It is always an exciting prospect when you start a brand new business venture. However there are a multitude of facets to overcome, one major aspect is your legal standing. Because legal requirements evolve over the years, consistent adapting is a must to make sure your business runs on legitimate grounds.
With that said, here’s what you have to do in certain aspects of your business to make sure you conform to the legal requirements:
Intellectual Property (IP)
Intellectual property, such as designs, creations, inventions, and other things created by you, must be protected through patents, trademarks, and copyrights. In other words, you must maintain entitlement to use your designs without hassle, which must be renewed every so often, depending on the type of protection. Failure to do so will result in IP issues, such as someone else acquiring entitlement over your designs, forcing you to sign up for a license to use your very own creations.
Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE)
Your business must maintain a standard of safety for your employees and the environment around you. You must make sure your workers are carrying out their tasks in the safest environment possible, and that your concern should be their health and well-being. Not only that, but the welfare of the environment is very much your concern as well. That means your business should minimise or eliminate any harm done to the environment, such as reducing waste and pollution.
Employment
Employment isn’t merely a matter of picking people out of the crowd and hiring them. Instead, you have to keep to a particular set of guidelines to meet your obligations as an employer. Selecting the right person for the job is also a must for the benefit of your company, so make sure your job description and requirements are as thorough as it can be.
Upon hiring an employee, training must be carried out to familiarise the individual with his or her tasks, other employees, and the workplace. Training that highlights health and safety issues also makes sure the employee and your business conform to HSE requirements and keeps your company safe from any HSE-related claims. If, in any case, you need to dismiss an employee, a formal process has to be carried out to avoid being sued for discrimination and other possible claims.
Contracts
Contracts are a lot of hassle because of how easily it can go wrong. Because of that, you must do your best to create standardised agreements to reduce any possibilities of confusion. Before getting into any contracts, however, it is vital that you and the agreeing party have the legal capacity (sound mind) to enter into a contract.
Risks
Risks are a normal part of business and one that you should always address. Your job is to find ways to minimise or even eliminate any risks that can be detrimental to your organisation. You can do so by avoiding decisions that carry risk, letting someone else carry that risk for you (such as insurance), or accepting that the rewards will justify the risk you’re taking.
Along with the list we’ve given you, there are plenty of other business aspects you have to be careful with. To make sure that you never step off of legal grounds, always have a legal requirements checklist with you. With a list in hand and a professional, such as advisors, to help you out, you can rest easy knowing that no matter what legislation changes occur, that your requirements checklist is all ticked off.
If you are looking for corporate lawyers in Brisbane to help make sure your legal documentation is bullet proof contact GLG Legal, to see how one of our team can help.
