Are you risking an expensive lawsuit?

It only takes one uncomfortable look, one complaint, one inappropriate touch or off color statement for a single employee to file a harassment lawsuit. Do you want to risk the future of your business due to the lack of professional harassment training? Sexual harassment in the California workplace continues to spur payouts in the millions! Supervisors can be personally liable for their actions and the acts of their employees if the supervisor failed to act. Business insurance may not pay judgments against supervisors. There may be punitive damages claimed against your business for failure to provide adequate supervisor training. Our best advice, provide on-site, interactive supervisor harassment training annually. By providing harassment training for your supervisors, they will understand how to identify potential harassment situations, thereby reducing your company’s liability. Our recommended steps: 1.   Verify that your handbook is California compliant and includes a general and sexual harassment policy with instructions of how and who to report potential violations or questionable conduct. 2.   Annually review / update policy changes with your employees. We have discovered that often, employees do not understand what a harassment-free workplace is. 3.   Thoroughly investigate all claims. If severe or the claim involve a supervisor, see independent assistance. Many times, your attorney will retain an HR firm such as eqHR Solutions to conduct an independent confidential investigation. 4.   If you are a California employer with 50 or more employees, you must provide mandatory supervisor sexual harassment training every two years and new supervisors within six month.

If you are a serious business leader, who understands the potential liability threat, you will not opt for an inexpensive online sexual harassment training course. You will retain your law firm or a professional HR consulting firm like eqHR Solutions. 

If you have questions about harassment claims or training, please call us.  There is no charge for your initial consultation.  

New California Bill - Requires Paid Sick Leave for Most Employees

If you are a CA employer you should be aware of this announcement. On Wednesday, Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation that entitles most CA workers, including part-time workers, to three paid sick days a year. The new law takes effect in 2015.

Surprise, surprise not everyone agrees with the new law. Some business groups said small businesses might not have enough employees to fill in for sick workers, which seems to imply it is OK for sick workers not to stay home when sick, but come to work and infect their co-workers.

In addition, the CA Chamber of Commerce and the Society of Human Resources Management opposed this bill.

We recommend our clients provide sick and vacation hours. We agree this law may cause a limited financial burden, but in our experience, even limited employee benefits do increase morale, productivity and employee retention.

You can view the entire article at http://www.sacbee.com/2014/09/10/6695628/jerry-brown-signs-bill-requiring.html

Do you have an opinion about this new law? Please post a comment

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eqHR Solutions is a professional, full service human resources consulting firm where trained consultants assist business leaders strategize their HR plans by providing guidance to avoid HR regulatory pitfalls.

We are a boutique HR consulting firm that is available to resolve your human resources issues or complete needed human resource projects. 

Los Angeles City to Pay 26-million Dollars for a Wage & Hour Class Action

Why should this story be so interesting to company leaders?  Rather than first seek advice from a knowledgeable HR professional or labor attorney, it appears the leaders decided to surrender to citizen complaints.  After all, these were just garbage-men. 

The moral of this story, seek advice from a  human resources professional before you make an employment decision that could cost your company millions. 

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The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday finalized a $26-million legal settlement to end a lawsuit over a ban on lunchtime naps by trash-truck drivers. The expenditure, approved on a 9-2 vote, resolves a class-action lawsuit involving nearly 1,100 sanitation workers who said they were improperly barred from sleeping and engaging in other activities during their meal breaks.

Sanitation officials had imposed the no-nap rule to avoid the bad publicity that would come if a resident, business owner or television news crew stumbled across a sleeping city employee. But lawyers for the drivers said the city, by limiting workers' mealtime activities, had essentially robbed them of their meal breaks.

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eqHR Solutions is a professional, full service human resources consulting firm where trained consultants assist business leaders strategize their HR plans by providing guidance to avoid HR regulatory pitfalls.
We are a boutique HR consulting firm that is available to resolve your human resources issues or complete needed human resource projects.  

Can an Employer Deduct Vacation Hours for Partial-Day Absences?

In this recent CA appellate case, the court confirmed that an employer may charge an exempt employee's vacation account for less than four hour partial-day absences.  The plaintiff's argued that his employer, General Atomics', could only deduct hours from his vacation balance if the employee partial-day absence exceed four hours.

Rhea v. General Atomics (CA4/1 D064517 7/21/14) Exempt Employees/Partial Day Absence Deductions

This appeals presents a challenge to General Atomics' employment practice of requiring exempt employees to use their annual leave hours when they are absent from work for portions of a day.  Although Conley v. Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (2005) 131 Cal.App.4th 260, 263 (Conley) established that California law does not prohibit an employer "from following the established federal policy permitting employers to deduct from exempt employees' vacation leave, when available, on account of partial-day absences," appellant Lori Rhea contends that Conley was wrongly decided, or in the alternative, that even under Conley, General Atomics is not permitted to deduct from an exempt employee's leave bank when the employee is absent for less than four hours. 

We conclude that Rhea's contentions are without merit, and accordingly we affirm the trial court's judgment in favor of General Atomics.

http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/D064517.PDF

    

eqHR is an Authorized ADP On-Site Training Firm

ADP does not offer on-site training for many of their high quality payroll / HR products and it is not cost effective for small to medium size clients to maintain permanent ADP product training staff.

Since there is a natural overlap of payroll and human resources services, we have been working closely with ADP representatives to help solve their client's needs. This month, we were added to the list of ADP approved consultants for on-site product training and implementation

eqHR consultants can provide ADP product expertise to solve your training and implementation issues to maximize the investment of your ADP products. In just a few hours, eqHR consultants, can fully implement your ADP product, train your staff, and/or create custom reporting templates than can be used repeatedly.

eqHR  can reduce your payroll expense - Outsource your payroll data entry to eqHR Solutions. Keying payroll is not a full time position. We have clients in Los Angeles and Orange Counties with 15 to 300 employees, who are saving significantly after outsourcing their ADP payroll data entry function.       

New Court Decision - Commissioned Employee Exception

The Supreme Court of California just ruled on a case at the request of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Peabody v. Time Warner should be reviewed by any employer who maintain a sales force that is compensated hourly near the minimum hourly wage and who's employees are are paid commissions on a monthly basis.

The facts as reported are that from July 2008 to May 15, 2009, Peabody was a Time Warner account
executive selling advertising on the company‟s cable television channels. Every other week, Time Warner paid $769.23 in hourly wages, the equivalent of $9.61 per hour, assuming a 40-hour workweek. About every other pay period, Time Warner paid commission wages under its account executive compensation plan.

Time Warner argued that commissions should be reassigned from the biweekly pay periods in which they were paid to earlier pay periods. It reasoned that the commissions should be attributed to the “monthly pay period for which they were earned.”  Attributing the commission wages in this manner would satisfy the exemption‟s minimum earnings prong that requires a minimum hourly rate of $12.00 per hour. 

The court concluded it may not do so. Whether the minimum earnings prong is satisfied depends on the amount of wages actually paid in a pay period. An employer may not attribute wages paid in one pay period
to a prior pay period to cure a shortfall.
 

Nancy Trujillo Joins Advisory Board

Please help us welcome Nancy Trujillo to our Board of Advisers. Nancy's various executive roles and experience will provide eqHR Solutions with valuable business insight.

Nancy Trujillo is the Chief Financial Officer and a senior management member for the Santa Margarita Water District and oversees the finance/accounting, information technology, and customer relations groups. The District provides water and wastewater treatment services to more than 155,000 residential and commercial customers in south Orange County. Previously, Nancy held executive finance roles with MIG Real Estate and The Irvine Company, and has over 25 years’ experience in real estate development, acquisitions, operations, and financial management. She had responsibility for all financial aspects of a multi-billion dollar real estate portfolio and was a key player at both ...........