BLOGS

Most businesses are started with the best intentions and tons of optimism. Sadly, not all businesses or business relationships work out. According to the various available statistics, between 50% and 70% of business partnerships fail. Several reasons exist why a business may need to break-up, ranging from retirement to mental incapacitation to fraud, or just a general inability of the owners to continue to run the business together.Emotions run high when a business partnership fails and former lifelong friends can become bitter adversaries....

On May 13, 2021, the CDC released new recommendations for fully vaccinated people, but does that mean you no longer need to require your employees wear masks at work?Not so fast.According to the CDC data tracker, about 59% American adults have received at least one shot, while 46% are considered fully vaccinated.  The new guidelines announced by Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, represent a major step toward a return to pre-pandemic times. "Anyone who is fully vaccinated can participate ...

While the term non-binary isn’t new, it is new to many employers and raises some complicated questions.  Most small business employers are aware of the policies they are required to have in place to protect LGBTQ employees from discrimination, but when it comes to non-binary employees there is still a lot to learn.This blog is Part I of a two-part series. This first article is intended to be an introduction to the terms employers should be familiar with based on recent US Supreme Court cases.  There are some generalities included here f...

As many businesses have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars invested in inventory or equipment, one would normally guess that such items would be a business’ most valuable asset and often they are. However, this information can be in the form of intellectual property (patents, copyrights, trade secrets, etc.) or market-related information (customer preferences, vendor relationship details, pricing arrangements, etc.). As a lot of this information is not physically tangible, it can get forgotten about by business owners during ...

On March 23, 2021, Illinois Governor Pritzker signed into law Senate Bill 1480, which amends both the Illinois Human Rights Act and the Illinois Equal Pay Act and requires employers to report EEO-1 and pay data to the Illinois Secretary of State.In this article we will focus on the amendment’s impact on the use of criminal background checks by employers in the hiring process.Essentially, the amendment provides that an employer may only consider an individual’s criminal conviction history if there is a substantial relationship betwee...