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Laws which you are
now required to follow |
20: The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA). The ADEA prohibits discrimination based on age for employees and job applicants 40 years of age or older. The ADEA also prohibits retailiation by employers against employees who file complaints or participate in any proceeding under the ADEA. A good summary of the law can be found on the website of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: http://www.eeoc.gov/types/age.html
20: The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1996 (COBRA). COBRA requires employers to offer a continuation of health benefits for a period of eighteen months following the employee's departure from the organization, whether voluntarily or involuntarily (except in cases of gross misconduct). The employee is responsible for paying 100% of the insurance premium. A thorough overview can be found on the Department of Labor website: http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/pdf/cobra99.pdf
20: The Older Workers Benefit Protection Act (OWBPA). A later amendment to the ADEA (see above), OWBPA prohibits age discrimination in compensation, and establishes the "equal benefits or equal cost" rule, stating that employers must either (a) provide the same level of benefits to all employees, independent of age, or (b) if the benefits are unequal, spend a comparable amount for benefits for all employees, independent of age. The definition of "benefits" also includes offers of early retirement packages offered to employees. More on this can be found at: http://www.ahipubs.com/cgi-research/show_research_items.pl?TopicID=10&SubTopicID=91
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Topics to think about
as you keep growing |
21/22: Government statistics. Congratulations! According to the U.S. Census Department, your business now has more employees than the average business (20.3 mean average) in the United States. The Census Department has a great wealth of statistics on businesses of all sizes in all industries that can be very useful. These paricular statistics are from: http://www.census.gov/csd/susb/susb01.htm
23/24: Fostering corporate culture. By establishing a proper corporate culture, senior management can gain greater employee commitment, effort, and productivity, which in turn leads to a better chance of meeting organizational objectives. Be aware that it is very difficult to change corporate culture, so it is preferable to start shaping it now while you have the opportunity. A lengthy series of articles on this topic can be found at: http://www.themanager.org/Knowledgebase/HR/Corporate_Culture.htm
25/26: On-line recruiting. If you haven't tried it already, on-line recruiting can allow organizations to find employees more inexpensively than traditional classified ads in newspapers. It also permits space for a more elaborate description of the position, and is published for a longer duration. The downside: since it is much easier to send a resume by e-mail than by regular mail, you will likely receive lots of overqualifiend, underqualified, and even erroneous responses. More on the topic can be found at: http://humanresources.about.com/od/recruiting/a/recruit_online.htm
27/28/29: Sexual harrassment training. While this should be a concern for organizations of all sizes, when a company reaches this level of employees, it is worth considering formal training on the topic. Having all employees understand and comply reduces the risk of lawsuits, and when companies make good-faith efforts to train their employees, they often are treated more leniently in the court system. There are many companies that offer this service -- just search in Google and see the results: http://www.google.com/search?&q=sexual+harassment+training
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