eSignature Legitimacy for Business Termination Contract in Canada

How to eSign a document: eSignature legitimacy for Business Termination Contract in Canada

the coffeemaker is broken seriously this video is for business owners managers and human resources professionals that want to avoid employee lawsuits I'm going to give you a broad overview of modern employment law from an attorneys perspective but I'm not going to throw a bunch of legal BS at you and I'm not gonna hedge every statement like most lawyers I'm gonna give you actionable insights on how to avoid getting sued in every major area of employment law now I am an employment lawyer in California but this video isn't just for people in California it's for all 50 states but it's not legal advice if you need actual legal advice contact an employment lawyer in your state if you're in California feel free to contact me okay with that said let's get this party started [Music] employment law is a gargantuan body of law that's why this video is so long but it can be broken down into twelve bite-sized subcategories employment contracts torts in the workplace wages and hours discrimination harassment leaves of absence workplace safety unfair competition unemployment layoffs collective bargaining agreements and everything else but before we start getting into each of these I'm gonna give you the number one way to prevent employment lawsuits I've said this a thousand times and I'm gonna say it a thousand more employees do not file lawsuits because the law was broken they file lawsuits because they feel that they were treated like garbage treat your employees with dignity respect and fairness and in my opinion you'll avoid almost all lawsuits even if you've inadvertently broken the law if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you know somebody who would benefit from watching this video please share it with them I also recommend that you subscribe to my channel that way you'll be notified when I make more videos in the future do we have any red vines the red vines are gone number one employment contracts typically when an employee is hired they sign a bunch of paperwork most likely an employee handbook but that's not a contract binding them to the employer in the way we traditionally think of contracts know most employees are at will meaning they can quit at any time and for the most part employers can fire them for almost any reason at almost any time now where the vast majority of the litigation in employment contracts is and where the vast majority of the money spent by company is is over salesperson agreements salespeople have Commission agreements usually written Commission agreements hopefully where it says how much money they're going to get paid for the number of widgets that they sell where people get in trouble where companies get in troubles when they tinker with that in the middle of a sales cycle or in the middle of a sales agreement period lots of salespeople are type A and they do not like when the rules of the game are changed under their feet so don't tinker with the sales agreements except for when it's time to rewrite them and you will drastically reduce your chance of getting sued by your sales folks number two torts in the workplace okay a tort is simply the infringement of a right and in the context of employment law there's four big ones that were all the money is spent number one wrongful termination we've all heard the term but really most people don't know what it means so basically wrongful termination is when an employer fires an employee in violation of a state specific law okay I'll give you an example in California it's unlawful for an employer to fire an employee because they complained about unlawful harassment or an unsafe working environment or price-fixing so the easy action step is don't fire an employee soon after they make a complaint about something that is protected by your state law so do do a little bit of due diligence and research on your state law and then just hit the pause button before you fire somebody and consult with somebody who knows what they're talking about okay number two is defamation now this is common in former employees what do I mean by that so here's the scenario an employee is fired by you by your company and then is looking for a new job a perspective employer contacts your company and says why was John fired and then you say because he embezzled ten thousand dollars or or misquoted something by a hundred thousand dollars if the employee the former employee has some sort of evidence or a credible argument to say what you told the prospective employer is false leading to them not getting the job they've now got a defamation lawsuit against you and it's a very sad day number three is privacy pay attention to your state privacy laws this not where a ton of money is spent but it will be a lot of money if you're infringing a lot of employees privacy rights at work number four and this is a biggie misrepresentation okay the situation is as follows you put out a job advertised or you make representations as to what a job is going to be and then somebody quits their job comes to work for your company based on those job advertisements or those representations which turn out not to be true here's an easy example let's say you told somebody the job is gonna pay a hundred thousand dollars but when they show up you say no it only pays forty thousand dollars they're gonna sue you for misrepresentation and it's gonna be a sad day so make sure you work with HR to make sure everything that's in the job advertisement is accurate and correct number three the wages that people earn and the hours that they work or wage an hour in law without question the big dog here is unpaid overtime and here's how it plays out if you're an employer and you inadvertently fail to pay an employee fifteen minutes of overtime pay a day for example and that accumulates day by day by day because your policy or your pay system makes it happen then three years down the road that's a very sizable chunk of money that the employee can go after you for so you want to make sure you know your state laws on overtime very well and they change from state to state and that you follow them as close as possible now this can get really scary when you group a lot of employees together and they file a class action and it becomes especially scary when if you lose in a wage in our case you're also gonna pay attorney fees on top of the judgment so this is an area of law that you need to be very careful and you need to pay very close attention to what your state laws are all right number two is off the clock work this is very common where somebody is working for the employer benefit yet they're not on the clock and usually it's in small amounts like they show up 15 minutes before they clock in for their shift or it's a requirement that they show up or they work during their lunch break or you ask them to run errands after they clock out for the day again if you if you accumulate a lot of people and a lot of violations over the course of a long period of time this can become a large class action third bonuses tips unreimbursed expenses mileage pay attention to those rules because they add up over time forth and this is primarily when we're talking about individual lawsuits is when an employer says to an employee okay I've hired you for this job and I'm gonna pay you a salary yet the job duties that that person is required to do dictate by state law that they be paid by the hour hourly they're a non-exempt employee well then if they're being paid a salary they're not earning overtime for all the hours over 40 in a week and they're not getting lunch breaks and all the benefits that come with being a non-exempt employee so that can add up over time and they can get really expensive even just for one person if you accidentally or inadvertently or intentionally misclassify somebody number for discrimination title 7 which is the federal anti-discrimination and employment law prohibits discrimination by employers against employees or prospective employees on the basis of sex race color national origin and religion now that's the federal minimum your state probably like my state does has additional protected characteristics that your state's legislature has said are prohibited means for termination or refusal to hire so pay attention to your state's anti discrimination in employment law in California you can look at the fair employment and Housing Act and it lays them all out very clearly in the big statue the big three in terms of money spent in this area are race age and disability discrimination race is fairly self-explanatory so I'm not going to get into it historically we very much understand that age is a little bit more nuanced typically this law protects people over the age of 40 you can't fire somebody because they're over the age of 40 and replace them with a 20 year old because they have more energy that's going to look really bad in a court of law so make sure if you're terminating somebody over the age of 40 and you're replacing them with somebody who's significantly younger you need to make sure you've got documented clear reasons why that's happening have nothing to do with their age the third and by far the biggest in my opinion is disability discrimination and this is nuanced because it's not just hiring firing it's also accommodating do you need to provide your disabled employee a reasonable accommodation if they request time off to go see a doctor do you have to accommodate that if they ask for modified job duties do you have to accommodate that and if you don't think that they can do the job duties that you've lined out in your job description order you've told that employee because their disability prohibits them from doing it can you fire them this gets really complicated really messy and that's why I would say the majority of discrimination cases that my office handles and most lawyers now handle are disability discrimination cases number five harassment remember when I talked about respect dignity and fairness that's where this really starts to pay off because aside from the large class actions in my opinion harassment cases pose the largest risk to organizations in terms of dollars than any other type of case in employment law and the reason is because if an employee has a solid case against an employer for harassment they're gonna be putting forth evidence in front of a jury in a public forum that shows truly atrocious atrocious and sustained conduct by the harasser you don't want to be defending them you don't want to have anything to do with that so the actionable insight is really simple you can avoid most harassment cases if you manage your managers and what I mean by that is most harassment is done by manager who does not feel like there's going to be any consequences that they don't have any oversight over them or they don't feel like they have oversight over them so they kind of just do whatever they want so if you properly train your managers and that they that you show that the managers that there's oversight over them that they're gonna they feel like they could get in trouble if they don't behave properly then they're gonna be far less likely to engage in harassment type behavior now a good warning sign that you should be aware of as if you're getting complaints by employees about bullying bullying is not illegal right it's perfectly legal to bully somebody in an employment context it's wrong but it's legal but that should be a large warning sign to you because usually if somebody believes they're bullied they're gonna call a lawyer and that lawyer is gonna be the one who's gonna ask that employee a whole bunch of questions and if the lawyer is talented enough and there's the lawyer gets lucky they're gonna be able to tie that bullying behavior to a protected characteristic and pursue a harassment case and it's gonna be a sad day for your company number six leaves of absence this is a complicated area of law at its basic level in the olden days companies would just fire people if they couldn't come one day right so the federal government and the state government's recognizing a need for a stable workforce and predictable employment pass laws that permit people to take temporary leaves of absence from companies while that company holds the job open for them so when they come back they can resume their work without being fired that's the basic premise now the big law in the country is called the Family Medical Leave Act FMLA that's the primary one people think about it as maternity leave law but it's it's broader than that it applies to disabilities and certain other types of leaves of absence so you first want to find out whether or not FMLA even applies to your company you secondly want to find out if there's any state laws that apply to your company because like most areas of employment law there's a federal law there's a state law and they overlap and sometimes contradict each other so make sure you if if an employee of yours wants to take a leave of absence and you're unsure whether or not you have to do it and you don't want to do it make sure you consult with a professional about it before you decide to give the leave of absence or deny the leave of absence number 7 workplace safety number 1 get workers compensation insurance if you don't have it don't be dumb get it number two take workplace safety very seriously if your industry has heavy OSHA regulation find out what they are and follow them don't try to circumvent them don't cut off the safety mechanisms off the machines just do what you says and follow this proper safety protocols where workplace safety can get extra painful for an employer is if an employee comes and complains about an unsafe working environment and then the company retaliates against that employee for that complaint that's where we're getting to whistleblower type cases but the reality is you'll avoid all of this if you make safety a priority so do it I wonder if we have any doughnuts number eight unfair competition now the first under this is the duty of loyalty there's not a lot to say about this aside from the fact that employees generally have a duty of loyalty while they're working for a company so that you really shouldn't be out competing against the company while they're working for it the duty of loyalty varies from state to state and it's not something you take action on I just think it's a great reminder to give to employees now and again the second is a trade secret litigation this is where all the money is spent in this area of law well what is a trade secret well we've all heard about famous trade secrets like the coca-cola formula but in most everyday context it's a system or a process or a customer list or some type of invention that a company has made that it keeps secret if you patent something it's not a secret anymore so it's something that you keep secret from all your competitors and from the public eye and if an employee who works at your company who knows that information then takes it and uses it against you or uses it to benefit somebody else some other company you could file a lawsuit against them now the practical insight on how to avoid all this from happening in the first place is to at the beginning of employment give the employee a document that shows exactly what the trade secrets are identifies them by name and what they are and tells the employee that there are trade secret they're confidential and they cannot be disclosed to anybody even after they quit that you have that document identified acknowledged in sign employee and that would help you immensely in enforcing temporary restraining order or a lawsuit against the employee down the road the third category here are non-compete agreements there's not a lot to say about them in some parts of the country like California they're almost completely void and unlawful so figure out what your state's non-compete laws are and make sure you abide by them if you're putting them in employee contracts before I get to the final four I want to say something I think is very important if you need actual legal advice don't put any information in the comments section below you want that information to be privileged therefore reach out to an employment lawyer in your state if you are in California you're more than welcome to reach out to me directly via email or my phone number however just note I'm a professional I have a family I have obligations I'm not going to respond to a bunch of people asking for free legal advice I don't give free legal advice I do give free consultations but there's a difference the final four subjects I lump them all together not because they're not important they're very important but because they kind of fall outside the scope of what an everyday business owner manager or HR professional can do to prevent employment lawsuits but real quickly unemployment largely as an administrative thing somebody applies for labor board benefits for unemployment benefits and then the company has to respond to that not a big dollar spend in the context of employment law secondly if we're talking about layoffs if you're gonna lay off a lot of people at one time you might need to comply with the WARN Act so contact a professional for advice on that third collective bargaining agreements oh my gosh that's way outside the scope of this video unions grievance procedures union contract negotiations kind of that's a labor law traditionally discussed as labor law finally arbitration and insurance arbitration is a super hot topic it's about whether or not you can prevent employees from filing lawsuits in court do they have to go to a private judge which is scary for an employee not to be in a public forum but it's very expensive for the employer because they have to pay for a private judge finally insurance is about what kind of insurance companies can can buy in order to protect themselves from employment disputes like Employment Practices Liability insurance or EPLI to protect against discrimination in harassment claims all right that's the basics as you probably can imagine by now there's a whole lot more to employment law than what I've said in this basic overview but I think that's got the job done if you think I missed something you have a question about something that I said if you disagree with something that I said or you want to request a video on a particular subject in the future that's what the comment section is for leave comments I will respond to them thanks for watching have a good one