Professional & Technical Services

Professional and technical services organizations are unique from a human resources perspective. While these workplaces can vary greatly, they share a key common element: their businesses are based primarily on selling the professional expertise of their employees or partners.

A key challenge for these organizations is that employment laws—based on rules related to wages and hours of work—do not reflect the realities of today’s professional services organizations, with many inconsistencies. While doctors, lawyers and engineers, for example, are exempt from laws relating to overtime pay, actuaries and other groups of professionals are not.

Hicks Morley has extensive experience in dealing with these and other human resources law challenges in this sector. We understand the regulatory environment in which professionals operate and we can help clients tackle the unique issues that professionals and their organizations face.

Clients

Our clients in this sector include:

  • accounting firms
  • law firms
  • engineering firms
  • advertising agencies
  • consulting services
  • medical offices
  • research organizations
  • architectural firms

Services

We help professional and technical services employers proactively resolve their employment issues across all areas of the human resources spectrum including advice and representation on:

  • litigation including wrongful dismissal, just cause, executive compensation, departing employee and restrictive covenants, class actions, pension and benefits, appeals and judicial review litigation
  • labour relations
  • human rights complaints and accommodation strategies (related to age, physical and mental disabilities, and family status)
  • privacy and freedom of information issues including managing data-loss incidents, recovering stolen information, achieving anti-spam compliance, conducting comprehensive privacy audits and ensuring staff understand and contribute to the compliance process
  • employment issues including structuring termination and severance packages
  • pension, benefits and executive compensation issues including compliance with wage restraint legislation and the design, funding and governance of pension plans
  • pay equity compliance

We are committed to ensuring our clients understand the impact that any new legislation or recent cases may have on their operations and we are frequent speakers at conferences that serve the continuing education needs of this sector.