We’ve recently fielded several questions from subscribers asking about the Employment Eligibility Verification Form, known as Form I-9. The questions arise because the expiration date on Form I-9 in current use is March 31, 2007.

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has yet to update the form with a new expiration date. The agency says it is working on updating the form and that employers should continue to use the current version in the meantime.

“The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) control number on the current Form I-9 expired March 31, 2007,” the agency says on its website. “USCIS is working on issuing a Form I-9 with an updated control number. This expiration does not affect employers’ requirement to comply with employment eligibility verification responsibilities, and employers should continue to use the current version of the Form I-9 until an updated form is posted on this website.”

When the agency publishes the updated form, we’ll notify purchasers, who will be able to download it from the private Download Area of YourEmployeeHandbook.com.

In August, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it planned on publishing a rule that would reduce the number of documents employers must accept to confirm the identity and work eligibility of their employees. Such a change would take months to go through the regulatory process before becoming effective.

Currently, there are no fewer than 29 categories of documents that can be used to establish identity and work eligibility. The department says the sheer quantity of documents is an invitation for fraud because employers lack the capacity to verify the authenticity of all the documents.

Many visitors to YourEmployeeHandbook.com are preparing to hire their company’s first “real”, that is, non-family, employee. Hiring your first employee can be overwhelming. You may not know where to begin or what ou must cover in order to avoid potential legal and financial liabilities.

We’ve listed a few of the most critical steps are listed below, however, when hiring for the first time, review your state’s employment regulations with your business advisor and tax specialist to avoid employment pitfalls.

When hiring, first obtain an employer identification number from the IRS. Download the EIN form from the IRS website at www.irs.gov.

With employees, you will have to pay state unemployment compensation taxes. These payments go to your state’s unemployment compensation fund, which provides short-term relief to workers who lose their jobs. Each state has a different way of handling unemployment compensation reporting. The Employer’s Poster Kit included in Your Employee Handbook includes a comprehensive 50-state listing of contact information for state unemployment offices.

You’ill need to withhold a portion of each employee’s income and deposit it with the IRS, as well as making Social Security and Medicare tax payments. The IRS has a special site for employers at www.irs.gov/businesses. Download IRS Publication 15, Employer’s Tax Guide, which is a very helpful guide.

You must also comply with the requirements of the Occupational Safety and Health Act or OSHA to ensure a workplace free of hazards, train workers on safety regulations, notify government administrators about serious workplace accidents, and keep detailed safety records. Rules vary depending on the type of industry. Go to OSHA’s website for specific information on your industry at www.osha.gov. Once you’ve researched OSHA’s requirements, you can use the basic Safety Program included with Your Employee Handbook to document your safety efforts.

Many federal and state government agencies require you to post notices providing information on worker rights for your employees. For information on the posters you are required to post, visit the Department of Labor website at www.dol.gov or refer to the Employer’s Poster Kit included with Your Employee Handbook.

For each employee you hire, create a file in which to keep job-related documents, such as job applications, employment offers, IRS Form W-4, performance evaluations, and sign-up forms for employee benefits. Medical records should be kept in a separate, confidential file, in a locked cabinet. You also need to keep I-9 Forms, which document an employee’s immigration status, in separate files and save the documents for at least one year after the employee has separated from your company. These forms, and many other HR forms, are available in the Companion Forms publication, included with Your Employee Handbook.

It is also is an excellent idea to provide a copy of Your Employee Handbook to each new (and existing) employee. Make it clear that employment with your company is “at-will”, and provide the new hire with a copy of the Handbook Acknowledgement Form to sign, and return to be held in their file.

These are a few of the critical first steps employers need to take when hiring employees. Following these steps will help reduce or eliminate problems with employee discipline, terminations and lawsuits in the future.

Soft skills are at least as important for success in today’s workplace as technical skills. In almost any industry, your employees will most likely work in teams. Certain types of skills and emotional intelligence can be crucial to success on the job in many of these situations. Assessing these soft skills can be difficult. Nick Roy offers some simple questions to use when you are conducting interviews.

Questions to reveal creativity/creative thinking/problem solving:

  When was the last time you “broke the rules” and thought outside the box), and how did you do it?
  What have you done that was innovative?
  What was the wildest idea you had in the past year? What did you do about it?

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Here are some guidelines about asking interview questions. A couple of key points to keep in mind.

  Never ask a yes or no question. These types of questions need to be reserved for the application form.

  Always ask open-ended questions. Treat the interview as an oral examination. The goal is to make the applicant think, so that you can select the most qualified to be in your organization. The more grueling your selection process, the more your employees will have in common with one another, since they have all gone through that “awful” examination.

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The simplest and most direct way to overcome the “employment-at-will” doctrine is to have an express contract, according to the Employment Law Memo.

“Employment-at-will” means that employees can quit, or an employer can fire the employee, at any time and for any reason, without prior notice. This doctrine is a “default” rule of contract law, meaning it applies whenever the employee and employer have not agreed on something else.

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In 2005, the “War on Talent” prevailed. The economy, as well as the job market, hasn’t slowed down with the new year – it’s only beginning to pick up even more. There is a greater demand for qualified people to fill the jobs than candidates available. Erin Mueller of Hiring Revolution offers a few tips to making successful hires more quickly and with fewer headaches and better results in 2006:

  Decide on which candidates to interview within 48 hours of receiving their resume. This will help you have a better chance at interviewing them before someone else snatches them up.

  Consolidate phone interviews to one or two days, rather than spreading them out over several weeks. This will help keep the candidate’s interest level high.

  After completing phone interviews, if you are interested in that person, find the earliest possible time to bring them out for an in person interview. The really great candidates will be snatched up quickly.

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In Missouri, a discharged 53-year-old employee presented enough evidence of age-based discriminatory animus to get her Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA)and state law claims to a jury, ruled the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, reversing a district court’s grant of summary judgment to her employer for lack of sufficient direct evidence of bias under the pre-Gross v FBL Fin Servs, Inc standard. In Gross (92 EPD ¶43,584), a divided Supreme Court ruled that an ADEA plaintiff alleging disparate treatment must establish by preponderance of evidence that age was the “but-for cause” of the adverse employment action challenged. Here, under any test, the employee raised a genuine issue for trial on the ultimate question of age bias vel non, the appeals court concluded. (Baker v Silver Oak Senior Living Mgmt Co, LC, 8thCir, September 14, 2009).

Most significant among the evidence offered by the employee were statements showing preference for younger over older workers that were made by her supervisor and the CEO, including: that the management team was “missing the boat by not hiring more younger, vibrant people”; that they “should start looking over applications better and try to consider hiring younger people”; and instructions that the employee fire certain workers in their 50s and 60s so that “younger workers”; could be hired who would be “better workers, have more energy, be more enthusiastic and stimulate the residents.” The clearly reflected age-based discrimination in these statements infected other remarks that might otherwise be subject to interpretation, noted the circuit court. Moreover, there was ample evidence of pretext given that the employee was placed on probation for reasons the evidence suggested were false and known to be false, and she was asked twice during her probation if she intended to resign, suggesting a quest to end her employment. Add to that the shifting and expanding explanations for her discharge, and a jury could find that management “harbored a discriminatory attitude toward older employees and desired to displace them in favor of a younger workforce,” wrote the appeals court.