Smart Strategies for Complying with

Federal and Michigan Employment Law

 

Successful startups and established companies understand their most valuable asset are often their employees and other members of their workforce. But without proper attention to federal and Michigan employment laws, employment agreements, policies, structuring, and management, employees can also become a significant source of risk and liabilities. Our employment law attorneys are focused on working closely to provide HR professionals and employers with practical, business-minded guidance on all aspects of the employment relationship, including the following areas:

• Human Resource and Employment Law Best Practices. Our Michigan employment attorneys are experienced in collaborating with employers when it comes to optimizing their human resource and employee operations when it comes to the full employee/employer life-cycle, including employee hiring, drafting and implementing employee agreements, employee manuals, non-compete agreements, independent contractor agreements, confidentiality and invention assignment agreements.  

• Employment Law Audits. We can also provide your company with an HR audit. These audits are a critical tool for evaluating your company's legal compliance with federal and Michigan employment laws, as well as for creating a proactive plan for eliminating or minimizing HR risks. Many HR risks can be easily corrected once they are identified. This proactive employment law audit provides can deter litigation and is an employer's bedrock for many “good faith defenses” in employment lawsuits.

• Employment Law and Human Resource Due Diligence. When it comes to buying or selling a business, a business undergoes a due diligence process to learn “the good, the bad, and the ugly” in terms of the overall health of the business and its value. While due diligence requires researching a range of business and legal issues that often include intellectual property and account valuation, environmental regulations, and tax requirements. But one significant part of a meaningful due diligence are the human resource and employee compliance issues. Employment law due diligence is critical because it affects the overall value of the business. Buyers must be cautious about inheriting the seller's human resources status quo and buyers run the risk of having to make price concessions for employment and human resource related deficiencies. For these reasons, we work with prospective sellers to implement a pre-sale employment assessment and prospective buyers to evaluate the employment operations of a to-be-acquired worldwide workforce. For both sellers and buyers, this includes assessing employment policies, employment agreements, invention assignments, non-compete agreements; investigating pending or potential employment law claims; and evaluating unique employment terms and conditions that go beyond legal minimums and that may bind the seller beyond closing. 

• Workplace investigations. Our attorneys are experienced in conducting workplace investigations concerning a range of employee misconduct. Examples of this experience include collaborating with employers to investigate allegations of harassment, discrimination, computer-related misconduct, trade secret and intellectual property theft. We have also assisted employers to respond to and conduct internal company investigations that involved actions that were simultaneously being investigated by local law enforcement as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Our thorough investigations result in practical recommendations that have helped employers protect their business interests and avoid later claims of wrongful terminations. 

• EEOC and Michigan Agency Investigations. The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and similar Michigan agencies are responsible for enforcing employment discrimination and related statutes. Our employment attorneys offer your company and HR professionals solutions for responding to and managing employment charges and litigation. We are focused on efficiently resolving charges on terms that make sense or preparing to defend those charges in litigation. We also pride ourselves in working with your company and HR professionals to provide a "lessons learned" following the resolution of a charge or employment law claim in order to prevent future charges or lawsuits.

 

Contact Jason Shinn who manages the Employment Law Services about setting up a complimentary meeting to discuss your company's current employment and HR situation.