities could land you in court.

Our team recently engaged in discussions with both current and former officials at Homeland Security Investigations, the workplace enforcement arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. In these discussions, beyond learning about the widely publicized plans to declare a state of emergency and to involve the military and National Guard in deportation and worksite enforcement activity, we gained insights into a few of the government’s lesser-known plans.

There are lots of legitimate reasons employers might need to terminate employees. In all cases, HR must review the reason for the termination and ensure the decision will be defensible in court should the former employee decide to file a lawsuit.

Suppose an employee states she is going to be absent because she is not feeling well due to pregnancy and is going to see her doctor. We as her employer consider the day to be covered by the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, so there’s no need for a doctor’s note. But if she continues to need time off because she is not feeling well due to pregnancy, at what point have we moved from time off for a normal pregnancy symptom and into leave?

It can be frightening to hear an employee has launched a federal discrimination lawsuit. Headlines emphasizing multimillion-dollar jury verdicts don’t help. Here’s what’s at stake should an employee win a discrimination lawsuit.

Employees who are properly classified as exempt are paid on a salary basis. Because you must pay them their full salary in any week when they perform any work, there’s generally no need to track every hour and minute they work. But what happens if you classified the worker incorrectly and she wasn’t an exempt employee after all?

What should employers do now that the overtime rule has been overturned? The good news is they won’t need to raise salaries on Jan. 1. But what about reversing the changes made in good faith back in July? Here are your options.

We pay a $1,000 signing bonus to new employees in exchange for agreeing to commit to working for us for at least one year. A new employee requested a three-month leave of absence for the birth of her child; the leave would begin six months after her hire date. Can we pay the bonus in two parts?

We’ve all thought it: “I just have a good feeling about this applicant.” Relying on subjective factors such as interview skills and personality is not the best way to pinpoint successful job candidates.

Disabled employees are entitled to reasonable accommodations that allow them to perform the essential functions of their jobs. Arriving at those accommodations is supposed to be an interactive process. If employers drag out that process, they run the very real risk of being sued.