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The Department of Labor announced yesterday in a press release that it has launched its first application for smartphones — a timesheet app to “help employees independently track the hours they work and determine the wages they are owed.”  Yes, that’s right.  The DOL created an iPhone app that allows employees to track their hours and calculate the amount of wages/overtime to which they may be entitled.

As you can imagine, this news was lighting up the blog-o-sphere all day, with just about every employment law blogger we follow chiming in on the issue.  Molly DiBianca at the Delaware Employment Law Blog wrote this post, which has screenshots and a good explanation of how the app works.  Perhaps my favorite quote comes from Jon Hyman at the Ohio Employer’s Law Blog.  In his post, Jon warns:

I cannot overstate the significance of this story.  The DOL is getting more and more aggressive in its willingness to help employees prosecute wage and hour violations.  If you do not know whether your wage and hour practices pass muster under the [FLSA], you are sitting on a bomb waiting to detonate.  And, the DOL continues to provide employees with the match to light the fuse.

Jon hit the nail on the head.  As you’ve heard us say many times before, FLSA wage/overtime claims are everywhere.  This is especially true here in the Middle District, where we have one of the highest rate of FLSA filings in the country.  This latest announcement from the DOL serves as a reminder — and huge red warning flag — to employers that these wage/overtime cases aren’t going away anytime soon.

What should you do?  Check, double check, then check again all of your classification decisions and time-keeping methods.  If you don’t have employees signing off on their timecards, start NOW.  While this new DOL app may give employees another method of keeping track of their time, it is not the end-all, be-all of time-keeping.  The stronger the employer’s records the better, and having your employees sign off on their time records may help discredit whatever records employees create in the DOL app.

We are pleased to feature a post from guest blogger Amanda Brock.  Amanda is a Henderson Franklin attorney and regular contributor to the Legal Scoop on Southwest Florida Real Estate, our real estate blog.  As many of you will remember from our seminar last month, in addition to her land use and environmental law practice, Amanda is assisting our clients with immigration-related matters.  Here, Amanda offers several great pointers for I-9 retention:

Who doesn’t love filling out mandatory forms from the federal government? In addition to being mandatory, the I-9 Employment Eligibility Verification forms come with a host of regulations that can easily trip up even the most experienced HR professional. Adding insult to injury, if the government audits your I-9s, you generally have only 3 days to respond.

I recently heard a great presentation from Colorado attorney Jeff Joseph, who shared a few key pointers that may help your company retain the I-9s in the event of an audit:

*       Conduct an annual in-house inspection of I-9s for all employees (or ask outside counsel conduct mock audits);

*       Identify one person to be in charge of I-9s to streamline the process and retain documents (and train this person regularly on I-9 regulations);

*       Make sure all employees have an I-9 (every employee hired after 11/6/86 should have one, with limited exceptions);

*        Make sure you’re using the correct form – the current version is at www.uscis.gov;

*        Regularly check the Handbook for Employers Form M-274 issued by USCIS – it’s a great reference material and updated frequently;

*        Keep I-9s for the proper period and purge after the period passes – this includes current employees and may include prior employees – you must keep the I-9 for 3 years from the date of hire or 1 year from the date of termination, whichever is longer; and

*       File your I-9s in 3 separate folders:

o       Current Employees

o       Prior Employees (review regularly for any you can purge – holding on to them for too long can actually create a liability)

o       Follow-up (those that need re-verification – for example, an employee’s I-94 showed work authorization for only one year; you should calendar a reminder to review in one year to be sure they are still in compliance)

Following these tips will ensure a much easier experience if you are audited, and have the nice side effect of also streamlining your everyday operations. This is a win-win, and who doesn’t love a win-win?!

We are pleased to welcome Amanda into our extended employment law family, and happy to now offer these additional services to our clients.  If you have any immigration-related issues, Amanda can be reached at 239.344.1269 or at amanda.brock@henlaw.com.

 

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Last week, we hosted the 19th Annual HR Law & Solutions seminar.  We welcomed a huge crowd and, for the first time, two fabulous guest speakers.  Paul Macleish got the day started off right (bagpipes anyone?!), and Dr. Rick Goodman finished the day with a bang.  In between, attendees learned about new cases, the FLSA, worker’s compensation, and GINA from Henderson Franklin attorneys.

We inducted three new members into the HR Law & Solutions Hall of Fame:  Lori Burke of INgage Networks, Anna Evans of Lykes Insurance, and Sandie Peterson of Markham Norton.  Our Hall of Fame recognizes attendees for their contribution to our seminar, and to the HR field in Southwest Florida.

Anna Evans, Sandie Peterson, Lori Burke

A packed house!

You can check out our Facebook page for more photos.  We want to thank everyone who attended for helping make the event such a success.  A very special thanks goes out to our generous lunch sponsor, Lykes Insurance.  Your continued support and partnership means so much to us!

Plans are already underway for next year’s seminar — our 20th anniversary celebration!

 

By now we hope you have registered for our 19th Annual HR Law & Solutions Seminar, as we are at full capacity with a wait list!  Inevitably, though, we will have a few cancellations, so if you haven’t registered yet and would like to attend please contact Gail Lamarche ASAP.  We have so many exciting things planned, and don’t forget the 5.75 HRCI Strategic Credits. Check out the agenda here.

For the first time, we will have live Twitter updates throughout the seminar, provided mostly by the fabulous Lori Burke on the HR Collier feed.  We will use #swflhrlaw and #shrm as hashtags.  If you’re in the audience, feel free to join in!

Finally, we wanted to give everyone the opportunity to send in their questions for the breakout sessions in advance.  We will, of course, field live questions at the seminar, but if you want to send them in now please email them to at gail.lamarche@henlaw.com.

See you Tuesday!

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Today the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued its Final Rule on the Employment Eligibility Verification process.  That’s the fancy name for the Form I-9, which all employers must complete for all newly hired employees.  The Final Rule becomes effective May 16, 2011.

According to the USCIS press release, the main changes made by the interim rule include:  “prohibiting employers from accepting expired doucments; revising the list of acceptable documents by removing outdated documents and making technical amendments; and adding documentations applicable to certain citizens of the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands.”

As you all know, the list of acceptable documents is divided into three sections:

  • List A—documents that establish both identity and employment authorization (ex. U.S. passport, Permanent Resident Card)
  • List B—documents that establish only identity (ex. driver’s license, ID card)
  • List C—documents that establish only employment authorization (ex. birth certificate, social security card)

Review the list of acceptable documents and make sure you aren’t accepting any of the documents that were removed from the list.   You may continue to use the current version of the Form I-9 (rev. 08/07/09) or the previous version (rev. 02/02/09).

If you have questions, check out the Handbook for Employers, Instructions for Completing the Form I-9.  We’ve used it in the past and found it to be very helpful.

In reading Jon Hyman’s most recent “What I Read This Week” (which, by the way, is an *awesome* resource if you haven’t seen it before), we came across this article on the “Three Best Practices for Terminating Insubordinates.”  In the article, Stephen Meyer offers a three-step plan for terminating insubordinates:  document; apply progressive discipline; and enforce consistently.

This is EXACTLY what we tell our clients (in fact, we know a couple of you reading right now have heard this quite recently!).  Though it may seem pretty basic, the importance of following these steps cannot be overstated.  Document, document, document.  Many times we’ve seen clients terminate an employee they claim has been a problem employee for X number of days, weeks, or months, yet the employer cannot produce a single incident report, written warning, or even a note to the employee’s personnel file to support this claim.  Those situations can be downright cringe-worthy for the lawyer who is faced with defending against a claim stemming from the termination.

While we certainly understand that dealing with problem employees and issuing disciplinary action is not exactly a fun part of any supervisor/HR professional’s job, it really is so important to head off problems when they first begin by following these steps.  When you do this consistently, the employer will be in a much better position to terminate the insubordinate employee, and at the same time you will help minimize the employer’s risk of being sued.

Plus, you’ll make your lawyer proud!

We are less than three weeks away from the 19th Annual HR Law & Solutions Seminar, and thanks to an overwhelming (and record-setting!) response, we are only 10 spots away from being at full capacity.  If you haven’t signed up and want to attend, register here, or contact Gail Lamarche at gail.lamarche@henlaw.com as soon as possible.

As we’ve mentioned before, we are featuring two fabulous guest speakers this year.  We profiled the first, Paul Macleish, in this post last month.  We want to take a minute to profile our second guest speaker, Dr. Rick Goodman:

What can an ex-team physician for the St. Louis Rams teach local business owners and HR professionals?  Dr. Rick Goodman’s high-energy speeches are designed for companies of all sizes that want to maximize their potential. Dr. Rick has been working and studying with some of the most successful people and organizations in the world for over 20 years. He has developed unique and effective systems that help organizations.

In 1995, Dr. Rick became a medical staff member for two professional sports teams, the St. Louis Rams and the St. Louis Ambush. After selling his medical practice, Dr. Rick worked with two of the largest corporations in America, McDonnell Douglas and Boeing Corporation, where he implemented strategies to form and execute self-directed work teams. Throughout the project, he worked directly with leaders from all branches of the armed services to increase the productivity of all employees, maximize efficiency, and cut costs. During the first two years, Dr. Rick saved each company several million dollars and even prevented layoffs at all of their facilities.

Dr. Rick doesn’t speak, teach, or train from the text book but passionately shares his life’s stories and experiences with laughter and fun. Click here for a YouTube sneak peak.

We are very excited to welcome Dr. Rick to our seminar, and we think attendees are in for a real treat.  See you soon!

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Yesterday, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass) re-introduced the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (“ENDA”) in the U.S. House of Representatives.  As you may recall, the ENDA would prohibit discrimination in employment based on an applicant’s or employee’s sexual orientation or gender identity.  If passed, the ENDA would create an additional protected class of employees.  Many states already have similar laws, but Florida is not one of them.

The ENDA, along with several other proposed bills, was big news back when President Obama first took office, as most experts expected the democratically-controlled Congress to institute sweeping employment law changes.  You can view one of our old newsletters on this topic here.

Fast-forward a couple of years, and Congress’ landscape has already changed.  Though the ENDA has been a major priority for civil rights groups for years, and though some reports have public support of the ENDA listed as high as 90%, with Republicans in control of the House the bill isn’t likely to garner much attention or support at this time.  Still, we will keep an eye on it and let you know if it does pass.

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Register now to attend the 19th Annual HR Law & Solutions Seminar, sponsored by Henderson Franklin’s Employment Law Practice Group. The seminar will be held on Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at the Pelican Preserve Country ClubClubhouse in Fort Myers, Florida. Registration and continental breakfast begin at 7:30 a.m. Topics and speakers include:

Registration fee is $25.00 per person and includes the seminar materials, a continental breakfast, plated lunch and valet parking. Lunch is generously sponsored by Lykes Insurance.

*HRCI has approved this course for 5.75 strategic business certification hours*  The use of this seal is not an endorsement by the  of the quality of the program. It means that this program has met the HR Certification Institute’s criteria to be pre-approved for recertification credit.

Click here to register.  Contact Gail Lamarche, Henderson Franklin’s Marketing Director, with any questions.  Gail can be reached at 239.344.1186 or gail.lamarche@henlaw.com.

Check back with us in the next few weeks as we profile guest speaker Dr. Rick Goodman, and preview some of the other sessions.  We can’t wait to see everyone!

We are very close to opening registration for the 19th Annual HR Law & Solutions seminar and we couldn’t be more excited!  We have a lot of great things planned this year, including, for the first time, TWO guest speakers.  The first, Paul Macleish, is profiled below.  We will profile the second guest speaker in the coming weeks. 

Our first guest speaker, Paul Macleish, is originally from the Scottish border.  Paul is a seasoned human resource professional, leadership coach, facilitator, author and motivational speaker. Paul created Achieve Leadership,® a company which specializes in creating and sustaining a culture of leadership excellence through sound business practices, good people skills, human resource best practices and great mentorship, development and guidance. 

Paul is an authority on the subject of developing world-class leaders to meet the challenges of today and the vision of tomorrow.   He was involved in the leadership development performance excellence strategies at Walt Disney World®, which helped transform the Disney® culture to a culture of high leadership performance and accountability.

Paul’s presentation "Becoming a True Strategic Partner" will help attendees:

  • understand why they need to become strategic partners
  • understand how to identify key business needs that will help align participants as a strategic partner
  • build an awareness of influencing skills and how to build alliances in the workplace
  • understand the importance of the company vision, mission and goals and how to use them on a daily basis
  • understand how to have a greater strategic impact with your boss, team and peers and elevate your professional reputation within the workplace.

Check back next week for registration, and for a very exciting announcement about the HRCI credits that will be available to attendees this year.  Make sure to register early, as last year we were near full capacity with 280 attendees.  Thank you so much for your continued support, and we look forward to seeing you all Tuesday, April 26, 2011.