Know the Employment Laws of Your Business

A friend of mine who also happens to be a Human Resources consultant wrote an article on Ezine the other day and I read it and found out that a recent court decision has been given out that affects all employers in the State of Minnesota, the state where I live in. Here's what the article had to say:

"In a nutshell, in August 2006 the MN Court of Appeals ruled that employers must pay employees all of their earned but unused vacation when their employment terminates. Many employee handbooks, including some I've written, have clauses in them that deny vacation payouts to employees who are terminated due to policy violations or who fail to provide adequate notice of their resignation."

We too have a clause in our employee handbook that states that terminated employees and employees who fail to give a two week notice of their resignation forfeit their vacation pay. After all, who wants to give vacation pay to someone who has been terminated for theft or sub-par work, or who quits without notice, leaving you high and dry?

I'm hoping this case will be appealed to the MN Supreme Court. In my opinion, vacation pay is a privilege, and not something that employers are required to pay. In any event, it pays to stay on top of any laws that affect you and your business. You don't want to find yourself in hot water because you failed to comply with the law!

Tips for Hiring Great Employees

A recent discussion about how some employees drag down their company's name has caught our attention. It is then extremely important. A while back we had a discussion about the problems some cleaning companies have with employees who drag you and your company name down. It got me thinking about what we try to do in our cleaning business to avoid this and hire great people. Here's a file I came up with:

1. Use a training program so everyone is trained the same. Have them sign off on the training program so they can't come back and say, "no one ever told me that!" This is why we developed our own training program. We found our supervisors weren't training consistently. Now they train everyone the same, covering everything we want them to cover.

2. Go after and follow up. Whether it's you in person or your supervisors. Once people are trained, you can't just leave 'em and forget 'em. People forget what they've learned so you need to remind them, point out what they're doing well and bad -- and don't just tell them about the bad - everyone needs a pat on the back once in a while.

3. Recompense employees for outstanding work. Give bonuses for perfect attendance, great walk-off or whatever incentive you can think of. Conduct regular reviews and give them raises based on performance.

4. Recompense your employees well. Give them a reason to stick with you versus going to the competition because they pay a quarter an hour more than you do. The employees that have been with us a while are making a good wage.

For more: How to start a cleaning business

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_F_Smith