Privacy, Business and Law

It so much easier for a new company to simply pay everyone a weekly salary than to have employees account for each hour worked and pay by the hour. It may also be cheaper to pay everyone a salary, as hourly employees usually are entitled to overtime premiums. As a result, it is fairly common [...]

E-mail has become an important mode of communication between co-workers, especially in technology-related companies. The traditional conversations “around the water cooler” have been replaced by cyber-talk. E-mail is a wonderful, efficient mode of communication. Unfortunately, it has an incredibly long half-life.

One way to avoid the expense and hassle of managing employees is not to hire any of them. Instead, use consultants to fill all labor needs. Use of consultants avoids the need to pay payroll taxes, overtime premiums, health insurance, and allows companies to avoid liability for employment discrimination, harassment and workers’ compensation.

It is a common and accepted practice for cash-starved start-ups to attract talented employees by offering substantial numbers of stock options as an alternative to high salaries and bonuses. However, many company founders, in their haste to attract qualified employees, do not give sufficient thought to the long-term consequences of large stock option grants.

Employees of technology-based companies tend to be relatively young, and these companies usually shy away from strict, hierarchical management structures. It is easy for executives of these companies to have a false sense of security when it comes to discrimination and harassment problems. The typical harassment scenario of the stuffy, older male executive “hitting on” [...]

Many people involved in high-tech start-up companies are fairly sophisticated about copyright and patent protection, and seek legal advice on those issues early in the development of a product or idea. However, there is a large category of critical information that is not patentable or subject to copyright protection that can and should be protected [...]

Keeping track of employee attendance can be an administrative nightmare. The problem is particularly acute when employees work off-site, and when a company has multiple, small offices. Larger companies can invest in any one of a number of software packages that are designed to account for employee attendance, and will be able to assign someone [...]

One might assume that health plans available to small and mid-sized companies are, like automobiles of the same class, comparable in terms of cost. In fact, the differences can be huge. If no effort is invested in the search for a cost-effective and well-administered plan, the result can be health coverage costs reaching 15%-20% of [...]