2 Things You Must Do to Keep Your Business on the Right Side of the Law

Staying on the right side of the law in the world of business is crucial for a number of reasons. Keeping your nose clean will help you to avoid costly lawsuits, it will help your company to maintain its reputation and integrity, and it will stop you from having to spend time behind bars.

Here are two things that you must do to keep your business on the right side of the law, and after reading you feel you're needing more information on the legal side, it would be advised to contact a lawyer like Alex Gotch who has great knowledge in this industry. Right, let's start!

Tend to your legal safety requirements

No matter what industry you operate in, you will have a number of legal safety requirements enforced upon you by your local governing body. Regardless of what these specific requirements might be, it’s crucial that you take them seriously and make tending to them one of your top priorities. Should you fail to ensure the safety of your working environment, don’t be surprised when an authority figure asks you to halt your operations until you adhere to their official safety legislation.

There are a number of different hazards and risks that you must take into account in this instance, one of the most serious and dangerous being fire. You are legally required to appoint a ‘Responsible Person’ who will then be tasked with deterring fire and, if needs be, dealing with it.

The person that you bestow this responsibility upon can be somebody that works for you, it can be your landlord, or it can be an external fire risk assessor. If you don’t have the time, expertise or even confidence to perform this all-important task, you should opt for the latter.

A professional assessor will be able to perform a fullscale Fire Risk Assessment across your entire business, which in turn means that they will be able to provide you with the best possible level of protection against the dangers of fire and smoke.

Employ your workforce legally

Illegal employment is something that the authorities are always on the lookout for… so you’d never stand a chance of getting away with it even if you tried! If you want to avoid landing your business in some serious hot water with the external bodies that govern it, it’s essential that you are astute when it comes to your hiring process.

If you want to ensure that you do everything by the book in this sense, be sure to heed the following advice:

1. Before you go ahead and provide new employees with their first contract, make sure that they have a legal right to work in the country in which you are based. They could have been born in the country or they could have been born elsewhere but since obtained a right to work in it — whatever you do, just make sure you see proof of their legality to work in your country of residence before you employ them.
2. Make sure that you are paying your employees fairly. At the very least, this means making sure that they receive the legal minimum wage. The amount of money that you are legally obliged to pay your employees differs by how old they are, which is why it is crucial that you take some time to study the age barriers. If you start paying someone less than they are entitled to, you will more than likely have a lawsuit on your hands sooner rather than later.

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