Like any business, a family-owned business has a strong incentive to attract, retain, motivate and reward key employees. A competitive salary and benefits package may not be enough to do this in today’s market. Many businesses offer equity incentive plans to employees as a form of long-term incentive compensation. For many family-owned businesses offering stock […]
Biggest Threat to Your Company’s Trade Secrets
For many people, trade secret theft evokes images of an international technological superspy using complex cyber-tools to engage in corporate or national espionage in cyberspace to steal the crown jewels of company or country. In reality, the more common, less dramatic and yet more dangerous threat to a company’s proprietary information comes from within. Current […]
Protecting Your Trade Secrets Where State Law and Federal Defend Trade Secrets Act Meet
When it comes to protecting your company’s trade secrets, one of the most important remedies you can secure is a court order preventing a former employee from making use of the trade secret for the benefit of a competitor. From your perspective, it’s impossible for an employee who received your company’s crucial business information to […]
Final Pay Rules When Employees Retire
The California Supreme Court has held, in a case of first impression that the state’s final pay rules for retiring employees apply in the same manner as to employees who quit. This is an important clarification of California employment law. Background California has strict final pay rules when employment ends. Labor Code section 201 requires […]
Independent Contractor or Employee? How to Choose Properly
One of the most common ways an employer gets into hot water is to improperly classify an employee as an independent contractor (“IC”). This is an important issue for businesses for a few reasons. There is no single, simple rule you can use to determine the proper employment status of an individual you hire to […]