Your In-House Employment Law Counsel
Employment Law for Small to Medium Sized Organizations
At Janis Employment Law, our employer services are tailored to small and medium organizations in Alberta – this means we understand the budgetary restraints and that while you or your HR manager wants access to quality legal advice, this service needs to look different than of a large employer. As a result, we have developed our service model around a streamlined, unbundled delivery at lower hourly rates than larger firms.
Before launching Janis Employment Law to focus on helping employers, our lawyers founded Alberta’s largest employee-side firm, Taylor Janis LLP. We therefore have extensive experience representing employees on every type of workplace matter, from severance to human rights and disability disputes, providing a distinct advantage in understanding employee psychology, strategy, and motivations; this allows for more effective risk mitigation and negotiation, that keeps your organization in business-and out of court.
How Does This Work?
- We’re virtual – we are available round the clock to ensure you or your HR manager gets the right advice when you need it by way of a virtual meeting – not by way of an expensive legal opinion that arrives 2 weeks later;
- We’re proactive – our role is that of an in-house legal counsel for your company. We are there to prevent legal disputes and the costly litigation that follows; to work with you and your HR team to get ahead of potential workplace liabilities before they become a drain on time and resources.
- We’re experienced – we have decades of experience advising employees and employers on disability, human rights and discrimination, and employee termination and severance. This translates into faster and more effective legal advice and lower fees.
Our fees are reasonable! Ask us about our creative fee arrangements that make using legal counsel make sense.
Common Issues Facing Small to Medium Employers
At Janis Employment Law, we spend most of our time advising and mitigating risk for employers surrounding disability and potential human rights matters. And for good reason. This is a very complex area of law and successfully managing these employees requires extensive experience. If you get it wrong, there is substantial risk exposure which can amount to several months or even years of employee wages, not to mention public record and embarrassment. It is worth investing in specialized legal advice now, to avoid spending thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in a protracted legal dispute.
Here are some examples of common issues facing small to medium-sized employers:
- You have an employee who has been off work with depression for several weeks but is not responding to emails. This employee occupies an important position with your organization, and the position remains unfilled.
- You have an employee who you were planning on dismissing for just cause due to incompetence or other misconduct, but they recently went on short term disability leave for stress. Now what? Can you still proceed with the dismissal and if so, how do you go about it?
- A female employee has recently complained to you or your HR team about sexual harassment by a supervisor. How should you respond?
Regardless of the issue your organization is facing, Janis Employment Law is here to help you navigate it in a way that suits your organization.
Our Areas of Practice:
- Employee disability and human rights
- Employee termination and severance
- Making changes to existing employment contracts
- Employee disability accommodation
- Drafting and reviewing contracts for new employees
- Preparing and reviewing employment law policies and handbooks
- Responding to employee complaints and legal demands.
What Are the Next Steps?
- We start with a confidential initial consultation to boil the facts of your situation down to the most critical legal issues facing your organization.
- We then discuss your options and a preliminary strategy; If, in our assessment, we think it is worthwhile for you to invest further in employment law services, you move to step 3.
- Our firm is engaged to work with you or your HR team which may take various forms whichever is the most economical and efficient.
- Ongoing advice and direction to ensure you or your HR team is best positioned to manage a particular situation from a legal standpoint. This is typically for an employee who is still employed but one who presents a risk to operations, other staff, or may become a source of liability.
- Providing an oral or written legal opinion respecting an employment matter – this is commonly requested by employers who are dealing with an employee where accommodation and human rights are in play.
- Assisting you or your HR team with a formal response to a Complaint (Human Rights, OHS, Employment Standards) or with defending a lawsuit brought by a former employee.
- Disability Accommodation Assessments – these are critical for employers dealing with an employee for whom the organization has put in place accommodation; however, things are just not working out. At this point, you must be able to show that you made a reasonable effort to accommodate the employee up to and including undue hardship – this is a highly technical and ambiguous threshold to meet. This is when our firm can step in with workplace investigators to provide you with an assessment as to whether you have discharged the burden. As a result, you have peace of mind knowing that you have acted reasonably, and you have something persuasive to rely on if the matter becomes contentious.