Avoiding employment issues starts with making the right hiring decision and making such decisions in a lawful manner. Employers can make better hiring decisions by having necessary screening practices and procedures in place to ensure that those hired are more likely than not to add value and be an asset and not create employment problems for the employer down the road. Such screening practices and procedures include developing and implementing:

• Unlawful Interview Question Guidelines – identifying both lawful/unlawful pre-employment inquiries.
• Employee Selection and Hiring Guidelines – designed to improve your Company’s hiring process, avoid inconsistent and/or unlawful treatment of applicants and insulate your Company from potential liability.
• Employment Applications – designed to obtain maximum information from applicants in a lawful manner since employers frequently overlook the importance of such applications, not only as an effective pre-hire screening tool but also given that misrepresentations or omissions in the applications process (e.g., resume fraud) can provide employers with a critical defense to limit or even preclude damages in connection with subsequent employee claims and lawsuits.
• Background Investigations/Screens – designed to ascertain whether applicants have a criminal record and/or credit problems and to corroborate information provided to the employer in the application/interview process.
• Drug and Alcohol Testing – designed to screen out persons who may be users of illegal drugs and/or abusers of alcohol in connection with offers of employment or promotion.
• Post-Offer, Pre-Hire Medical/Physical Exams – designed to confirm that persons to whom a job offer is made are able to perform the essential functions of the position they have been offered, with or without accommodation.
• Other Employment Screening Procedures – designed to identify the candidates most likely to succeed in a given position.
• Job Descriptions – designed not only to accurately describe job duties and requirements of and qualifications for the position. Among other things, this will protect against claims of discrimination and unequal pay, but also to identify essential job functions (factors critical in cases involving alleged disability discrimination, disability accommodation and the interactive process).
• Customized “At-Will” Offer of Employment Letters – designed to preserve the “at-will” relationship and memorialize critical terms and conditions of employment, including certain critical rights and obligations of the parties.
• Employment Contracts and Agreements (including agreements for commissioned and non-commissioned salespersons) – designed to memorialize critical terms and conditions of employment, including certain critical rights and obligations of the parties.
• Commission Plans/Programs and Related Agreements – designed to memorialize the terms and conditions which govern the payment of sales commissions.
• Independent Contractor Agreements – designed to establish defensible independent contractor relationships.
• Confidentiality, Non-Disclosure, Non-Solicitation and Assignment of Inventions Agreements – designed to protect confidential and proprietary information and trade secrets and prevent solicitation of your employees by co-workers.
• Employment Arbitration Agreements – designed to require the submission of employment-related disputes to arbitration rather than having such disputes be resolved in court and potentially through a trial by jury.

In addition to the foregoing, to avoid becoming the target of a lawsuit by an actual or potential business competitor, it is also critically important that employers have screening procedures in place to identify applicants who are subject to agreements with their former employers or business associates prohibiting or restricting their use or disclosure of confidential or proprietary information to which the applicant had access in connection with their prior employment or business relationships. Such screening measures can be incorporated into other employment-related documents or can be adopted as part of a separate, stand alone process.

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For more information about what we do, our innovative fee options, or to schedule an initial consultation with an experienced Los Angeles employment and HR law attorney at Miller Legal Group, P.C., please contact us at our South Bay employment law firm by e-mail or by telephone at (310) 426-2650.