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HR Growing Pains
Bigger may be better, but
adding employees adds new layers of Connecticut and federal regs
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Business New Haven
1/26/1998
By: Susan Banfield
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Growth. It's what every start-up company aspires to. Every new business looks forward to the day it first turns $1 million in sales, or the day it moves into a new 20,000-square-foot facility all its own. But few business people, when they start out, realize the myriad new legal responsibilities that come with that growth.
As a company attains certain growth yardsticks, measured in terms of numbers of employees, a host of different federal and state regulations kick in. Compliance is not optional. Even a company with a single employee must contend with a myriad of state and federal laws.
Employers of any size must comply with wage and hour laws, workers compensation laws, the unemployment law and the Occupational Safety & Health Act (OSHA). More recently, all employers have been required to abide by provisions of the so-called Whistle-Blower Act, which provides protection for an employee who discloses illegal practices on the part of his or her employer, and the Meal Law, requiring employers to give all workers at least a 30-minute lunch or meal break. And once a company has three or more employees, an employer
is subject to the provisions of the state anti-discrimination law.
At 15 employees, compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) becomes mandatory. The ADA requires both adjustments in a company's physical plant to accommodate employees with disabilities, and demonstrable lack of discrimination in employment. Companies with 15 or more workers must also comply with federal anti-discrimination laws.
Companies with 20 or more employees are required by the state to provide a smoke-free work area. They are also required by the federal government to abide by the COBRA law.
COBRA mandates that an employee's medical insurance be continued if the employee leaves. COBRA carries with it “complex procedural obligations,” says Robert Noonan of the Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA). It is an augur of what is in store for companies that continue to grow.
“Employers are often surprised and dismayed to find that when they hit 50 employees they have to contend with two laws,” says Noonan.
Maria Fisher-Proulx, principal of Future Directives, an HR consulting firm, echoes Noonan's experience. “A lot of people that hit the 50 [employee] mark don't even realize what laws kick in,” she says. “It seems easy - until they get audited or someone comes down on them.”
Many of Fisher-Proulx's clients are employers that have sought out a human resources consultant precisely because they realize how much they don't know.
The two laws that companies with 50 or more employees must contend with are: 1) the statute obligating employers to provide sexual harassment training and education for all supervisors; and 2) the federal Family & Medical Leave Act. Sexual harassment training must be provided “regardless of any existing policies or practices,” says Noonan. Some may regard this as an unwieldy burden, especially since the training must be provided both for new supervisors (within six months of their hire) and continually for those already in supervisory positions.
Perhaps even more burdensome can be the hyper-technical language of the Family & Medical Leave Act. An attempt to make it easier for employees to take extended leave when they have a child or must cope with another family member's serious health condition by providing benefits during the leave period and a guarantee of their job when they return, the law runs to about 100 pages of detailed explanations of the rights of employees and the obligations of employers. The complex definitions of “serious health condition” and other terms “make day-to-day decision-making difficult,” acknowledges Noonan.
The complexities of the act are compounded when a company reaches the 75-employee level. Then the state Family & Medical Leave Act takes effect - and the Connecticut and federal versions are not the same. While the two laws are similar, there are critical differences. An employer must be able to sort these out.
Firms that contract with the federal government
must cope with even further regulation when they hit the 50 mark. Such companies are required to have an affirmative-action plan and to submit an Equal Opportunity report annually.
So is bigger still better? Most companies simply do what they must to cope. “Whatever the federal law says, we'll abide by the law,” says Bob Flyntz, vice president of human resources at the Miller Co. in Meriden.
Flyntz says his firm's implementation of the Family & Medical Leave Act was not too difficult. “It went pretty smoothly. The impact has been pretty modest.” As for sexual harassment training, “We'd been doing this for a long time. There are a number of vendors who provide this service.”
Not everyone takes the regulations in stride, however. One whom they rub the wrong way is Laura Reid, president of the Fish Mart, a West Haven wholesaler of tropical fish, reptiles and small animals.
Reid currently has 42 employees, and is glad she is still small enough to avoid the laws that apply to slightly larger companies. “I resent any unnecessary government interference in my business. In my opinion, it's got to remain in the hands of the employer and not be dictated by the government,” she says of the Family & Medical Leave Act.
“We provide in our employee handbook for a medical leave of absence. I try to accommodate the people I have here. In a small company [the law] poses a real hardship.”
Whether one views the regulations that are binding on larger companies as burdensome or benign, one thing is certain: They must at least be recognized and dealt with. Any employer approaching the 50-worker mark should be aware that questions regarding these laws can be fielded by the staff at CBIA at 860-244-1900.
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