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Personnel Files

Must we give drug policy to an ex-employee?

05/05/2011
Q. We just terminated an employee for testing positive for PCP. Now the former employee wants a copy of our drug-testing policy. Do I have to provide it?

Double-check ID records! No-match letters are back

05/04/2011

After a three-year hiatus, the Social Security Administration has resumed sending no-match letters to employers, alerting them when em­ployees’ Social Security numbers don’t jibe with the ones in its database. While it’s unclear whether the resumption will harm employers, now is a good time to make sure your employment eligibility verification processes are in good shape.

N.J. Supreme Court decides: Can employees take confidential docs?

04/25/2011
Can an employee who wants to prove discrimination take, copy and dis­close company documents? How does that square with the company’s right to protect what it deems to be confidential information? The New Jersey Supreme Court ­recently offered some guidance on this issue in Quinlan v. Curtiss-Wright.

Double-check employee ID records! No-match letters are back

04/19/2011
After a three-year hiatus, the Social Security Administration has resumed sending no-match letters to employers, alerting them when employees’ Social Security numbers don’t correspond to numbers in the SSA’s database. Because the feds have offered no guidance on what no-match letters mean these days, experts fear confusion for employers.

How do the new Illinois Equal Pay Act rules affect my record-keeping obligations?

04/14/2011
Q. I’ve heard that there are new Illinois Equal Pay Act regulations I have to follow. Does this affect my record-keeping?

Work with your attorney to preserve evidence

04/14/2011

These days, much of the evidence used in employment litigation is electronic—such as attendance records. Courts require employers to preserve such evidence when employers reasonably know that a lawsuit could arise. If evidence is destroyed, courts can impose heavy financial sanctions and even hand a win to the other side without a trial.

The best reason to retain personnel documents: Employees–and courts–have long memories

04/14/2011
Employees are often only too happy to go back years to come up with circumstantial evidence that their employers are biased, citing incidents that on their own could not be the basis for a lawsuit.

How to conduct effective and legal workplace investigations

03/18/2011
Eventually, every employer will have to investigate some sort of workplace concern. Whether because of a dispute between co-workers or a need to address unethical or unlawful behavior, workplace investigations are an important and delicate exercise. The following tips will help investigations produce useful results.

How do we legally correct errors on I-9s?

03/10/2011
Q. I found some minor errors in our I-9 forms. For example, some have signatures on the wrong line. Is it legal to correct the errors or do I need to have the forms filled out again? If I do new forms, should I back-date them?

Dirty Dozen: 12 manager mistakes that spark lawsuits

03/03/2011
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