Choosing the employment policies that are right for your company is a big deal. Things like dress code requirements, remote working options, and time off allowances can have an enormous impact on your company’s culture and the happiness of your employees. There are some policies, though, you simply must have in place – the kind that can protect you and your company in the event of an employee-related issue.

So where do you start? How do you know what types of policies and documents you need to create? Well, we created this blog post to answer these very questions. At a high level, there are three items we suggest all companies have in place:

Firing or terminating an employee is a natural part of business. It can be uncomfortable, awkward, and certainly not fun. But it can also get a whole lot worse, especially if a former employee brings a lawsuit against you. It can not only be costly, but it can cause unrest among your other employees and customers.

So how do you best protect yourself from lawsuits from terminated employees? Employment separation and release of claims agreements.  We’ll call them separation agreements.

As much as we hate to admit it, sexual harassment is a hot topic right now. From celebrities to large corporations and even startups, it’s everywhere. And regardless of whether you want to discuss it, sexual harassment needs to be talked about with your employees because, let's face it, it's not going anywhere unless we do something about it.

In April and June, we published blog posts about changes in overtime laws for the white collar exemptions set to take effect on December 1, 2016 (see Changes in Overtime Laws are Coming and Update: Changes in Overtime Laws are Coming). Yesterday, an Eastern District of Texas Judge issued a nationwide injunction barring the implementation of the new overtime rules.  This means that for now, the salary thresholds for the white collar exemptions remain unchanged and are not increasing.

In April, we published a blog post titled “Changes in Overtime Laws are Coming.” Since that time, on May 18^th, 2016, the Department of Labor officially announced the publication of the rule updating overtime regulations. The changes will take place December 1, 2016, giving employers plenty of time to prepare.

In this post, we simply hope to update our previous post with specific information that was not available at the time.