Governor Holcomb’s Executive Order 20-43, signed on September 24, 2020 requires all businesses situated or operating in Indiana to create a COVID-19 response plan outlining measures and safeguards for the safety of employees, customers, clients and members of the public. The plan must be provided to all employees and posted publicly. Existing policies should be reviewed and updated to reflect current practices and standards.

The minimum requirements of the COVID-19 response plan include:

On Monday of this week, a divided U.S. Supreme Court decided a landmark employment law case.  In Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court found that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits sex discrimination in employment, includes sexual orientation and gender identity.  Title VII applies to employers with 15 or more employees in 20 or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar year.  Title VII prohibits discriminating against an individual with respect to employment decisions, compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment because of an individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.   

New overtime rules go in effect on January 1, 2020 that may affect whether your employees qualify for an exemption from overtime pay. You may recall that a previous rule in 2016 to increase salary levels was blocked by a federal judge before the rule went into effect. Thankfully, for employers, this new rule is a smaller increase in salary levels than the 2016 rule.

In summary, the salary threshold for two exemptions from overtime pay -- the white collar exemption and the highly compensated employee exemption -- are increasing on January 1, and certain nondiscretionary bonuses and incentive payments can be used to satisfy a portion of the salary threshold. This means that employers will need to increase salaries, nondiscretionary bonuses, or nondiscretionary incentive payments to retain the exemptions or pay overtime to employees who do not meet the new test.

The full details on the final rule can be found in the Department of Labor press release, but here's a brief summary of the changes:

Keeping track of employee documentation can be tedious, but it’s necessary and
especially helpful in the event of an employee-related issue. The big question is: what
kinds of documentation do you need to file away? In comes our personnel file checklist.
Below we’ve outlined our recommendations for what documents you should keep in
personnel files and those you should keep separately. If you have any questions, please
give us a call at 765.423.7900.

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: