COLUMN BUSINESS TALK You’re hired. You’re fired! How to manage the expansion and contraction of your practice Consider these two scenarios: BY ANTHONY LOMBARDI Terminating employment Scenario one You have a massage therapist or associate chiropractor who has been with you for five years and you are finding that you could be making better use of the room they are using. How do you go about changing their hours or asking them to leave altogether? Scenario two A receptionist who has been with you for 10 years has been creating drama within the clinic and it’s starting to affect the day-to-day business operations. How do you properly sever their employment? Scenario one is interesting because it’s one that we will likely experience by being either on the clinic owner side or the as-sociate side. To begin with, your associate chiropractor, massage therapist or physiotherapist should be on an independent contractor agreement. This will not only be a tax advantage to you, it will also absolve you from paying employee benefits and government taxes – and make it easier to let them go. For your associate practitioners to be classified as an in-dependent contractor you need to have a signed agreement in place, which ensures the independent contractor is able to do the following: • set their own schedule • use their own equipment • submit invoices to the owner reflecting work completed • remit their own taxes to the government • demonstrate a certain amount of risk or individual invest-ment, i.e. if they do not see any patients they do not get paid. An independent contractor agreement is absolutely nec-essary. The contract must outline expectations from the very beginning signifying all parties were aware of and under-stood the position description. An independent contract agreement should include: duties and responsibilities; explanation of service offered; remuneration and benefits; handling of confidential mate-rial; termination clause. Email me at [email protected] if you would like me to send you a copy of the lawyer-drafted template I use for signing all of my independent contractors. DR. ANTHONY LOMBARDI, DC, is consultant to athletes in the NFL, CFL and NHL, and founder of the Hamilton Back Clinic in Hamilton, Ont. He teaches his fundamental EXSTORE Assessment System and conducts practice-building workshops to health professionals. Visit exstore.ca for information. 18 Canadian Chiropractor July/August 2015 Scenario two examines how to safely terminate an employee. An employer can fire (or change the employment relation-ship of) an employee or contract worker at any time, as long as the employer provides them with fair compensation as determined by the Ontario Employment Standards Act and common law. The Employment Standards Act sets out the minimum requirements. The notice can be given a number of different ways – lump sum payment, working notice or salary continuation. It can also be a combination of any of these things. In fact, the reasons for the termination are completely irrelevant, according to lawyer Sabatina Vassalli. She said: “The reason for termination of employment is really not relevant unless human rights have been violated. It just boils down to if they are paid enough money and/or given enough notice. This often makes employees furious.” There are several factors to consider when an employer is comtemplating employment or contract termination. Level of specialization The CEO of the company gets more compensation than the cashier at McDonalds. Their duties are implicit in this. Managers and upper level staff are entitled to more com-pensation. When severing ties with one of your employees, answering the following question is vital in preparing a severance package: How many other people can do this job? Working notice In lieu of monetary or other valuable compensation, you may give your employee “working notice” in place of firing them. For instance, if an employer approaches the worker and says, “in nine months we will be cutting your hours from 40 hours a week to 0 hours a week,” then this is re-ferred to as the amount of paid notice the worker will re-ceive while still working over the course of those nine months before their hours change. Essentially, the expec-tation is that the worker will use this notice period to find another job to replace the lost income – or to accept the change. If the employee does nothing in this case (where an important term of their employment relationship has changed, i.e. wages), they are said to have condoned or accepted the change. They have a limited amount of time to dispute the change. Q&A with a lawyer To gain more understanding on this important topic, I in-terviewed Sabatina Vassalli, a lawyer from Hamilton, Ont. www.canadianchiropractor.ca
Chiropractic + Naturopathic Doctor July August 2015: Page 18
