4 Ways Your Small Business Might Be Breaking The Law

When you’re getting ready to get your business under way, the last thing you’ll probably be thinking about is that you might be breaking the law. However, it’s exactly this type of thinking that causes so many problems for startups in the first place. Very few new businesses knowingly break the law; it is born out of ignorance of what they can, can’t, and should be doing. If you’re getting your business, whatever it may be, under way, take a read through our five common ways that small businesses break the law, and make sure you’re innocent of them.

Employment Concerns

Your business might start relatively casual, and this might extend to when you hire your first employees. And when we say, ‘employees,’ we might mean friends who you’ve asked to help you out. But if you have grand ambitions for your company (and why not?), then you should avoid this period of lax employee relations and start off on the right foot. Employment law is extensive, and there is a long list of things that you can and can’t do, as well as things that you must do to be on the right side of the law. Take care of it from the beginning, with the right procedures in place, and a strong understanding of what constitutes workplace bullying, wrongful termination & other common workplace law issues, and you’ll never have to worry that something will jump out and bite you.

Safety First

Take a look at your workplace. It might seem relatively benign, but regardless of what your business is, there will be safety concerns lurking around every corner. Of course, everyone knows that blocking fire exits and not having a plan in case of an emergency is a disaster waiting to happen. They might not know that they may be required by law to have their electrical equipment checked for safety by portable appliance testers. Electrical equipment is a common source of workplace injury, which could give you big legal headaches if they do injure one of your workers. Remember, you have a duty of care to make sure your employees are kept safe.

Website Violations

You want your website to be the best it can be. Unfortunately, this doesn’t just mean you can hire a web developer to make it look modern, slick, and professional. There may be issues on your website that makes you look terribly unprofessional, even if it’s presented in the right way. We’re talking about using images, videos,  and even fonts that you don’t have permission to use. The last one in particular often catches businesses out, and in fact, many big corporations have been sued – and had to fork out big cash – for this very reason.

Mountains Of Paperwork

It’s worth retaining the services of legal advice from the outset of your company because there will likely be more issues to deal with that you might realize. You need to establish your company, make sure your taxes are in order, have terms of agreement and contracts drawn up, and so on. Make sure you don’t leave any stone unturned when it comes to making sure all your paperwork is all taken care of.