Ep. 95: Human Resources 101

Prepare for a variety of employee management challenges with practical tips for Human Resources. Legal experts at NFIB cover essential employment law questions, top hiring practices, and more. The podcast features a special segment from a recent NFIB webinar with additional information on handbooks and other resources for small business owners.   

 Learn more: Human Resources 101: A Small Business HR Playbook webinar 

Legal guides for small business owners 

Previous webinar resources: Webinar: Five Most Frequent HR Mistakes and How to Avoid Them 

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

The Small Business Rundown is the official podcast of the National Federation of Independent Business, the member-driven voice of small business. Every two weeks, a new episode offers resources for small business owners and information on relevant laws and regulations. NFIB and our members advocate to keep U.S. small businesses strong and independent in Washington, D.C., all 50 states, and the nation's courts.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Welcome to the Small Business Rundown. I'm Rob Smith, Senior Attorney of the NFIB Small Business Legal Center. Recently, Beth Melito, who is Vice President and Executive Director of the NFIB Legal Center, and I hosted a webinar on Human Resources 101. We discussed best practices for hiring, wage and hour laws, employee handbooks, and more. This podcast episode includes a segment from that webinar. Let's take a listen. We're going to start diving in with the substance of today's webinar with basically what is the beginning of the employment relationship with your employees, the very start of that process and the start of interviewing the employees, bringing them on board, training them, and things that employers and especially small businesses need to be aware of during this process. So the first thing, you know, is the hiring process, how to interview employees, how to document the hiring decisions that you're using when choosing whether to hire an individual or not hire an individual. And I want to touch on this first bullet here for a minute, HR compliance. It is very important that small businesses keep in mind when they're going through the interview process, they need to stick to job-related interview questions. It's so important because nowadays people often say, you know, who do you want to work with? Well, it's someone you may want to go have a drink with after work. And that is very true. You want someone who is, you know, cordial and is going to be a good worker in the environment and a good fit. But there's a very fine line between determining whether someone is a good fit for the workplace and asking too many personal questions that could lead to problems for small businesses. And I do want to flag on this topic, NFIB, the Small Business Legal Center, we have an employment handbook that talks about federal employment laws. And in that handbook are interviewing don'ts, common questions about what not to ask prospective employees. For example, their family status. Are you planning on having a child in the future? Don't ask those questions. Tell me about your partner, or are you single? Are you married? Are you widowed? Don't ask those questions. Those are the kind of questions that could lead a prospective employee to claim discrimination if they eventually don't get the job. So it's best to just avoid any of those kind of questions. So that's a resource that I would urge all of you to look at and use in interviewing prospective employees. Moving on to I-9 compliance, this is so important in our current environment, as I'm sure every single one of you know. We're constantly hearing about immigration issues. We're constantly hearing about workplace visas, someone's authorization to work in the United States. So we can't stress enough the importance of complying with the I-9 requirements. So, and what form I-9 does is it verifies a new hire's identity and their ability to work in the United States. The form must be completed and signed within three business days of the employee's first day of employment. So that's a little bit on the timeline. And under federal law, employers must keep the employees' I-9 for three years after the hire date or one year after their last day of employment. So those that's just kind of the general overview. But and again, I want to stop and touch on the I-9 issue and flag a little bit of it because again, it is so important. We get questions in the legal center constantly about I-9 compliance. In anticipation for today's webinar, we got a question about I-9 compliance, touching on how important it is and whatnot. So that's why I really want to focus on this. Back in January, the legal center did a blog for small businesses, and it's on our legal center's website. And it was a blog post that goes over everything that a small business owner needs to know to comply with the form I-9 requirements. So I would urge uh all of you on this webinar to look at that and utilize that and making sure that you comply with those requirements. Also, as Beth mentioned, to start the webinar, I want to flag for everybody to put on your calendars. October 7th, uh, we are going to have a webinar with an immigration attorney. And the sole focus of the webinar is going to be complying with I-9. So if this is something that you've had trouble with in the past, or this is something that you still have questions on, I would urge you to put a calendar hold on your calendar for that webinar. Again, it'll be October 7th at noon with an immigration attorney. And I think it'll be a great webinar for any small business who has to deal with the I-9 compliance issue, which is basically every small business. So moving on to worker classification, I'm not going to touch on that too much because I know Beth is going to get into that a little bit in a few slides. Just want to flag, it's important to classify your workers correctly from the very beginning, because if you don't, you may be subject to penalties and back pay for misclassification, even if you ultimately classify an employee correctly as exempt or non-exempt under the FLSA, or you classify them correctly as an employee or an independent contractor later on. If you make a mistake at the start of the working relationship, the employee or the independent contractor can always come back and make a claim for back pay, and the small business could be subject to penalties for that initial misclassification. So it's always important to spend some time on the front end, making sure that worker classification is given enough time that you're spending enough time and resources to make sure that every employee is classified properly. And if you need help on this, this is one where we would suggest working with an attorney. I know the upfront costs sometimes can get up there. Attorneys cost a lot of money these days, but it is worth it in the end to avoid some of those back penalties, back pay, and headaches later on from misclassification. Moving on to HR policies, NFIB and the Legal Center, we do have an employee handbook. And this is a great resource for small businesses, especially, because not only do we have a PDF of the employee handbook, we have a Microsoft Word version. So you can download the Legal Center's employee handbook and edit it however you'd like. So I would urge all of you to use our handbook as a template. That's what it's there for. That's one of the benefits that NFIB provides for small businesses, are these employee handbooks. They're completely free on our website. So there's no charge. Anyone can go and get them at any time. So I would urge all of you guys to do so. Think of the employee handbook as not just a way to tell employees about the business or company policies or even answer frequently asked questions, as the slides suggest. Think about it as a way for your business to lay out the terms of an informal contract with your employee, so to speak. Because that's essentially what the employee handbook is. It's a contract between you and your employee where you are saying these are the policies of this business, and where the employee is accepting the position, reading over the handbook, and usually the employee will be asked to sign a document stating that they've read the handbook. They are accepting those terms that you've laid out. So think about it in that sense of this is your opportunity to really tell your employees, this is what I expect, this is what the business expects, and this is how we are going to operate. These are going to be your benefits. These are going to be, uh this is going to be your pay, your leave. This is what I will tolerate in the workplace. This is what won't be tolerated in the workplace. As the employer, you get to set out all those policies. And the best place to do that is the employee handbook. So what does a good handbook entail? Well, a few things. First, you want to include a mention that, and again, most states are at-will employment states. Um, so you just want to make sure that yours is an at-will employment state. But like I said, the overwhelming majority are, but you want to mention that so your employee is aware that employment is at-will. And you know, sometimes we get questions on this. So I just want to stop and clarify the distinction between at-will employment and right to work employment. These are not the same thing. Right to work employment or a right to work state means that employees cannot be forced to join a union in order to accept a job position. Neither the employer or a union that represents employees in that workplace can force an employee to join the union. That's what right to work means. So when you say, for example, Michigan is a right to work state, that's what we're talking about. At-will employment is very different. At-will employment means that an employer can terminate an employee for any reason at any time or for no reason at all. So it's just important to clarify the distinction on those, because again, sometimes we get a little bit of confusion on that. We see that, and those terms tend to be used interchangeably, especially when people say, oh, this is an at-will state, this is a right-to-work state. So it's important to clarify and remember the difference between those. Other things to include in your handbook, you know, what discipline is going to look like, whether there's going to be a structured, tiered policy, you know, uh reprimand initially if an employee violates the handbook, what that might look like, what an escalating punishment might look like, just so the employees are aware and they have notice of what's going to happen if they violate some of the provisions in the handbook. Also, rights for employees after termination. When should they expect to receive their paycheck if they've been terminated? Many states have laws that require employees to be paid within a certain time frame. So this is where, as the employer, again, you have to be in compliance with whatever law of the state that you live in. This is where you can say, this is when you will receive a paycheck, your last paycheck, and any other benefits that you may be entitled to after termination. And another one that a lot of employees will want to be aware of is this time off and leave policy. That's one that all of your employees will, you know, be concerned of, want to know what the leave policy is for the business. So that this is a good place to set that for the employees and make them aware of how much leave you're going to provide as the employer, whether you provide leave, how many days off in advance they need to ask to use PTO, what the process looks like to request PTO. The handbook is where you can lay out all of that. So we have seven things here that you should include in the employee handbook as a minimum. Again, NFIB's employee handbook includes all of these. So please, I would urge you all to use ours as a template. That way you don't have to reinvent the wheel on all of these things. And you can download our employee handbook by going to nfib.com backslash legal hyphen guides backslash. For information on other HR 101 concepts, check out the link in today's show notes or visit nfib.com slash webinars. In addition to what you heard here, the webinar covers topics like family and medical leave, minimum wage, overtime, compliance with the employment laws, and potential penalties for lack of compliance. And if you have any questions about the information in today's podcast or NFIB's HR 101 webinar, contact the NFIB Legal Center. You can reach us at info at nfib.org.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Thanks for joining us for this week's episode of the Small Business Rundown. Your continued support helps us amplify the issues that matter most. If you like this episode, please help small business owners find the podcast by giving it a rating, like, or review. You can find us at nfib.com and on YouTube, X, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook.