Employment Counseling

Butler Snow excels in providing counseling, advice and creative solutions to achieve important business objectives while minimizing exposure under the myriad of employment regulations.

Dynamic organizations constantly strive to improve the quality, productivity and flexibility of their workforces. In today’s environment with laws as diverse as the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), the potential for legal challenges is inevitable. By becoming intimately familiar with their operations, leadership, and goals, we are able to assist employers in their quest to succeed at what they do best with confidence. We do not have a crystal ball, but our business acumen, broad knowledge of the applicable laws, and breadth of experience give us the insight and perspective to help clients make informed business decisions.

Our Labor and Employment attorneys have an established record of giving excellent advice on issues including:

Our Labor and Employment team includes attorneys with years of experience in providing management training ranging from Effective Employee Relations, Basic Supervision, Sexual Harassment, EEO laws, FMLA and leave administration, to Wage and Hour Compliance for managers and human resources representatives, Workplace Violence, Effective Workplace Investigations, Complaint handling, and Preventative Labor Relations. We provide training for human resources representatives, upper management briefing, middle management, and front line supervisors and managers in hospitals, grocery stores, manufacturing facilities and warehouses, truck lines, mines, banks, construction sites, medical clinics, and other employer facilities.

Our programs on Preventative Labor Relations focus on the basics and causes of unionization, updates on labor organizing techniques in the particular industry involved, and effective techniques for preventing and combating union organizing. We provide training on a flat-fee basis which includes handouts and resource materials.

Following the conclusion of every lawsuit, employment dispute and significant matter, we make available for clients an After Action Review (“post mortem”) by a member of our Labor and Employment team who was involved in the matter. The purpose of these After Action Reviews is not to assign blame but to identify lessons learned and suggestions for improvement. Reviews usually can be conducted face-to-face in an hour or less and provide invaluable insights.

Our Labor and Employment team is experienced in reviewing and developing employee handbooks, employment manuals, and personnel policies and procedures. Whether the employer is a small business or a large multi-state operation, our attorneys have the knowledge and experience to custom-design appropriate materials to fit the employer’s needs.

We offer both compliance audits and employee relations audits to assist employers in ensuring that they are complying with applicable regulations and following best practices to maintain healthy working relationships and productive workforces.

Compliance audits range from a full audit of all policies and personnel practices to specialized audits, for example, for compliance with federal overtime laws. A full compliance audit examines all written materials such as employment policies, handbooks, recruitment, hiring, advancement, corrective action and termination procedures and include interviews with appropriate human resources representatives and operations managers to determine whether actual practices are consistent with the applicable laws.

An employee relations audit reviews not only all relevant data such as turnover, absenteeism and unproductive time, EEO data, conflict resolutions and employee attitude surveys, but also includes interviews to detect problematic employee concerns, sources of potential conflicts, and vulnerability to union organizing.

Our attorneys and staff are experienced in developing, revising and updating written Affirmative Action Plans, as well as assisting employers in responding to desk audits, full audits, and on-site investigations by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP).