Employment Relations Seminar: A Day at the Races

Against the Odds: Ensuring Your Employee Handbook Is Keeping Stride
Mike Underwood, Porter Wright
Jamie LaPlante, Porter Wright
Your employee handbook should be a valuable tool for communication, improved employee relations and legal risk reduction. However, without a thorough review every once in a while, a handbook can work against you. Changes in employment law and the rapidly increasing impact of technology at work makes this an opportune time to audit your handbook. We will take you through the paces for a solid handbook audit. Along the way we will cover best approaches for policies on equal employment and preventing harassment, accommodation under the ADA, use of technology and avoiding contract liability. We will also help you steer clear of problems under the National Labor Relations Act and will offer tips about common problems we see when reviewing handbooks.

The Preakness
Taking the Reins: Preventing Data Leaks Through Workforce Management
Brian Hall, Porter Wright
Unfortunately, data breaches have become all too common in today's technology age, and as too many companies can attest, they can have dire and painful consequences to a company's bottom line. Studies show that a company's own employees, whether intentionally or not, create one of the biggest risks of data leakage and loss. To prevent such destructive consequences, employers need to get an early lead to ensure they are taking all precautions they can. We will offer best practices for employers to address these potential issues early, including how to properly train employees to protect sensitive data. In addition, we will address the prevalence of mobile devices being used by employees to access their employer's networks and the serious implications it creates for employers.

The Belmont Stakes
Conditioning a Thoroughbred Workforce: Effectively Implementing Policy Changes and Improving Employee Engagement
Mark Sullivan, APEX Business Consulting
Jim Manuel, Porter Wright
Understanding a horse's personality, strengths and weaknesses and making important adjustments that help it race at its best is an important responsibility for a trainer. Similarly, as a human resource professional, you must not only ensure you create effective policies and practices within your workforce, you must also understand how to train, communicate, educate and condition supervisors as well as all employees in order to create a positive work environment with a fully engaged workforce. In this session, a former in-house counsel and a leading workforce performance coach will take you beyond the updates to your HR policy documents and guide you through the elements for implementing effective changes in workforce behavior to ensure compliance with new developments in the law and also help you improve your workforce engagement in the process.