The legal threat is constantly growing for businesses, not only from outside the organization by business partners or customers, but also from within - by employees.
Currently the bigger threat is being sued by your own staff for running afoul of a smorgasbord of statutes like labor, wage and hour, worker classification, discrimination and harassment laws. 
As an employer you need to be aware of the many threats errant policies may pose to your organization's financial wellbeing. One lawsuit by a disgruntled or wronged employee with a large award or hefty attorney fees can sink a small business.
Part of protecting your organization is implementing strong workplace policies and enforcing them. But you also need to communicate them to your staff, including via your employee handbook.
To best protect your business, your handbook should cover the following:

• 'At-will' employment. This policy basically states that either you or the worker can terminate the employment relationship at any time and for any reason (as long as it is legal). This needs to be clearly understood by employees.
• Discrimination and harassment.  Make it clear that your organization has a zero-tolerance discrimination and harassment policy and that you will always take a complaint seriously.

The handbook should include information about who to contact with a complaint, and how to file a complaint. The policy shouldstate that the accuser will be protected against retaliation, as well.
Finally, spell out the steps you will take against employees that violate the policy.

• Employment classification. Make sure that you outline clearly how your employees are categorized (full-time or part-time, exempt or non-exempt). Spell out which employees are eligible for company benefits, such as sick leave, vacation time and employer-sponsored health insurance.
• Time off and employee leave.  Describe the rules for accruing and using vacation time and sick time. List any holidays for which your employees will receive pay. Clearly outline the steps your workers need to take to request time off, as well as note whether unused time will carry over from year to year.
• Meal and break. Every state has meal and rest break laws. In California, non-exempt employees must be provided with no less than a 30-minute meal period when their work period is more than five hours. In addition, non-exempt employees are entitled to a 10-minute break for every fours hours worked.
• Timekeeping and payday. Your employee handbook should describe the rules and methods for recording time worked. It should also cover paydays, ways in which employees can receive their pay (check, direct deposit, etc.), and how final pay will be handled should you need to terminate an employee.
• Workplace safety. Regardless of your work setting, your employee handbook should cover safety and emergency procedures. Even if your operation is mostly office workers, there are still hazards they should be made aware of.
  As part of the safety policy, you should also include information on what an employee should do if they are injured on the job, including who to report to.
• Attendance. This is an important one, and employees must understand that their jobs could be at risk if they fail to come to work on time, leave early often or miss too many days. You need to have rules in place that your staff understand, so that you can enforce policies on attendance punctuality.
  Make sure that you outline what you consider excessive absenteeism and what employees need to do and who to contact if they are going to arrive late or need to take time off.
• Employee conduct. Outline the standard of conduct you expect from your workers when it comes to drug and alcohol use, workplace violence, confidentiality, conflicts of interest and other common issues.

 
Make sure that your policies are conveyed to new hires by going over the handbook with them page by page, asking them to take it home and read it and having them sign off that they have read it when they are finished.
It is also a good idea to hold a yearly refresher for all existing staff, as well.

At some point you're going to be in the market for your next car, be it used or new. If you've narrowed your search down to the type of vehicle you'd like to own, you should check insurance rates before you buy.
Often we will get calls from people who bought a new vehicle and gave no thought to the insurance rates and who were shocked to learn that, in some cases, their monthly premiums were more than their monthly car payments. That smarts and could have been avoided if they had checked first.
The main factors that influence your insurance rates are:

• Your driving record
• Your insurance claims history
• Your credit history (in some states)
• Your zip code
• The cost of repairs to your car
• The cost of injuries to people injured in that car

 
The last two items are affected by the type of car you choose. A more expensive car will typically cost more to repair, hence the higher premiums. And cars with poor safety ratings will also cost more to insure.
 
One of your first stops when researching a new car should be to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety for a review of your vehicle. If your car has poor ratings in any category, realize that there is potential for this to negatively impact your insurance rate. Their website is: www.iihs.org
 
After that, call us and we'll be glad to obtain some quotes for your new purchase so you won't be surprised by insurance sticker shock.
 
Keeping your premium in check
Once you do have your car, there are a number of steps you can take to ensure that your premium doesn't escalate substantially later. These include:

• Being smart about filing insurance claims. Do you have some minor damage to your car? Consider paying for the cost of the repair before you file an insurance claim if the cost of the repair is close to or just slightly higher than your deductible.
• If you have been involved in an accident and there are injuries, file a claim without hesitation. This is a scenario where you should involve your insurance carrier immediately to help protect yourself, particularly if you believe the other driver was at fault.
• Have you been pulled over and ticketed for speeding? You can often avoid having it show up on your record if you pay the fine and take a special safe-driving course offered through providers that contract with your state Department of Motor Vehicles. The cost of the defensive-driving class is far less than the increased cost to your insurance rate.
• Maintain your credit/insurance score by heeding the following tips. You can also find many more online at various resources (these will also help you qualify for lower interest rates on your car loan):

            - Pay your bills on time
            - Avoid excessive inquiries into your credit reports
            - Limit the number of credit accounts you have
            - Review your credit report annually (Credit score does not apply to insurance rates in California)
            - Limit the amount of new debt you take on
            - Work with creditors to resolve outstanding balances before they are turned over to collection agencies

In Western states and other parts of the country that are prone to wildfires, homeowner's insurance is getting harder to come by and insurance companies are requiring policyholders to tend to the space around their homes to reduce the chances of the house going up in flames.
If the policyholder doesn't comply, they risk having their coverage non-renewed or see their rates increase. 
Some insurance companies have started pulling out of certain areas that are prone to wildfire, or they are only writing coverage for homes whose owners have made a "defensible space" around their homes. These spaces are designed to keep combustible landscaping and structures away from the house, and they stretch for more than 100 feet.
Shopping around for home insurance now requires planning and patience on the part of homeowners. Here's why:

• Some insurers have pulled out of some areas. Others have cut back on the number of homes they will insure in a certain area or region in order to manage their exposure to future wildfire claims.
  Since 2014, more than 15,000 homeowners in medium or extreme fire-risk areas in California have turned to the state's lender of last resort, the California Fair Access to Insurance Requirements Plan, which was created to serve people unable to find coverage elsewhere.
• Prices are increasing. Because of the increasing frequency of wildfires, homeowner's insurers have been raising rates to account for the higher risk homes in the West face, as well as higher rebuilding costs.
• More selective underwriting. Instead of ceasing to issue new homeowner's policies altogether, many insurers are only choosing to write policies for homeowners who have taken steps to reduce the chances of a fire.

 
Securing coverage
Insurance companies now use satellite data to assess fire risk at a given location. They use tools that weigh factors such as topography, vegetation, wind patterns and accessibility.
There's been an increase in insurance companies doing inspections before they will renew a policy or insure a new home. 
This is happening most often in neighborhoods known as "urban-wildland interface zones" and areas considered to be at risk for wildfires.  The insurer will either send its own staff or contract with an outside inspector. 
After an inspection, the insurer will either decline to extend coverage, accept it with no additional stipulations or require that the homeowner make certain repairs or improvements if they want coverage. This depends on the insurance company.
 
Typical improvements
Here's what you can do to make your home more insurable in a wildfire-prone area:
The structure
Roof - Roofs made of wood or shingles are at high risk in a wildfire. Reroof with composite shingles, metal or tile if you can. Eaves and downspouts should be protected with fire-resistant or non-combustible materials.
Windows - Replace single-pane glass windows with dual-pane glass, to reduce chances of breakage in a fire.
Vents - Vents on homes create openings for flying embers. Cover all vent openings with inch metal mesh. Do not use fiberglass or plastic mesh, as it can melt and burn.
Siding - Wooden boards, panels and shingles are combustible. Your home will be better protected by building materials such as stucco, fiber cement, wall siding, fire retardant, treated wood, or other approved materials.
 
Defensible area
One of the keys to the defensible space around your home is making sure that all plants are well watered and not dying and dry. Use the following three-ring approach to minimize fire risk:
Very near home: In the first 5 feet surrounding any structure, avoid anything flammable - this includes plantings, but also mulch, woodpiles, and furniture, decorative items, and stored items. There should be no trees in this area.
6-30 feet from home: Use low ground cover such as mown grass, flowers, vegetables and mulch. Plants should be watered as needed and routinely maintained to remove dead/dry material. Remove all dead plants, grass and weeds. Remove dead or dry leaves and pine needles from your yard, as well as from roof and rain gutters. Trim trees to at least 10 feet away from the house.
31-100+ feet from home: Shrubs and trees should be well spaced and pruned to eliminate fuel ladders, where fire can climb from a ground fire to an ember-producing crown fire. Cut or mow annual grass down to a maximum height of 4 inches.  Create vertical spacing between grass, shrubs and trees.

​Call us today if your home is in a designated brush area.

​If you have life insurance and are concerned if it will pay out in case you pass from COVID-19, you can rest assured your loved ones will receive a payout, but if you have not yet purchased coverage, it's not too late.
The good news: Life insurance is still very much available and, according to trade publication reports, there was a noticeable increase in policy applications in March. 
You will have to move quickly though, as some experts think life insurance companies may impose stricter underwriting standards as they see higher losses in addition to losses in their investment portfolios, which they use to fund claims payouts.
While life insurers are not excluding claims related to a pandemic, they may start including exclusionary riders on new policies as well as increasing premiums.
And if the pandemic worsens, some insurers may opt to put a hold on writing new policies, particularly for older individuals, and resuming once a vaccine has been developed.
As for pricing, insurers have not yet been raising rates in response to the coronavirus, but they may later, particularly for permanent - or whole life - policies. That said, pricing for term life policies is not expected to see any changes.
New policies
Many life insurers that are writing new policies now are asking applicants if they've been tested or treated for the virus. After the underwriting is complete, they are asking them again to sign a statement saying their health status has remained unchanged.
If someone buys a life insurance policy today and finds out later they have COVID-19, and then dies from it, their beneficiaries will receive a payout as long as the policyholder didn't lie about their health status (like knowing they had COVID-19 when buying the policy).
Also, people who contracted COVID-19, were hospitalized and later discharged after recovering may have difficulties in purchasing a life insurance policy now. That's because most insurers will ask on their applications if you have been hospitalized in the past year.
Another new question that insurers are asking new life policy applicants is whether they have traveled overseas recently or been on a cruise. While the possibility that you did this recently are now quite slim, if you did, some insurers are asking that you wait 30 days since you returned before applying for coverage.
Medical exams
You will often be asked to undergo a medical exam when applying for life insurance. If the life coverage you're applying for requires a physical, chances are that it will still go on as planned, unless you're uncomfortable with it or are sick.
Some people may be nervous about going in for an exam, particularly if they are under orders by authorities to stay home. With that in mind, many insurers are offering an extension of up to 90 days on the medical exam. In the meantime, they will offer immediate coverage to those applicants up to $1 million.
One workaround for this is to first secure a no-exam life insurance policy, which does not require a physical to qualify for coverage. You can apply online and typically get approved the same or next day. This way, you can at least get some coverage in place if you have not been diagnosed with COVID-19. 
One thing about no-exam policies is that they will typically have lower limits than standard policies. They may also cost more than life insurance that requires a medical exam.

Welcome to our new insurance agency blog!
 
This is our very first post. We're not quite sure what we're going to write about here, but the plan is to create helpful content for customers and prospective clients about information that is relevant to you.
 
We hope you'll come to view this as a top resource for keeping your family and your finances safe.
 
Here are a few of the topics we may be writing about:

• Answers to clients' frequently asked questions.
• Helpful information about insurance shopping.
• Safety and Health Tips and Ideas.
• Local Community Information.

 
Stay Tuned!