Advice & Counsel
k8bisch focuses on providing pragmatic and thoughtful advice when organizations face mundane or the most HR difficult situations. With your business goals in mind, here are the types of help k8bisch can provide:
- Affirmative Action Plans & Strategy
- Apprenticeship Programs & Compliance
- Bring Your Own Device & Other Technology Programs & Agreements
- Charges of Discrimination
- Confidentiality & Data Security
- Diversity & Inclusion Programs
- Discipline & Terminations
- Employee Reorganization & Reductions
- Employment Agreements & Releases
- Nonsolitication & Noncompetition Agreements
- Prevailing Wage Issues & Compliance
- Separation Agreements
- Social Media Policies & Use
Advice and counsel relationships can be done on an hourly or month-to-month retainer agreement.
Audits
With employment laws constantly in flux, policies, procedures, and pay practices can easily fall behind. Compliance audits can be a great way to take a look under HR’s hood and see where things can be improved. k8bisch conducts the following types of audits:
- 30,000-Foot Compliance Audit
- Culture
- Employee-Independent Contractor Classification
- FLSA Exemption Classification
- Pay (including pay equity)
- Prevailing Wage
- Policy & Handbook Audit
- Recruiting (including affirmative action)
For small and high-growth companies, k8bisch offers an eight-hour, employee-lifecycle compliance audit designed to identify areas where improvements could be made. The first four hours are spent with those who perform HR tasks, including recruiting, pay, and file maintenance. The next four hours are spent reviewing HR policies, employee handbooks, and procedures identifying if any need updating. After the review, we provide a menu of sorts that outlines areas that may need attention. The employer then gets to prioritize these areas and make business-focused decisions on what to tackle first. If we describe an issue that we don’t handle, we will connect you with experts who can.
A key benefit to an audit conducted by k8bisch is that the audit would be done by an attorney. The attorney-client privilege can act as a cloak to an audit, and at times, protect an audit from federal agencies or in litigation. When non-attorney consultants conduct audits, no such privilege exists, meaning the audit results must be shared with agency investigators or turned over in litigation when requested. This should be a consideration whenever an organization contemplates an audit.
Most audits can be conducted on a flat-fee basis.
Contract & Policy Preparation
HR owns many contracts and policies, from service agreements with tech vendors and executive-level nonsolicitation agreements to the all important employee handbook. Because all of these contracts and policies are impacted by employment law, they should be reviewed and revised regularly, even when drafted by an attorney. Here are some of the contracts and policies, k8bisch can work with you to create and update:
- Employee Handbooks
- Employee Agreements
- Executive Agreements
- Discrimination, Harassment & Retaliation Policies
- Leave & Reasonable Accommodation Policies
- Separation/Severance Agreements
- Release Agreements
- Social Media & Technology Use Agreements
- Employee Monitoring & Privacy Policies
- Drug & Alcohol Policies
This work can be done on an hourly or flat-fee basis.
Investigations
Sometimes, you’ve got to dig deeper into situations. A manager could be a bully, a co-worker could be sexually harassing another, or an employee could be stealing trade secrets. All of these situations call for an investigation.
Just like audits, when an attorney conducts an investigation, attorney-client privilege and/or the work-product doctrine may apply.
Depending on the situation, investigations can be conducted on an hourly or flat-fee basis.
Training
Good training is the backbone of good human resources. From training HR on how the organization operates so they can better recruit and provide services to employee to training employees on their role in cybersecurity issues, good training is a must for all organizations. k8bisch provides the following trainings:
- Manager
- Harassment & Discrimination Prevention
- Leave & Disability Issues
- Performance Management
- Discipline
- Cybersecurity
Each training is customized to an employer based on its culture and organization. Most trainings can be done on a flat-fee basis.