What effective tools help California employers to prevent lawsuits and minimize the legal and financial exposure of any employee-related dispute? How can the Watkins Firm’s almost four decades of experience advising and representing San Diego and California employers help you and your organization to prevent disputes and lawsuits?

Key Takeaways About How Effective Tools Help California Employers to Prevent Lawsuits

• One of best tools for California employers to prevent lawsuits is an up-to-date policies and procedures document.
• The policies and procedures lay out specific strategies to manage every day operations and guide not only decision making but the investigation and management of issues and disputes.
• The employee handbook should be tightly tailored to protect the employer from unnecessary risks and expectations.  Stick with the basics here.  The employee handbook establishes expectations and provides insight into your company’s values, policies, mission, benefits and day-to-day operational procedures.
• Recent substantial changes based upon a recent US Supreme Court ruling and developing California law have obliterated a decades long attempt by California to eliminate the ability of an employer to require an arbitration agreement.

Why are policies and procedures, employee handbooks and an arbitration agreement a few of the effective tools help California employers to prevent lawsuits?  These important corporate employment documents guide many internal processes and management tactics to effectively manage employee discipline and disputes.  They also provide important guard rails to limit the financial exposure of a dispute or lawsuit.

Policies and Procedures

One of the effective tools help California employers to prevent lawsuits is an up-to-date policies and procedures document.

Well-written policies and procedures are not paperwork for a shelf. They are operational safeguards. Presented clearly, they function as both a management tool and a risk-control system.

Effective policies and procedures should:

• Establish consistent strategies for managing day-to-day operations
• Guide decision-making at every level of the organization
• Provide a specific process for investigating and acting upon internal complaints and disputes
• Define how the management responds to worker-related issues
• Ensure compliance with all federal and California legal and regulatory requirements
• Create uniform, measurable standards for employee conduct
• Outline disciplinary protocols and corrective action steps
• Establish and protect workplace safety standards and reporting procedures
• Institute essential foundational defenses by documenting expectations, employee performance, and disciplinary processes

When properly drafted, implemented, monitored, and enforced, policies and procedures reduce uncertainty, promote accountability, and create a documented, defensible structure in the event of a any internal or external issue or allegation.

Employee Handbook

It might surprise you to learn that the employee handbook is not the right tool to write a treatise on the corporate culture or all the perks of being an employee. An employee handbook should be deliberate, disciplined, and focused on protection, not promises. It is not a marketing document. It is a risk-management tool.

A properly structured employee handbook should:

• Be carefully tailored to reduce unnecessary legal exposure
• Avoid creating unintended contractual obligations
• Focus on clear, enforceable workplace standards
• Define company values and your company’s mission
• Outline core policies governing behavior and performance
• Explain employee benefits clearly and consisely
• Describe day-to-day operational expectations

When strategically aligned with your internal policies and procedures, the employee handbook serves as the operational and legal framework for protecting your workplace and the management team.

A well-crafted employment document strategy should:

• Establish measurable and enforceable standards for employee behavior and performance
• Define what is acceptable versus unacceptable workplace conduct
• Outline disciplinary processes and corrective action steps
• Explain how complaints and investigations will be handled and documented
• Ensure consistency in daily management and decision-making
• Create documentation standards that support the record, while providing tools for enforcement

Clear documentation, consistently applied and monitored, creates stability. It ensures that employment expectations are clearly understood in advance and provides the legal foundation to enforce them when performance or conduct falls short.

Arbitration Agreement

Recent substantial changes based upon a recent US Supreme Court ruling and developing California law have obliterated a decades long attempt by California to eliminate the ability of an employer to require an arbitration agreement.  The arbitration agreement is somewhat straightforward: it establishes the ground rules for how any dispute between the employer and employee will be resolved.  This limits the ability of employees to seek plaintiff’s attorneys to bring substantial lawsuits and PAGA actions.  The arbitration agreement is one of the essential 3 tools for San Diego employers to prevent lawsuits and limit the damages which might result.

Effective Tools Help California Employers to Prevent Lawsuits – Implementation and Enforcement

The experienced business general counsel and employer defense attorneys at the Watkins Firm help you to ensure you are compliant with all federal, state and local laws.  We also help to structure the types of policies and procedures you and your management team will employ to discipline or terminate an employee.

We help to close the loop holes that allow poor performers to abuse FMLA and FLSA laws to artificially protect their employment status, or claim retaliation due to mishandling of a prior complaint or disciplinary action.  There must be specific strategies to handle employee complaints, allegations of discrimination or misconduct, and other employee-related complaints.  Your processes must legally and efficiently separate these issues from performance measurement metrics and ultimately the disciplinary measures you need to put in place.

The consistency of your policies and procedures and employee handbooks and the regularity with which they are updated play a major role in this effort.  In addition, your internal communications to employees ensuring they are aware of any changes or updates and clearly understand how this impacts them personally and the manner in which the arbitration agreement will play a major role in preventing disputes and lawsuits.

Pro-Tip: “Every year it gets harder. They come up with new laws, new issues, new matters, and then the courts rule on them one way or the other. And these employees are more educated. They read this stuff, they’re constantly bombarded with sales pitches from lawyers. So they’re watching everything you do when you hire somebody all across the nation and especially in California.

The effectiveness, cohesiveness, implementation, documentation, and enforceability of your employment-related documents is the foundation of being an employer in California.  Without this important layer of protection, you are an easy target.

There’s a whole industry. It’s doubled. There are class actions, PAGA wasn’t even heard of in 20 years ago. And now every seminar you hear about is on PAGA defense. There’s sexual harassment, used to be the young, the big game in town. And now you’ve got to check your paycheck stubs to make sure that they’re not spelled wrong or there’s a missed decibel point, or you’re going to get a class action lawsuit filed against you in, in a multitude of ways. Obviously we have wage and hour disputes. Those are big. They’re everywhere. They’re big in California, they’re big nationally. In fact, the United States Supreme Court recently just ruled in favor of the employee again.

Wage and hour and overtime are similar, but PAGA, a private attorney general claim against the employer is a really heating up. There are law firms that just do that and they send out constant communications to every area of employee you can imagine. And if anyone’s thinking about leaving your employment, they’re going to be tempted to get a little severance, pay involuntary and then misclassification of independent contractors. California keeps changing the law and the courts keep changing their interpretation of the California law. So yes, they do really hard to stay on top of that. Sexual harassment is always a scary thing because you can get sued for sexual harassment and lose, even though no one was actually harassed because you didn’t investigate it. Right. That’s a separate cause of action. Failing to investigate it according to the law, even if your investigation finds out that it was a false claim, which seems terrible, but it’s true. And then discrimination claims are always there. Retaliation again for somebody making a false claim. If you retaliate against them for lying about you and suing and lying about you, you’re still liable for retaliating against a liar. Again, terrible but true. And then general wrongful termination, how people are terminated and whether or not you comply, you can get stuck with 60 days of pay that you inadvertently didn’t know about.

If employers would just call us the minute they’re aware of an issue, there’s so much more we can do to help them.” – Dan Watkins, Founding Partner

Defending California Employers in PAGA Actions

Employee-related lawsuits and PAGA Actions have spiked here in San Diego in the past few years.  Protect yourself and your company. Learn more about the 3 tools for San Diego employers to prevent lawsuits and reduce the risks of being an employer in San Diego and Southern California. We invite you to review our recent podcast Episode 28 – Common Employer Disputes and Defenses, as well as the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation today.

Let’s discuss your company policies and procedures, employee handbooks and the implementation and management of arbitration agreements so that the Watkins Firm can help to protect and support your goals and objectives as an employer while reducing the likelihood and risks associated with an employee-related dispute.

Meet Daniel Watkins:

Daniel W. Watkins is a true people person who sincerely listens. He cares deeply about what others are going through.  Dan enjoys digging into the facts and finding creative solutions to problems.  He contributes his insights candidly and constructively.

Dan’s interest in people make him deeply invested in every relationship and his exuberant personality makes him a true litigator. Dan fights for his clients with a fierce and calculated commitment.

Dan has practiced in the areas of business, medical practices and healthcare business, high tech/science, real estate and employment defense law since 1987. He is a trusted litigation strategist and true trial attorney with over 50 jury and bench trials to his credit. Dan has successfully represented both large companies and individuals and achieved substantial victories in well-publicized trials throughout California and the U.S.

He is experienced in business and corporate formation and administration, as well as all forms of alternative dispute resolution, including binding arbitration and mediation.

THE ROAD TO BECOMING A BUSINESS LAWYER AND LITIGATOR

Dan has almost 40 years of experience working with, for and against some of the largest insurance companies in the country. He has successfully tried and litigated cases in the areas of Healthcare Compliance, Commercial Litigation, Unfair Business Practices, Fraud, Breach of Contract, Battery, Premises Liability, Product Defect, Medical Malpractice, Discrimination, Sexual Harassment, Construction Defect, as well as Unfair Competition, Defamation, and Trade Secrets.

In December 2003, Dan commenced litigation against Health South Surgery Centers-West, Inc and its’ subsidiaries, exposing the company’s extensive mismanagement and misconduct of its’ surgery centers. Dan has also been asked by some of California’s largest municipalities and corporations to conduct legally required investigations into matters involving alleged employment discrimination and harassment.