Employee Claims, Investigation and Litigation

Unfortunately, conflicts with employees, former employees, applicants and government agencies can occur even when you have taken reasonable preventative measures.  Claims of misconduct can be made between employees, which the employer must investigate.  Employees can make claims against managers or the company, which must be carefully evaluated and appropriately defended.  Government agencies may find reason to initiate an audit or investigation.  In such situations, early legal counsel is imperative.  The sooner you are apprised of the legal issues and options, the better able you will be to respond.  Such situations should not be left to non-legal advisors or HR form dispensaries.

The attorneys at Alaska HR Consulting can offer years of employment litigation and consulting experience to evaluate your company’s options and to defend your company’s legal interests.  If the conflict is between employees, Alaska HR Consulting can neutrally investigate allegations of harassment, discrimination, substance abuse, theft or other workplace misconduct.  Sometimes internal conflicts are best addressed with mediation or workgroup facilitations. When claims have been made outside the company to an agency or through a lawsuit, there is simply no substitute for prompt legal action.  Whatever the situation, Alaska HR Consulting can assist in the appropriate response.

Management Training

The best of intentions and even a good set of policies and procedures will mean very little if your management personnel do not know how to manage employees.  The most dangerous employee on the payroll is often the untrained supervisor.  The legal requirements impacting the workplace are now too numerous, complicated, and even arbitrary to safely manage employees by intuition and a good sense of fairness.  There are ways to safely investigate sexual harassment or whistle-blowing complaints and ways that will result in expensive litigation.  There are some things you can say and do when managing employees with disabilities and some things that will result in a complaint of discrimination.  Wage and hour management, employee privacy, FMLA and other employee leave regulations, employee discipline, preventing workplace violence, record-keeping and numerous other issues are important topics of training for management personnel. 

Alaska HR Consulting can help you to train your workforce with on-site or off-site interactive seminars.  Training for individuals, management teams or even larger multi-employer groups facing common human resource issues can help put the power of prevention in the hands of those who need it most: the front line supervisors enforcing the rules of your company and serving as the first point of contact for employee complaints and concerns.

Program Review and Planning

A key to effective human resource management is the ability to simultaneously focus on day-to-day issues affecting the individual employee as well as managing for the future of the workforce as a whole. Employer program planning is a vital part of preventive management.  Affirmative Action programs, required or voluntary, can be very involved and do not come together overnight or without complication.  The same can be said of workforce reorganizations such as mergers and RIF’s (reductions in force).  Similarly, Disability Accommodation Programs, Drug Testing Programs and Employee Assistance Programs all require advance planning, long-range troubleshooting and care to meet all legal requirements and to fully integrate such programs with the rest of your business. 

Alaska HR Consulting can work with you to develop fully compliant and effective employee programs that are consistent with your business operations and workplace philosophy.  If you have already developed such programs and want to make sure that they comply with current legal requirements, or if the changing business environment has caused you to reevaluate the need for such programs, Alaska HR Consulting can help.

Government Audit and Reporting

For better or worse, employing other people means that in addition to relationships with your employees, you also have relationships with a collection of government agencies:  EEOC, DOL, OFCCP, OSHA, AERC, AHRC and other acronyms in the alphabet soup of employer regulation.  Few things are more daunting to employers, particularly new employers, than reporting to these agencies about various aspects of your business. Whether it’s routine EEO reporting and on-going record keeping requirements, or whether you are suddenly dealing with an OSHA inspection or an investigation by local, state or federal equal rights commissions, you want to get it right and minimize the complications.

Alaska HR Consulting can help you to manage your relationship with government agencies either as an official point of contact and formal legal representative, or simply as a consultant to assist in navigating the regulatory minefield.

Contracts and Agreements

A company’s relationship with its employees is an enforceable, legally regulated relationship, regardless of whether it is governed by a written contract.  Unwritten contracts, however, are usually worth the paper on which they are printed.  Written employment contracts and other agreements between you and your employees are important tools that can help bring clarity, control and predictability into the workplace, for the benefit of all concerned. 

Alaska HR Consulting has the legal experience necessary to prepare enforceable and constructive agreements – including employment contracts, independent contractor agreements, non-competition agreements, severance and release agreements, and others—that will help you to maintain a clear understanding between you and your employees.  If disputes do develop, well-drafted agreements can define not only how those disputes must be resolved, but can also help you prove your side of the story.

Pre-Employment Background Checking

Legal Notice Review and Preparation

Over the past decade, government regulation of the workplace has exploded.  Your employees are entitled to a variety of legal notifications in a wide range of circumstances.  It is imperative for employers to know what notices are required under federal and state laws, including the Family Medical Leave Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Alaska Wage and Hour Act, COBRA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and others.  Particularly for new businesses, knowing the types of notifications, in what circumstances they are required and what exactly they should say, is a daunting task.  Not knowing, however, is an invitation for trouble.

Alaska HR Consulting can provide you with up-to-date notice forms and can advise you on the circumstances in which they are required.  Some situations require more than a generic form to do the job.  The attorneys at Alaska HR Consulting can help analyze those situations from a legal perspective and can prepare notices that best address your needs while taking into account aspects of a problem that may be too sensitive or peculiar to leave to a one-size-fits-all approach.

Policy and Procedure Review and Preparation

For any company, working policies and procedures are fundamental to the employment relationship; without them, the task of managing employees is reduced to a dangerous game of chance.  On the other hand, simply having a set of rules is not nearly enough.  An employer’s policies and procedures will often cause more harm than good unless they are clearly written, widely disseminated, generally understood, consistently enforced, compliant with federal and state law, and designed to avoid some of the more predictable employment liability hazards. 

Alaska HR Consulting can create your policy and procedure manuals from a blank slate or we can revise and improve on whatever you may already have in place. Sometimes it is only a particular type of policy that is causing concern such as leave or benefit policies, sexual harassment policies, grievance procedures or compensation policies.  For other companies, the issue may relate more to hiring procedures such as using an essential job function analysis to avoid discrimination claims or knowing when and how to conduct pre-employment testing that will not violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.  Whatever the concern, Alaska HR Consulting can help you make sure your policies and procedures are helping rather than hurting.