Zenith Lawcademy Podcast

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This podcast provides content creators and others who do business on the Internet with practical legal information and tips to help you protect and scale up your business.

Episodes

  1. The Difference Between Employees and Independent Contractors

    01/02/2024

    The Difference Between Employees and Independent Contractors

    Even if you’ve just started your business, you may need to get some helpers. You might need somebody to answer customer service calls, or you might need somebody to run your social media marketing, or to help fulfill orders, or to draft your blog posts—it could be anything, really. And maybe some of these people you might want to pay by the project—for example, a designer you might hire to help you out with a logo or art for your website—and others you might want to pay by the hour, especially if they are going to be helping you out regularly. So can you just pay these people by the project or the hour, maybe send them money through paypal or wise or write them a check from your business account and call it a day? Not so fast! Because some helpers can be paid that way—they do the work you ask them to do, you pay them whatever you’ve agreed to pay, and everybody takes their ball and goes home. Those people are independent contractors. And it’s relatively easy to manage paying them, because it’s a simple by the project or by the hour kind of a deal, usually. But you need to beware! Because depending on the role that your helper plays, and especially the amount of control you exercise over what they are doing, even a helper who isn’t full-time might be considered under the law to be an employee. And employee status is going to trigger numerous responsibilities and obligations on your part, not only to the person but also to the government. And the government cares very much that you not treat workers like independent contractors when they should be treated like employees. Furthermore, even if you do have a true independent contractor, it is a terrible idea to just pay them by the project or hour without documentation memorializing what their responsibilities are, what your responsibilities are, and—and this is especially important for businesses that involve content creation—who owns any intellectual property that they might create for your business. So today we’re going to talk about employees and independent contracts, how you can tell the difference, how important it is to get it right, and what you need to do to make sure that your relationships with these folks are structured correctly.

    30 min

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This podcast provides content creators and others who do business on the Internet with practical legal information and tips to help you protect and scale up your business.