Legal Rights in The Employer's Legal Handbook by Steingold - Book Report/Review Example

The Employer's Legal Handbook The Employer's Legal Handbook is a best-selling business law guidebook. It is a complete guide to an employer’s legal rights and responsibilities. Written by Attorney Fred S. Steingold, and published by Nolo, the newly updated book (8th edition), reveals how laws affect every aspect of the role of an employer from hiring practices to termination, from advertising jobs to handling benefits. The 8th edition updates current employment laws and also covers the latest developments like the Supreme Court's new definition of "retaliation," and why the number of claims against employers is going up. The author, Fred S. Steingold, is an expert on small business law and represents and advises many small businesses. He practices law in Ann Arbor, Michigan The Employer's Legal Handbook, which consists of more than 400 pages, shows you with the help of easy-to-use legal charts, how by complying with the most recent workplace laws and regulations one can run a safe and fair workplace. It is a comprehensive resource covering all the basics of employment law in one single book. The book cover a wide range of laws and regulations like safe hiring practices, employee benefits, wages, working hours, taxes, liability insurance, sexual harassment, discrimination, termination and so on. The book gives general information and there is an in-depth description of the various topics it covers. Overall the book is very informative. It has everything you need to manage your staff. The topics covered in this book include: Hiring The book helps you to understand the legal guidelines on requires for hiring employees, to conduct interviews, to write job descriptions, to carry out investigations of applicants and much more. Hiring people can turn out be risky and irksome as one needs to have a legal knowledge of subjects like privacy rights, discrimination, implications of job security, unfair competition, legal rules pertaining to immigrants, IRS standards and the like. When you are describing a job, risks are involved as you put down your requirements in writing. Smart personnel practices The book contains guidelines on what to include in employee personnel files and employee handbooks, references for former employees and how to carry out performance reviews. According to the author the key to dealing with legal issues between an employee and his employer is to ensure that the company has strong written policies and that the company always has well documented papers to support its policies. Wages & hours A business owner has to comply with federal and state minimum wage requirements and overtime laws. Laws regarding wages and hours are the least followed laws and often misunderstood by the employees. Overtime laws and rules can lead to tricky situations. The Employer’s Legal Handbook gives you details of all this and more. Taxes The author discusses taxes in Chapter 5 of the book and the topics in this chapter range from an Employer Identification Number to Employment taxes, tax deductions for salaried employees to self-employment taxes, tax deductions for bonuses to meals, etc. Employee benefits: The book explains wage and hour laws, health insurance and retirement plans for workers. Workplace health and safety A worker’s safety depends on how a business complies with OSHA requirements and how it implements policies on smoking, alcohol abuse and drugs. The book outlines these policies and requirements. Discrimination The book describes ways to prevent sexual harassment and discrimination based on age, race, national origin, sexual orientation and pregnancy. A knowledge of the laws discussed here can save an organization from lawsuits, especially embarrassing lawsuits. Termination and layoffs Terminating an employee is always a delicate issue. The book tells you how to avoid wrongful termination cases, conduct a final meeting with the terminated employee and also how to protect your business information when an employees leaves. Laws affecting small business practices The book has everything you need to know about laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, health and safety, etc. The 8th edition updates the latest employment laws. The Employer’s Legal Handbook as seen from the above descriptions covers a wide range of topics that all employers face day in and day out and hence need to know. We also infer from this that the book is of immense help to employers in so many different ways. For instance, a business owner must know the right way to advertise so as to get good applicants. Once applications come in an employer has to investigate the employee backgrounds. One has to have knowledge on subjects like employee records and files, performance reviews, employee benefits, payrolls, taxes, and knowledge about the various agencies like OSHA, EEOC, ADA, etc. When a business owner wants to expand his business he is not afraid of taking financial risks and is not worried about the quality of his products. What he is afraid of is hiring employees and coping with all the laws and administrative problems that come with a growing business. The rules are the same whether one employs 1 per or 100 persons. Employers fear dealing with unknown laws or the little knowledge that they have of the laws. More than dealing, sometimes it is the worry of how to get information about these laws. One has to read this book. It will make clear most aspects; if not all aspects of the legal challenges one has to face in a business. It is a very useful and handy book for a small company as it outlines different state requirements, common pitfalls that one encounters, and provides many sample texts that is needed for a professional small business. Every Human Resource manager will benefit by reading this book. They can easily prevent legal issues by having knowledge of all laws and regulations. As the book is enjoyable and easy to understand it is an excellent book for those who are new to the subject of Human Resources or for those who want to understand the Human Resources function better. The Employer’s Legal Handbook is exactly the book a busy owner of a business or a busy manager needs. It is book for those who do not have time or money for dealing with employee problems. Solutions to any question on workplace laws and regulations can be found in this book. It is almost like a bible for small business owners. This book will enable you to save money which you may have to spend on lawsuits from employees both current and former and also from applicants, which may occur on account of your ignorance of applicable laws. As the author, Fred Steingold (2007) says in Chapter 1 of this book, “Most large companies maintain human resource departments and in-house lawyers to lead them through the intricacies of employment law -- but it's a costly endeavor. And if you run a small or midsized company, this is an unaffordable luxury. In either case, the guidelines discussed here should reduce your need for outside legal help when hiring employees.” Litigation and government regulations are the most common causes of legal problems business owners have to face. The street-savvy knowledge this book provides may help them to save a lot of money by helping to prevent them. According to Los Angeles Times, the book "Belongs on every business owner's bookshelf. It covers everything from discrimination to using independent contractors and is written clearly and concisely.... Save yourself thousands in potential legal fees." The Employer’s Legal Handbook is filled with practical information in the form of model forms, letters, policy documents and procedures you have to follow for all key employment issues. This will be of immense help to small to medium sized business owners and employers as they need not hire an outside agency to do their work. In conclusion it can be said that the entire book is eminently readable. The strength of the book lies in its simplicity. It is written in an easy to follow, plain English. The book uses minimum jargon. The chapters in the book provide grids that summarize all the information and also compare it with other states the legality of this information. The various sections in the book are clearly defined with examples. All the information on the various labor laws is well consolidated and organized and a person who wants to do some research or make an enquiry is able to do easily with the help pf this book. In fact many lawyers have been using this book to teach their students. Laws of a country constantly change. The laws outlined in this book may be changed suddenly. This may turn out to be one of the negative points of this book. But one can always follow up by checking the latest developments through the internet, or by phoning the concerned authorities to check the current status of any applicable law. In short The Employer’s Legal Handbook helps you to take a sensible approach while dealing with employees. It helps you to take a real life approach. References 1. Steingold Fred (2007), The Employer’s Legal Handbook, 8th Edition, Nolo Publishers Read More