Is Your Business Healthy?

You are a hard-working small or medium size business owner “fighting the battle” every day. But at the end of the day when you are trying to unwind, troubling thoughts may creep into your mind. Are there critical issues lurking that could hurt or even destroy my business?

Managers of big, publicly owned companies face the same questions and these questions gave rise to Enterprise Risk Management or ERM. Briefly, ERM is a risk based approach to managing a business which identifies particular threats, assesses them in terms of the likelihood and magnitude of impact and then designs appropriate contingencies and response strategies to minimize effects on the business.

The owners of small and medium sized businesses can adopt these principles and practices to mitigate risk and make their businesses more profitable. That doesn’t mean hiring an army of consultants or building an in-house legal department. Owners can take a first step by having an assessment of their businesses’ organizational health. An assessment will identify such things as:

• Compliance with relevant business and labor statutes and regulations.
• Compliance with all applicable licensing and registration requirements.
• Whether essential business organization documents and business contracts properly address the topics they are intended to cover and that such documents and contracts are readily accessible.
• Whether the business has implemented effective retention and security procedures for important documents and records (including intellectual property, client information, employee personnel and medical records).
• Whether all necessary and appropriate insurance coverage is in place.

My firm has recently developed a working relationship with Glenn Powell, Principal of the Law Offices of Glenn Powell & Associates, L.L.C. located in Collinsville, CT. We work together to help small and medium-sized businesses proactively identify and resolve potential legal problems and other issues that may exist in their business operations.  Glenn is an employment lawyer with broad experience in both Aetna’s corporate law department and representing small and medium-sized businesses. He also acts as a neutral arbitrator and mediator in employment-related proceedings. Although Glenn and I have different areas of expertise, we are like minded in terms of approaching legal issues in a reflective, analytical and cost effective way.

To facilitate our efforts to proactively identify and resolve potential legal problems for prospective and existing clients, we have developed the General Business Checklist and a Human Resources, Employment Law Compliance Review.  The checklist and compliance review are available at no cost to clients/prospective clients for their completion.  We will review the information disclosed, perform further due diligence, prepare a preliminary general assessment of the business’ organizational “health”, and make appropriate recommendations based on the information provided.

If you would like to receive a complementary general assessment of your business’ organizational health please email your request to info@michael-freeman-law.com.

Attorney Michael Freeman is responsible for the content of this message.

This piece was originally posted at michael-freeman-law.com.