It’s been a busy summer for employment law changes, and there are a number of upcoming compliance deadlines which may impact your business. These, and other key developments, are outlined below. September 30, 2019 Deadline For Submitting EEO-1 Pay Data By September 30, 2019, employers covered by EEO-1 reporting requirements (generally, employers with 100 or … Read more

Employment law issues rarely determine the strategy for a multi-jurisdictional business acquisition, but they can certainly give rise to significant avoidable costs and delay if issues are not spotted in advance. In the Herbert Smith Freehills 2016 global survey, 57% of respondents cited employment regulations as one of the reasons a deal had failed to … Read more

Large employers using wellness programs to reduce the cost of medical benefits must take care not to inadvertently violate various federal laws, including The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) and The Genetic Nondiscrimination Act. To assist employers in this regard, on 16 May 2016, the Equal Employment … Read more

A rule recently proposed by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission seeks to expand the scope of information that US employers with over 100 employees ("Qualified Employers") must currently report to the federal government. Specifically, in addition to reporting the race, gender, and ethnicity of their employees, the proposed rule would also require Qualified Employers … Read more

The EU Commission and the US have agreed on a new framework to facilitate the transfer of EU personal data to the US, the EU-US Privacy Shield, following the ECJ ruling that the old Safe Harbour framework was invalid (see here). The Article 29 Working Party (ie, the EU data protection regulators) have called on … Read more

Herbert Smith Freehills has published the first edition of a Global Guide to Whistleblowing, providing a quick reference guide to the law and culture around employees 'blowing the whistle' in 40 key jurisdictions covering in EMEA, the Americas and Asia Pacific. Read more

A recent decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals (Bergman v Neo@Ogilvy LLC) held that the Dodd-Frank Act protects employee whistleblowers who report wrongdoing internally to their employer, in addition to employees who report wrongdoing to the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). The court's decision creates a split with the Fifth Circuit, which previously … Read more

The Securities and Exchanges Commission has settled its first enforcement action against a company for “improperly restrictive language in confidentiality agreements”. SEC Rule 21F-17 prohibits companies from taking any action – including enforcing, or threatening to enforce, a confidentiality agreement – that impedes an employee from reporting possible securities laws violations to the SEC. Read more