As the New Year begins a couple of things to consider:
- Is the company employee manual up to date – any changes necessary? – The beginning of the year is always a good time to review those policies and procedures and see how they worked in 2019. Often the year will show some deficiencies or problems with policies as they are applied.
- Are employee files up to date? Make sure all employees have acknowledged receiving the most recent HR manual or any changes to the manual.
- Are company employment agreements up to date? Make sure any employment agreements are updated or amended to reflect changes in ownership or term expiration. Quite often those agreements are forgotten about and there is no agreement in place.
Make sure employees have signed off on all non-compete, non-solicit, or confidentiality agreements. Make sure you have signatures - Frequently the end of the year involves reviews. Make sure those reviews are acknowledged by the employee and make it to their employment files.Do you have job descriptions for your employees? Do you even need them?
- Are your independent contractors really employees?
- Is it time for some employees to move elsewhere?
- Is there a troublesome employee our there that might benefit from a performance improvement plan?
- Get your lawyer to take you out for lunch so they can update you on any new employees issues coming in 2020 and so you can pick their brain about any other issues.
All the best in 2020!
