15 Employment and Labor Resolutions for 2015, part 3 of 3

This is the last installment of the resolutions I suggest you take, as noted by Constangy, Brooks, to keep your human resources department, and business as a whole, healthy and well away from the inside of a courtroom or mediation center. The last five resolutions are:

11. Are your non-competes enforceable? And are you using them judiciously? Laws on the enforceability of non-compete agreements vary from state to state. If your agreements have not been reviewed in a while, this would be a good time to have them reviewed to ensure that they'll do you any good if you need them. You may also need to review your territorial or customer restrictions to ensure that they are serving your current business needs, as opposed to the needs you had 10 years ago.

It's also a good idea to take into account how your non-competes are being used, even if they are generally in compliance with the law. A national sandwich chain recently had a public relations nightmare after it came to light that some restaurants were requiring hourly, minimum wage delivery employees to sign non-competes.

12. Keep on monitoring the "legal pot" issue. A patchwork of state and local laws is developing that permits medical or recreational use of marijuana. Right now, it's still all right under federal law for employers to ban marijuana use, even in states where it's legal, because use of marijuana violates federal law. But that doesn't mean you couldn't run afoul of state law. This issue is developing quickly, so keep watching, and be ready to make appropriate adjustments to your substance abuse policy depending on what happens.

13. Make sure you're ready for the Affordable Care Act. Review your current compliance with your benefits counsel and consultants. If you have collective bargaining agreements coming up for re-negotiation or renewal, consider building in some sort of "flexibility mechanism" to deal with the huge uncertainty that the ACA is generating. As examples of the moving target that the ACA has become, the Supreme Court agreed in November to hear a case challenging the subsidies to states that did not set up their own insurance exchanges. (A decision is expected this summer). And just this week, the Republicans in Congress introduced two bills designed to mitigate parts of the employer mandate.

14. Review your contracts with staffing services and true independent contractors. This is a good time to examine your contracts with staffing providers and genuine independent contractors to be as certain as possible that you have properly allocated risks and responsibilities, including insurance obligations, indemnification rights and obligations, compliance with wage and hour and other recordkeeping obligations, employee supervision, employee safety, discrimination or other required training, benefits compliance, anti-discrimination compliance, and recordkeeping obligations and procedures. (If you aren't sure whether your "independent contractors" are true independent contractors, then go back to Resolution Nos. 1 and 6).

15. Review your alternative dispute resolution policy, or consider adopting one. If you already have an arbitration agreement, is it drafted, published, and executed through agreements with employees in a manner to be enforced by a court? The NLRB still refuses to recognize arbitration agreements that eliminate the possibility of class or collective arbitration, but the Board's position has been rejected in three federal circuits. The courts generally favor arbitration agreements, so if you do not have one, it might be worth consideration. For employers with collective bargaining agreements, consider whether you should negotiate to obtain grievance and arbitration provisions that would help to meet the NLRB's new standard for post-arbitration deferral.

Disclaimer I am not a licensed attorney. My blogs are based on my own experiences, interviews (where credited), and loads of research, and do not represent legal advice.