A Sonic Drive-In in Grapevine, Texas pays $31,000 to settle a recent sexual harassment lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).  Professional Building Systems of North Carolina pays $118,000 to settle a racial harassment case filed and Celestica Inc., an electronics manufacturer, pays $112,000 to settle a disability discrimination case.  These laws have been on the books for decades; yet, they’re routinely violated.

Failed business policies can subject your company to thousands of dollars in legal liabilities.  Learn how to make your business policies more memorable and more effective.

Register today for the complimentary teleseminar How to Successfully Market Business Codes of Conduct, on April 21, 2010 at 8 pm Eastern, 5 pm Pacific when The No Nonsense Lawyer™, Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, interviews business policy expert Carole Basri.

 Who should attend:

• Entrepreneurs and business owners with up to 80 employees
• Human resource professionals
• Ethics and compliance professionals

What you will learn:

• How to write policies that grab your employees attention,
• Why non-lawyers are the key success to effective compliance,
• Tips to make your business code training more palatable, and
• The most common mistakes employers make and how you can avoid them.

Ms Basri helps businesses create and improve their internal compliance and ethics programs in her role as president of the Corporate Lawyering Group and Corporate Lawyering Association.  She has worked with major such as Dun & Bradstreet, Cendent, and Dannon, among others improve their compliance programs.  She is also an adjunct professor of Corporate Law at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Law. Let her share her years of experience and insights with you. 

Click here to register for How to Successfully Market Business Codes of Conduct.  Submit a question you would like to hear answered during the interview and receive the call-in information free.

If your business is engaged in international transactions you may be interested to know that law enforcement officials are increasingly collaborating across borders on investigations of a host of illegal activities ranging from the antitrust violations, to tax evasion, to bribery of foreign officials, financial fraud, and more.  No longer can you safely escape the clutches of Inspector Clouseau by crossing a border.

Due to this heightened scrutiny, companies with significant international operations are conducting more of their own multi-jurisdictional and cross-border investigations.  Of course every time you leave your home country you are bound to encounter some surprises and challenges. 

An interesting article, titled “Pitfalls of Cross-Border Investigations” identifies four important rules of the road that are worth noting: 

1. Secure relevant documents.  This may be easier said than done due to diverse document retention policies abroad, language barriers, and other technological challenges.
2. Beware of local rules when interviewing employees abroad.  Some countries have privacy laws that entitle employees to bring their own attorney or to decline your invitation to sit down and talk altogether.  Then there are additional hurdles created by language and other cultural barriers.
3. Recognize that the U.S. concept of attorney-client privilege is not universally accepted abroad.  European law in particular is at odds with U.S. law on this front.
4. Give consideration to a coordinated investigation if multiple governments are zeroing in on the same issue.

Conducting business internationally is a trap for the unwary, regardless of whether you have a substantial footprint overseas or are just starting out.  That’s why I’m delighted to be interviewing international legal expert, Carol Emory on December 3, 2009 at 8 pm Eastern ( 5 pm Pacific) about the potential legal pitfall of international business transactions. 

Click here for more information about how you can submit a question that I’ll ask Carol on December 3^rd and mark your calendar to join us for this valuable and complimentary program.

Copyright © 2009 Corporate M.O., LLC

The cold and flu season is upon us and this year it has more than a few employers nervous.  That’s because the new wheezing and sneezing season promises to bring more than the sniffles.  It could feature some seriously pigheaded symptoms thanks to the H1N1 virus, also known as the Swine flu. 

Workplace legal obligations such as the general duty clause of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (also known as OSHA), that requires employers to provide a safe working environment “free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm” to employees. 

And then there is the Americans with Disability Act (ADA).  You have to be careful about the type of health related questions you can ask employees and job applicants.

Thankfully, there are some useful references that contain tips to help you navigate these delicate situations:

1. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released Guidance for Businesses and Employers to Plan and Respond to the 2009-2010 Influenza Season;
2. The Department of Health and Human Services, US Department of Homeland Security, and the CDC have issued Preparing for the Flu (including 2009 H1N1 Flu) – a Communication Toolkit for Businesses and Employers; 
3. The Department of Health and Human Services has also assembled a useful website; 
4. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has issued some guidance to help you stay within the ADA requirements called Pandemic Preparedness in the Workplace and the Americans with Disabilities Act; and
5. The general government site called Flu.gov.

To you and your employees’ health!

Economics tells us we should engage in rational decision making.  We shouldn’t take irrational risks.  Okay, then tell me why do so many successful, high-profile, and otherwise smart individuals take what appears to irrational risks that can turn their world upside down?   

Enron financial engineers, the Wall Street wizards who helped implode the financial market and deepen our recession, and of course the parade of sex scandals such as Governor Elliot Spitzer and his call girls, former presidential candidate John Edwards and a campaign consultant with a love child, Governor Mark Sanford and his Argentinean soulmate mistress, Senator John Ensign and the wife of a former top aide, and just last week – David Letterman and certain Late Night Show staffers, all demonstrate a lack of “good judgment” or rational risk taking. 

What were they thinking?  How could smart people get it so wrong?

Senator Tom Coburn, in talking about Senator John Ensign who admitted to having an affair with the wife of his close friend and former top aide, offers some interesting insight.  Coburn was recently quoted in the New York Times as saying, “John got trapped doing something really stupid and then made a lot of other mistakes afterwards.”  But my favorite line is when he said, “Judgment gets impaired by arrogance.” 

 Bingo!

Coburn’s observation dovetails with the research done by behavioral economists.  Those are the folks who look below the surface at what we do and examine how decisions are really made.  Among the interesting findings in this field is the role of overconfidence.

Overconfidence contributes to hubris and arrogance.  It causes people to take huge risks.  Their perceptions of invincibility can lead to large scale risk taking and have legal implications that trigger liabilities ranging from negligence to brazen malfeasance, such as fraud. 

Organizations seeking to effectively manage their enterprise wide legal risk need to be cognizant of this behavioral flaw and blind spot it creates.  The best way to guard against it is to properly train all employees, including the most senior AND to create a system of rational checks and balances to protect the business from poor individual judgment.   

The conflict between behavioral economics and business economics presents serious and continuous leadership challenge.