China HR: The Webinar, January 29

Our law firm’s lead China employment lawyer, Grace Yang, will be leading a 90 minute webinar on what HR departments need to know about China employment law. Spoiler alert: It’s a lot.

Way back in September, 2008, we wrote a post on what was then China’s new employment law regulations: China’s Brand New Labor Law Regulations. It’s All Here. A client (no less) got angry with me for even writing about it because they would never be enforced and our post would scare foreign companies into complying with the law and thereby further damage their ability to compete against their China company peers. I insisted that these laws would be enforced and I most definitely have been proven right.

In the early days of China’s employment laws, we divided the work among our team of China lawyers, but as enforcement increased and as so many employment rules became highly localized, it became apparent we needed a lawyer who would focus on China employment law. See China Employment Law: Local and Not So Simple. Grace Yang is that lawyer for us. Grace has law degrees from leading law schools in China and the United States and last year she wrote a well-received book on China employment law: The China Employment Law Guide: What You Need to Know to Protect Your Company. If you are doing HR in China and you want English language help, you absolutely should buy the book.  

Our China employment law team mostly works on the following these days:

1. Helping foreign companies in China avoid employment law problems. We do this mostly by performing employer audits and then remedying the mistakes we find. See China Employment Compliance and Audits: THE New Big Thing.
2. Helping foreign companies with a specific and urgent employee problems. These problems range from fending off a lawsuit or a government regulator to figuring out what to do with employees that will be brought on via a merger deal or will be terminated due to an office or company shut-down.
3. Helping expats negotiate enforceable contracts with their China employer.

Now about this upcoming China employment law webinar. It’s called China Employment Law: What HR Needs to Know and it’s going to be on Tuesday, January 29 at 1 p.m. Eastern Time and it has been approved for 1.5 general recertification credit hours toward PHR, SPHR, and GPHR recertification through the HR Certification Institute. It also will get you 1.5 PDCs for the SHRM-CP or SHRM-SCP.

It will be geared towards “HR, in-house counsel, financial officers, and company presidents.” It is being put on by HR Webinar Company and they describe it as follows:

China’s employment laws are complicated and highly local. Foreign companies doing business in China face complex China labor and employment issues and questions every day – often without even realizing it. What works in the United States has very little in common with what works in China. Employment compliance has become one of the most important issues foreign companies face in China and it is the rare foreign company that gets it right. Employee disputes are becoming considerably more common and government enforcement is getting significantly more stringent. It virtually always costs less for your company to deal proactively with China employment law issues than to wait to address them only after they devolve into a dispute. It is therefore imperative that you understand the framework of China employment law and steps you can take to mitigate risk.

If you have China employees, you really do not want to miss this webinar!