News & Events

HR departments play a critical role in ensuring that their companies comply with all applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations. This can be a challenging task, especially given the ever-changing regulatory landscape.

“The function of human resources (HR) has undergone significant changes and growth over the past few years,” writes Cailin Potami in Business News Daily. “HR’s constantly expanding functions include recruiting top talent, shaping a company’s culture, building better leaders, and maintaining legal and effective company policies.”

Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law in May a bill prohibiting race-based hair discrimination in Texas workplaces, schools, and housing policies. House Bill 567 -- The so-called CROWN Act -- takes effect September 1, 2023.

Texas joins 20 other states in passing a CROWN Act – the acronym stands for Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair, according to the CROWN Coalition.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) published on Aug. 1, 2023, a revised version of Form 1-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, with a requirement that all employers must start using the updated form by Nov. 1, 2023.

HR compliance checklists come in all shapes and sizes with the spectrum covering an alphabet soup of acronyms from COBRA to FMLA to ADA to FLSA.

The Society for Human Resource Management offers its members a whopping 39 compliance checklists that fall among 13 different categories.

“Ensuring your company is compliant with tax and labor laws helps create a safe and secure workplace for employees, provide fair compensation and ensure your company keeps up with its tax obligations.

Businesses can be forgiven if there is confusion surrounding guidelines concerning the classification of workers as independent contractors vs. employees, and that’s because the rules on the federal level are constantly shifting.

In just 15 months, the Trump Department of Labor (DOL) issued a Final Rule that adopted an “economic realities test”, then the Biden DOL scuttled the Final Rule, and now a Texas federal judge has reinstated that former Final Rule.

The 87^th Texas Legislature met from January to May and then again in three more special sessions from July to October, giving lawmakers many opportunities to pass new bills in the Lonestar State.

There were a whopping 9,999 bills introduced in the regular session alone with 3,803 passed.

While many of the bills passed are ceremonial there are several new laws that affect Texas employers.

Compliance is a bit like flossing … you may not see immediate consequences from letting it slide, but the long-term repercussions ultimately reveal themselves.

Lax compliance protocols increase the risk that your small-to-medium size business runs afoul of local, state, and/or federal regulations.

For most business owners, compliance violations are more painful than the sound of any dentist’s drill.

As an employer in Texas, it is important that you understand overtime pay and overtime exemptions. If you fail to properly pay your employees, you could be violating federal law and state law. You may face fines and may have to pay your employees what they were legally owed plus penalties and interest. Unfortunately, not every employer fully understands overtime pay and overtime exemptions in the state of Texas, and the laws regarding exemptions recently changed at the start of 2020. Here is more information about overtime pay and overtime exemptions in Texas. 

Like all states, the state of Texas requires employers and employees to abide by certain labor laws, which govern issues such as minimum wage, overtime payments, meals and breaks, harassment, child labor and discrimination. In addition, employers in the state of Texas are also subject to all federal labor laws. In order to ensure ongoing compliance with these laws, Texas employers need to be aware of all current state and federal regulations, as well as any changes going into effect in the future. Below is some information about Texas labor laws in 2020. 

Every business owner knows they should have an exit strategy, because buying and/or selling a business can get pretty complicated, and they may be relying on a successful exit to retire or start their next venture. The thing is, keeping your business up and running, getting your work done AND ensuring you have a smooth, functioning exit strategy isn't easy. Usually business owners will develop their own organizational structure and internal office practices, and then hire employees to run them a specific way. This specific way is not usually the “right” way, but the way that the business owner has always done it and is afraid or overwhelmed by the thought of changing it.