As a new general counsel at the legal technology start-up SixFifty, one of Marie Kulbeth’s key tasks was helping the growing Utah-based company hire employees in other states.
Kulbeth says this required her to research answers to questions she hadn’t faced before in her legal career, such as what type of business registrations were mandated in different jurisdictions and what level of employee benefits were required by state.
“There’s a lot of boxes to check,” Kulbeth tells Legal Dive. “And depending on the size of your business, you may or may not be ready to check all of those boxes or to even know what those boxes are.”
In hopes of making things easier for GCs and HR leaders whose teams are charged with bringing on new employees amid a growing acceptance of remote workers, SixFifty recently released a 50 State Hiring Kit.
The software enables employers to select where they wish to hire and then automatically generates a detailed document explaining the laws and action items necessary to conduct business and maintain an employee in any state or the District of Columbia.
“Hiring in new states presents challenges and significant costs, and SixFifty’s kit, along with our broader employment and privacy offerings, removes the guesswork and roadblocks because we do the legal legwork for you,” says SixFifty CEO Kimball Dean Parker.
Complying with key requirements
The mandates that the toolkit helps legal and HR teams comply with include employment and tax registration.
The platform also provides information about employment policies, employment implications and workplace signage.
“I put in my new jurisdiction, and I can see this list of things that I'm going to need to do,” Kulbeth says. “As a general counsel, that's really important.”
She shares the example of how the toolkit can help a company that is hiring its first employee in New York City be both legally compliant and operationally efficient.
The toolkit would tell the company it needs to register to do business with the New York Secretary of State. It then follows up with a link to where the legal or HR professional can do exactly that.
“After explaining the state insurance benefits requirements and NYC wage transparency laws, it will give you an operational reminder to ensure that [your] insurance benefits cover New York and that [your] future job advertisements list wage ranges,” Kulbeth says.
Real-time updates
Another key feature Kulbeth highlights is that SixFifty, which is a subsidiary of the Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati law firm, monitors employment law closely and then updates its hiring tool in real time.
Users of the toolkit receive regulator notifications with information explaining how laws have changed, as well as recommendations for updating agreements and handbooks. Additionally, any new documents in SixFifty’s system will include the updates.
Kulbeth says the updates feature is a major reason why the hiring toolkit has generated interest “across business sizes” during beta testing.
“No matter how large your legal department is, staying up to date with all of the different laws and regulations that impact your business is a really difficult lift,” she says.
Other employment tools
While the 50 State Hiring Kit can be purchased as a standalone product, it is also available as an add-on for existing SixFifty subscribers.
Kulbeth says she has found the new toolkit works very well in tandem with the company’s other employment law offerings, including its Employment Agreements tool. That software drafts offer letters, employment contracts, non-disclosure agreements and independent contractor agreements, among others, for all 50 states.
SixFifty also offers an Employee Handbook and Policies tool that covers all states and can be customized by business.
These various tools can come in handy when a company is trying to determine which state’s laws apply in the employment context to its remote employees.
Kulbeth notes the general rule is that employees will now be governed by the laws of their home states if they are permanently working from home, even if they were initially hired to perform services in different states.
“So employers may need to review employees' contracts as well as their handbooks and policies to determine whether they need to be updated to come into compliance with the laws in the jurisdictions where they now have employees who are permanently working remotely,” she says.
