If you are a Texas employer, you may be wondering whatever happened to the concept of employment at will, where you could hire, discipline and fire an employee for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all. You are worried that the pat on the back that you once gave for encouragement is now considered sexual harassment. You may feel like you are fighting a workplace war and you seem to be losing.

You have good reason to be worried. Jury Verdict Research reports that the median discrimination verdict in the United States was $252,000 in 2007. In 2008, we saw the largest single plaintiff employment law verdict ever–$46.6 million awarded to a supervisor who refused to fire three employees in their 60s and was then fired himself. With the economy in the toilet, more employees will lose their jobs, which always results in an increase of employment litigation for wrongful termination of some sort.

But the business owners and managers that I talk to everyday as an employment lawyer can’t keep up with the new laws and regulations that they have to follow. They understand that the laws are designed to bring fairness and equality to the jobsite, but unless the laws are merged into some kind of simplified and usable form, they find compliance almost impossible.

How can you run your business without spending all your time on employment issues? These are the ten basic principles that you and your managers need to follow to comply with most employment laws and avoid a costly lawsuit: Continue reading Employer’s Ten Commandments →