Labor Law Spotlight: ADA

Americans with Disabilities Act - ADA

Federal Law

Enacted: 1990

Company size covered: 15 employees & more

Purpose:
Requires employers to make "reasonable accommodations" for employees with disabilities, once the disabilities are identified to/by the Company.

Key Provisions:
-Companies must make reasonable accommodations to enable employees identified with disabilities to perform their job duties
-disability loosely defined as interfering with "major life activities"
-strictly defined procedures for compliance
-establishes procedures for "reasonable accommodations" by employers

What You Should Do:
Be alert and sensitive to any employee input about potential disabilities that may require accommodations.

Get expert HR advice with this one.

In my opinion it is impossible to take issue with the intent of this law. But the reality of providing certain accommodations has proven to be expensive in many cases.


Lance

Labor Law Spotlight: Equal Pay Act

Equal Pay Act

Federal Law

Enacted: 1963

Company Size Covered: 2 employees & more

Purpose: Prohibits pay discrimination based on sex of employees.

Key Provisions:
-Male and female employees performing the same work/job must be paid equally.
-Pay rates for equal work must be set without regard to the sex of individual employees.

What You Should Do:
Establish pay rates for individual jobs based on the work being performed, without consideration to the sex of the employees doing the work.

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Labor Laws Company by Company Size - State & Federal

                                                    LABOR LAWS

Law/Employees                            Content
1+                                 
                           
Wages & Hours                             Overtime pay                    

Discrimination/Harassment           Federal law               
                                                                                                        
Workers' Compensation                Insurance for work       
                                                       related injuries/illness

Eligible to Work in U. S.               I-9 Form for all employees

Posters & Notices                          Company bulletin boards

New Employee Reporting             All new hires

Paid Family Leave                         CA State law

Disability Insurance                      SDI (CA)

Workplace Safety                         Cal/OSHA

Lactation Accommodation           Breaks & facilities for new mothers

Child Labor                                  Minimum ages & type of work

2+
COBRA Continued                      18 months after termination       
Health Insurance

5+
Discrimination Laws                    CA State law                         

Pregnancy Disability                    Leave of absence for pregnancy

11+
OSHA Log 300                            Annual posting

15+
ADA - Americans with                Workplace accommodations        
Disabilities Act

Discrimination Laws                    Federal 

GINA - Genetic Information        Prevents use of certain genetic
Non-Discrimination Act               information for employer discrimination

25+
Drug/Alcohol Rehab                    Leave of absence                             

School Activities                          Time off work for children's            
                                                      school activities

50+
Affirmative Action                      Hiring quotas                                           

Family Leave                               FMLA & CFRA*

Sexual Harassment                      Supervisor/Extended training for
Training                                       all Supervisors/Managers - CA law

                                                  *Family Medical Leave Act (Federal)
                                                    CA Family Rights Act (CA State)

100+
EEO-1                                       Annual posting

Company Culture: A Summary

We've established the importance of company culture and the key role it plays in growth and development. We've also examined the mechanics of developing and adapting a positive culture as the company grows.

I conclude with, one more time, remember the example of Costco. You can read about it in the May 10, 2013 post in detail. It is a shining example of keeping a dynamic start-up culture as a robust and vital guiding beacon through the absolutely stellar leadership of the company founder.

Define yours,  build it and cultivate it. It's actually fun and well worth every precious minute you spend on it.

Lance

Company Culture: Maintaining As You Grow

Okay, you state the company's mission, develop the core values of the organization and then build the culture that expresses the company's "personality," and life is good.

Thing is, time doesn't stand still and keeps moving forward. You add people, change products, popular culture changes around you, and people just get bored with anything over time.

Simply stated, different things work at different stages of a company's evolution. These are my version of various growth stages:
-Embryonic........you-10 employees
-Start-up............10-30 employees
-Small................30-100 employees
-Medium...........100-600 employees
--merge or be acquired--multi-sites--venture capital--IPO--
Board of Directors--founder(s) leave--
-Large...............600 to infinity

We'll be looking at the stages up to Medium, you know, the ones where it's still fun.

So the art to employ here is to adapt your culture to changes by morphing elements of it to keep it viable.

Repeat after me: CHANGE IS GOOD.

Stay creative, my friends.

Lance

Company Culture - A Story of Evolution

Here's a little tale of success and culture...

You make a little star template out of wood for your granddaughter. Her little friends like it. After giving away a couple of dozen plus a batch to her pre-school - it hits you - POW! "I could sell these."

Embryonic
You start to peddle them around town after work hours and make them on the weekends. You've expended to several different templates. But you're maxed out.

So you hire a college student and a junior woodworker part-time to market and make the product. You name the template enterprise "StarWorks" Clever, n'cest pas?

Culture: You think about how you want your daily culture to be and decide on the theme, in this case I would make the word "Star" the centerpiece.

Start-Up
The addition of a Bookkeeper, another student for selling, plus the rental of a mini-suite with a roll-up door in the back elevate StarWorks to a start-up.

You cut your job work hours and work here half-time and more.

Culture: This is the most energetic phase of company growth. Use lots of imprinted stuff to build identity like t-shirts, caps and mugs, anything. Bring in lunch once a week on the company. Sell the culture frequently in emails and postings.

Small
A year passes and demand for your toys has grown to region-wide, including all of Southern California.

Among others, you've added a Purchasing Agent, an Accountant and a shop Foreman. You wisely use helpdeskHR to establish a basic Human Resources program and keep you in legal compliance.

You're there 70 hours a week. Headcount reaches thirty - you're a small company! Before you know it you have 100 souls working at StarWorks.

Culture: Logo golf shirts, include culture in new hire orientation, start a newsletter,
have a picnic type event for employees (not families yet) and maybe have a "Starmap" to find the "Picnic Galaxy."

Medium
Life is good as you expand product offerings, go national and appear on QVC - you add a Call Center for nationwide orders and a Sales staff to work the retail channels.

You are now CEO of a fully functioning business, becoming a player in the toy industry and setting the pace for competition. Congratulations!

Culture: Shift to more sophisticated programs such as recognition awards for accomplishments (Shining Star,) expanded newsletter (The Pulsar,) a family picnic type event (Star Cluster,) and start a regular employee communications program (Nova.) May sound overdone in one dose but it works in realtime.

And that is how it's done. It takes energy and persistence to keep your company identity intact but it's worth it. Remember Costco.

Lance

Company Culture: That's Mine and I'm Stickin' to It

Forgive my strained attempt to tie this all in to a popular song title. The title does, however, contain one of life's universally shared experiences. We've all had to pick a story and stick to it on at least one occasion.

I suggest every company do the same with their culture. Form it on day one, build it every day, and use it continuously to further the company's success.

I would employ these basic building blocks:
1. the essential value of employees - they are the company
2. positive, consistent customer service - like your customers
3. exceptional quality of product or service - it's what sets you apart

Your goal is to make your company an employer of choice with people who realize that their best interests and those of the company are one in the same.

A perfect starting point are your Mission Statement and Core Values. These are two documents guide you every day and should be displayed prominently and discussed frequently.

Next post we'll look at maintaining a culture as you grow.

Lance

Company Culture: A Tale of Two Cultures

So we have seen the role of company culture in two organizations.

Costco: Original positive culture championed by the founder/CEO who handed the reins over to a successor who shared his philosophy. This culture remains an engine for the company's continuing success and growth.

Home Depot: Original dynamic culture eventually crushed by the weight of global growth, The two founders and chief executives lost touch and lost control. A rah-rah culture devolved into a sloppy destructive mess that led to some horrible fatalities of customers in the stores. Even if they try to restore it or build a simulacrum, it can never be the same.

In my own start-up experience, we maintained the original culture from 35 employees to over 600 and even through the addition of an outside sourced CEO who grasped the value of the culture. Then came the merger with a culture that valued only the technical contributors and created an elite class and a mass of drones. The thrill is gone, baby.

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Company Culture: Gone Wild

After all the praise I have heaped on positive company culture, I just witnessed culture taken to a non-productive extreme.

I can tolerate the endless "hellos" from every employee on the floor at Von's and the painted on kind of toy soldier cheeriness at In 'n Out.

But today at Whole Foods, a well run non-union operation, I witnessed two gaggles of employees on some sort of culture building effort swoop into the store in which I was shopping. One bunch of red t-shirt wearing folks with a mobile flip chart cornered seemingly unsuspecting store employees. Problem was that they completely blocked three aisles that I saw and prevented customers from passing and buying.

Another bunch formed some sort of discussion circle around a giant cookie display and for the duration of their exercise not one package of cookies was sold.

Both efforts were not well thought through and the participants were so intent on their activities that they were oblivious to being aware of customer inconvenience.

I guess we file this one in the "too much of a good thing" folder.

Lance

Company Culture: When Culture Goes Bad

It happens to cottage cheese and buttermilk. And it happens to organizations as well.

Watching a TV special on the rise of Home Depot I was blown away as the start-up culture (1970's) was being described: upbeat, resourceful and rah-rah to the max. But then the show went on to the late 80's when the culture began to look like a bloated, grotesque Mardi Gras mask; aisles filled with dangerous forklifts and not an employee in sight. That's the Home Depot I know and as a result will not go into one.

Back to the show, the founder decided to leave when, in a meeting, he realized they were opening stores that he would never see. A far cry from displaying empty boxes in the first store opening to give the appearance of a huge inventory and describing managers as "animals."

So here we have a case of a wonderful start-up culture spoiling into a rotten mess. The founders did not focus on maintaining and vitalizing the culture that grew Home Depot into a DIY retail giant.

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Company Culture: Role of Management

The people that fill the offices of the senior management team, CEO and every other title starting with a "C" and the Managers of departments are literally the architects and authors of every company's culture.

Invariably when I learn about a CEO that is out in the field with the direct employees, it is a successful organization. One recent example I encountered is retail monster Costco. The recently retired CEO (75 years of age btw) made a career of regularly visiting all of the Costco stores and actually talking with employees. He's on the company jet every week.

His successor shares his values and goals. This means there is a high probability that the positive culture of success will continue.

The essence of the culture came out when Costco's wine purchaser was interviewed. The question to her is how it felt to be one of the top wine experts in the business and her response was, "I'm an employee of Costco who knows something about wine." I couldn't write a script that would more perfectly illustrate an employee state of mind that fuels a successful company culture.

Culture starts at the "top" of the organization and permeates every employee and therefore every CUSTOMER.

When a positive culture is maintained from start-up to mega-company you are seeing business as good as it can get.

Lance

Company Culture

I've recently encountered some television shows that focused on the central role that the culture of the organization plays in the company's growth or demise.

The term "culture" is used a lot but do we know the definition for sure? Academically speaking, culture is the crown of values, goals and experiences sitting atop the society. They are commonly shared by the people living the rules and procedures that form the structure of the society. That's my definition anyway and it does fit well to business organizations.

The blog post on 5-13-2011 describes the process of building the culture of a start-up that contributed directly to the emergence of the company to a revenue producing powerhouse that is still putting employees' kids through college.

Recently the subject popped up on several television shows and got me thinking about it again. So we'll take a look at the shows and how company culture figures in over the next series of posts.

Lance