Q. One of our employees has received glowing reviews for 10 years, but she’s been working on her personal business on company time for the past two years. The employee’s supervisor never addressed this issue in writing, and now her new supervisor wants to fire her without any documentation or counseling. Can the supervisor do this without any expectation of “trouble” from the employee?

Q. We use a timecard punch-in/punch-out system. If an employee forgets to punch in, and we manually do it, do any labor laws apply?

Q. Currently, our company pays 70% of employees’ health insurance premiums. Now we need to either decrease the percentage or possibly ask employees to pay the entire premium. How much notice must we give employees before making such a change?

Q. Our church day care center hired a woman who—we later found out—was living with a man who was married to someone else. Our director had a moral problem with this situation and terminated her. I think the termination was illegal. Was it?

Q. Can we require full-time nonexempt employees to attend work-related functions after regular hours? If so, should this time be compensated?

Q. Let’s say I do the payroll for a company and know that we are misclassifying employees (exempt vs. nonexempt; independent contractors vs. employees). And let’s say I advised the owner, but he chose to leave it as is. Could I be held liable as the payroll administrator?

Q. We are considering providing an enhanced severance package to a group of employees if they agree to waive all potential claims against the company, including age discrimination claims. Are there any specific steps we need to take in connection with these releases?

Q. One of our school employees hurt her back while assisting students in the classroom. She went out on workers’ comp and has now reached maximum improvement, according to her doctor. But she can’t do her old job. Do we have to provide another job for her?

Q. How has the recent DOL interpretation letter addressed an employer’s obligation to pay employees for time spent changing clothes?

Q. What are the new hiring preference requirements on Illinois public works projects?

Q. How do the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 and the Health Care and Education Tax Credits Reconciliation Act of 2010 (collectively known as the PPACA) affect health flexible spending accounts?

Q. We have an employee who cares for a child but does not have a legal or biological relationship to the child. The employee wants to take a child-related leave under the FMLA. Is she eligible?

Q. One of our exempt employees is in the Reserve. He is going on a two-week training session that starts on a Tuesday. That means he will work on Monday, the start of our week. Do we have to pay him for the whole week when he is only going to be here Monday?

Q. Our company has a confidentiality policy about employee wages. We recently learned that one of our employees has been violating this policy by disclosing his hourly pay rate to co-workers. Can we terminate this employee for violating our company policy?

Q. An employee has requested FMLA-protected leave to care for his partner’s son. We are aware that the child is not legally or biologically related to our employee. Do we have to grant the leave?