Designed for Human Resources leaders wishing to take their skills and knowledge to the next level.
This presentation delivers a comprehensive legal roadmap for senior HR leaders navigating critical organizational risks. Day One focuses on the legal complexities of Pre-Employment, covering strategic approaches to job postings, interviews, human rights compliance, and drafting enforceable employment agreements and policies. Day Two shifts to Managing the Employment Relationship, providing tools for performance management, establishing enforceable policy handbooks, navigating accommodation requests, and utilizing specialized industry panel insights to proactively minimize organizational liability.
What You’ll Learn
- Understanding in-depth the rationale for provisions relating to termination, bonuses, commissions, stock options, continuance of benefits, non-solicitation and non-competition clauses (failure to understand which can lead to costly litigation)
- Strategic approaches to the framing and drafting of workplace policies and procedures and employment contracts
- Effectively planning and managing performance and performance improvement plans (PIPS)
- What the law requires, and what represents proactive best practices, in strategies for accommodation
- Tackling the issues of social media and its impact on the employment relationship
- Overcoming the challenges posed by harassment and mental health issues in the workplace
- Termination of employment: managing and limiting the legal risks
- Understanding the formal mediation and litigation processes which come into play if informal resolution does not succeed
Day One: Pre-Employment: Job Postings, Interviewing, Drafting Employment Agreements & Termination Clauses
With Stuart Rudner and Brittany Taylor.
Session topics for this day include:
- Job Postings and Conducting Job Interviews
- Best practises for job postings and the implications of not following them
- Inaccurate or misleading job descriptions: is there a duty of care between a candidate and the employer, and if so, what are the practical consequences of breaching that duty?
- Identifying potential discrimination in the job advertisement/description: ensuring that your hiring practises comply with all applicable laws
- How do the courts interpret Bona Fide Operational Requirements (BFORs) and their limits?
- Tips to avoid/minimize risk of inducement
- Permissible and impermissible questions in conducting the job interview: beyond the obvious
- Checking the applicant’s social media profile and avoiding the pitfalls
- Potential human rights claims resulting from job postings/advertisements
- Drafting Effective Employment Agreements
- What are the legal implications of an offer letter?
- Tips and tools for crafting a valid, enforceable contract congruent with organizational needs
- Avoiding the errors that can unexpectedly make an employment contract unenforceable
- How to protect against constructive dismissal claims: the art of incorporating appropriate flexibility into the job description
- The scope of termination provisions to include in employment contracts
- Non-compete and non-solicitation agreements: current judicial thinking on the protection of legitimate business interests and ‘reasonable’ restrictive covenants
- Drafting provisions relating to severance pay, bonuses, commission, stock options, career counseling, continuance of benefits: how to avoid going wrong
Day Two: During the Employment Relationship – Policies and Addressing Performance Issues
With Stuart Rudner and Geoffrey Lowe.
Session topics for this day include:
- Employment Policies
- Determining the policies your organization needs
- How to effectively communicate the organization’s values and expectations and implement its policies
- The essential scope of policies and procedures: harassment, privacy, use of technology/social media, benefits, discipline, and absenteeism
- Policy hazards and omissions and taking steps to ensure that policies will be enforceable
- Conducting effective policy and handbook reviews and updating
- A Comprehensive Guide to the Legal Landscape
- Tools for effectively assessing and managing performance
- Establishing specific, measurable objectives
- Performance Improvement plans: key considerations in managing challenging employees
- Communicating expectations and consequences effectively
- Human rights issues and accommodation
- How are the standards and evidentiary requirements for showing ‘undue hardship’ evolving?
- Creating a record you can rely upon for discipline and potential dismissal
- Fireside Chat
- Hear from some of the country’s leading human resources experts on one of the topical issues of the day. With Mark Edgar, (Chief People Officer, Wajax), Andrea Garson, (Founder and Principal, Breaking Glass Inc. HR Consulting), and Gordana Terkalas (SVP and Chief People Officer, Aecon).
