Even as an employee, some of your actions result in the breaking of employment laws. Some of the violations you may be breaking involve your interaction with other employees and “playing” with your time.

If your actions come to the surface, they will affect your reputation. Your violations will go to your public record and will affect your future employment. Moreover, your actions will also affect your company and hold them accountable depending on their courses of action. With that said, you should make sure to avoid committing these actions.

Excluding Your Fellow Workers on Social Groups

Creating your own inner circle in a work environment is normal. However, if your inner circle starts to affect the work environment for other employees, then that’s when the problem arises.

How does creating your own group affect your office? Well, it can make other employees feel excluded as a workgroup. With cliques already formed within your workgroup, others who don’t belong in a smaller circle will often feel left out. This can affect their capability to perform their tasks or respond to conflicts.

For example, they might find it difficult to contribute to a discussion in response to a problem. If their exclusion affects their performance, then it indicates a hostile work environment within your office. While the alienation of employees already violates employment laws, the ‘hostility’ of the work environment further adds offense to it.

Both the employees responsible and their employers are subject to punishment. Not only that, the company will indirectly suffer as it will affect its reputation for having a bad working environment. Their lower reputation might lose them potentially valuable candidates that know their worth.

If you are charged with alienating your coworkers, you can seek help from Criminal Defense Lawyers Orlando. They will advise you on what legal actions to take. They can also help establish that you unknowingly did so and defend you on the court.

Harassment of Various Forms

Harassment in a workspace might occur in the form of jokes among employees. While the joker might think it’s just a joke, the receiving employee might feel uncomfortable about it. Especially when the employee jokes about someone he is not close with, then it can further boil down to harassment.

Criminal Defense Lawyers Orlando identifies joking about the following topic as harassment, thus you must avoid them:

• Color
• Race
• Gender and Sex
• Physical Attributes
• Religion
• Sexual Orientation

Bullying can happen too. Oftentimes, senior coworkers bully their juniors or new recruits into doing unreasonable requests. For example, a senior coworker might force his tasks on a junior or reject his output simply to see him redo it.

As identified by Criminal Defense Lawyers Orlando, bullying can be rooted in different factors. It involves the following:

• Age
• Race
• Religion
• Gender and Sex
• Physical Attributes
• Physical and Mental Disability
• Marital Status

Harassment and bullying contribute to a hostile environment, which, as mentioned, violates employment laws. Not only that, but it can also affect their performance. If the company does not take the necessary steps to stop them, then even the company will be held liable. After all, it will be implied that they are enabling the toxic environment by not taking care of it.

Adjusting Your Time In and Time Out

To compute how much the employees will receive, companies employ a timesheet that they should fill out. The timesheet contains the time in and out of the employee during that week. It helps the employer in identifying how much the employee worked during the month, even the overtime.

Most jobs only have weekdays as their operating days. Despite that, they ask their employees to work on the weekend. To make it favorable for them, most employees instead add it to their timesheets by adjusting their time in and out. Some employees even skip some of the weekdays and fill them in because they attended the weekend.

While this might seem like a reasonable and harmless action, it actually counts as stealing from the company. As such, it displays dishonesty thus violating employment laws.

You can review your agreement to navigate how weekend hours and the timesheet work with your company. Unless they stated that they include weekend hours as overtime, then adjusting your timesheet remains illegal. After all, it breaches company policies.

Additionally, you can try declining weekend requests from your employer. If they charge you of breaching your agreement, then you can consult Criminal Defense Lawyers Orlando. They can help review the legality of their demand and if declining them is breaching your agreement.

Engaging in Contractual Employment

As an employee, you’re not necessarily breaking employment laws when engaging in contractual employment. Instead, you enable them to further hire employees on a contractual basis.

Contractual employment is not a violation in itself. However, if it only benefits the employers then it may have been breaking employment laws. After all, the workers are being exploited by the company.

Here are some of the signs that contractual employment only exploits you as an employee:

• They expect high performance with minimum pay
• They don’t let you ask for a higher wage
• They do not provide any worker benefits

Additionally, if they treat you as a regular employee rather than an individual contractor, then it also identifies as exploitation.

As an individual contractor, you should have your own autonomy and flexibility when working with your ‘partner’. However, if they force you to follow guidelines outside your contract while expecting your loyalty then they are violating employment laws.

If they accuse you of breaching the contract by acting independently, Criminal Defense Lawyers Orlando can help explore your situation. They will identify whether you actually breached the contract. Moreover, if your situation escalates to court, they can also help defend your case.

Employers should also take note of identifying contractors and employees in their company. Once determined that you are actually exploiting your workers, then you might suffer great penalties. Your company will suffer from a great decline in terms of reputation.

Not only in contractual contracting, but you should also keep the other violations in mind. As an employer, you are responsible for your employees’ actions. So make sure you help establish a comfortable and productive working environment to prevent a hostile workspace.

Finding an office space? Visit OfficeFinder. We can assist you, anywhere in the US. Message us.