This course is, as the name suggests, for absolute beginners in medical terminology and is suitable for anyone wanting to enter medical administration/secretarial work. The course contains one module covering the basics of how a medical term is formed (prefixes, suffixes and root words) and leads gently on to more complex terms. The course incorporates a number of self-assessment opportunities and a final assessment, enabling the student to print off a certificate detailing t...

As the complexities of the business world multiply, so do potential antitrust problems for a company up and down its organizational chain. An intricate web of federal, state and international statutes and regulations poses significant dangers for both intentional and inadvertent antitrust violations — companies get fined and broken up, mergers and acquisitions are thwarted, enormous litigation costs pile up, people go to jail. As importantly, businesses and their employees become afraid t...

Buying and selling stocks is no longer the sole domain of wealthy investors and large institutions. In fact, investing in securities has become an important factor in the financial lives of millions of people across many income levels. Frequent news reports of overnight billionaires in the stock market can tempt people to try to cash in on inside information they learn at work before the news is known to the general public. But buying or selling stock based on a simple "tip" or tidbit of in...

It is widely agreed that every company needs to have a policy statement on legal and ethical conduct. The Organizational Sentencing Guidelines require that a company "must have taken steps to communicate effectively its standards and procedures to all employees and other agents, e.g., by requiring participation in training Courses or by disseminating publications that explain in a practical manner what is required." Thus, if a company hopes to qualify for more lenient treatment under the Gu...

It's widely agreed that every company needs to have a policy statement on legal and ethical conduct. The Organizational Sentencing Guidelines require that a company "must have taken steps to communicate effectively its standards and procedures to all employees and other agents, e.g., by requiring participation in training programs or by disseminating publications that explain in a practical manner what is required." Thus, if a company hopes to qualify for more lenient treatment under the Guid...

Almost every week there's a front-page story about a company or a company's employee, or an elected or non-elected official, engaging in an activity that presents a conflict of interest. Without a doubt, the surge in conglomerates and joint ventures has increased the potential for conflicts of interest to arise. Conflicts of interest can create a lot of bad publicity, damage a company. Course Summary This Course sets forth and explains a model conflicts-of-interest policy that is a synt...

Business people deal with contracts in many different contexts — purchasing, sales, marketing, distribution, employment and others — almost every day. A contract serves, in effect, as the "private law" of the parties on whatever subjects it covers. This is a powerful tool, since the law gives parties tremendous flexibility in defining their contractual relationships. Whatever terms the parties agree to include (within broad legal limits) define their respective rights and obligations fo...

Copyright law affects the workplace activities of many employees on a daily basis. Copyright protection extends to newspaper and magazine articles, instructional videos, web sites, computer courses, and even elevator music. Most people recognize the presence of a copyright by the symbol ©, but even in the absence of the symbol the material may be protected by copyright law. Employees need to understand copyright basics for at least two reasons. First, to the extent a company produces ...

The Organizational Sentencing Guidelines have had an undeniably huge impact on the way U.S. companies do business and train their employees to abide by the law. What were considered large fines for corporate misconduct in the pre-Guidelines 1970s — several hundred thousand dollars — are now being dwarfed by fines in the hundreds of millions. In addition to these increasing monetary penalties, there are potential criminal sanctions and civil liability that make corporate compliance one o...

Political activity is heavily regulated by government. Federal and state laws govern everything from campaign finances to communication with legislators, and both corporations and individuals are subject to various campaign-related restrictions. Having a basic understanding of these regulations and restrictions is especially important as we approach this year's presidential, congressional and local elections. After a brief summary of the sources of the applicable law, this Course discusses w...

This course sets forth and explains a Crisis Management Policy, which is intended to help employees recognize and deal with any type of crisis that arises concerning the company or their fellow employees. A central purpose of the Policy is to answer three key questions: How can employees anticipate and prevent a crisis? Who speaks for the company during a crisis? What should an employee say to third parties if asked about the crisis? Course Summary The topics covered in the course includ...

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) requires employee testing for companies that employ or use professional drivers, specified safety-sensitive transportation and/or oil and gas-related occupations, and certain federal employers. Specifically, the DOT requires urine testing for five controlled substances: marijuana, opiates, amphetamines, cocaine and phencyclidine (PCP). The DOT rules for "Procedures for Transportation Workplace Drug Testing Programs" set the standards for employer drug...

It is certainly no secret that drug and alcohol abuse is one of our nation's most serious problems. This holds true in the workplace, as well. Almost 40% of industrial fatalities and 50% of work-related injuries are linked to drug and alcohol impairment. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, more than 70% of illegal drug-users are employed. That means an estimated 8.3 million workers are illegal drug users. Without a doubt, drug and alcohol abuse in the workplace has significant negative e...

With all of the potentially positive uses of e-mail and the Internet come potential abuses as well. Of 1,200 companies surveyed recently about Internet usage, 54% reported that they had caught employees browsing Web sites that were unrelated to their work — some up to eight hours per day! Not only can unauthorized Internet usage take a huge toll on employee productivity, but it can divert network resources from "mission critical" company functions. Improper or indiscriminate use of e-mail...

Layoffs in corporate America have become the stuff of daily headlines. Since last December, U.S. companies have announced more than 500,000 job cuts, and that trend is continuing. Among the challenges that companies face in this regard are (1) organizing, training and empowering a smaller workforce to deliver improved services; (2) preserving the dignity of departing employees; and (3) boosting the morale and productivity of the employees who remain. The purpose of this training Course...

According to a 1995 study by the Workplace Violence Research Institute, every workday 16,400 threats are made, and 723 workers are attacked. One of four full-time workers has been harassed, threatened or attacked on the job. Workplace violence, which costs American businesses an estimated $36 billion annually, is the second leading cause of job-related deaths for all workers (behind only motor-vehicle deaths) and the leading cause for women. No wonder the Centers for Disease Control has cal...

Until a few years ago, workers in the United States faced remarkably high safety and health risks on the job. Through the efforts of individual workers, unions, employers, government agencies and others, considerable progress has been made in improving these conditions. Today, both federal and state occupational safety and health regulations are broad and far-reaching. They require employers in most industries to keep their places of employment safe and free of recognized hazards likely t...

Advances in information technology have enabled companies to collect, compile, analyze and deliver data around the world much more quickly and cheaply than ever before. But these technological advances have also brought new challenges to protecting "information privacy." In fact, some experts believe that privacy concerns will slow the growth of the Internet generally and electronic commerce in particular. Different countries view privacy issues differently. In the U.S., for example, c...

With the arrival of the Information Age and the explosion of high technology, communication is getting faster but not necessarily better. Many employees believe that if they act with integrity and simply follow their bosses' or customers' instructions, their good intentions will keep their communications from becoming a legal "smoking gun." In reality, however, nothing could be further from the truth. Almost everything an employee says or does on behalf of his or her company can be use...

Many aspects of employment are heavily regulated in the U.S., none more than the interviewing and hiring process. State and federal statutes and court decisions prohibit employers from discriminating against certain groups of people and from taking actions that impact those groups adversely and unfairly. Employees involved in the recruiting, interviewing and hiring process need to be aware of the laws that govern the questions they ask applicants. This Course will help them (1) avoid t...

A company's corporate records are one of its most important and valuable assets. Almost every employee is responsible for creating or maintaining corporate records of some kind, whether in the form of paper, computer data, microfilm, electronic mail or voice-mail. Letters, memoranda and contracts are obviously corporate records, as are things such as a desk calendar, an appointment book or an expense record. Companies are required by law to maintain certain types of corporate records, ...

Regulation FD, for "fair disclosure" dictates how public companies may disclose certain types of information about themselves. In essence, Regulation FD requires that a public company's communications regarding so-called inside information be made in an approved form of public disclosure. The purpose of the regulation is to make all material information about a company available to all investors at the same time. The topics covered in the Course include — An overview of Regulation...

This Course provides a general overview of OFAC sanctions and their key provisions. It is designed to help employees recognize situations presenting a risk of legal violations and deal with them properly. It includes a discussion of OFAC-related developments since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The U.S. Government, through the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) uses economic sanctions and trade embargoes to protect the country's economy and enhance its security. Every U....

The corporate-responsibility scandals and business failures involving companies such as Enron, Adelphia and Global Crossing revealed widespread accounting, self-dealing and mismanagement issues. Seeking to instill greater accountability by senior management of public companies, Congress enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002. The prevailing view among legal commentators is that the Act is by far the most significant federal securities law passed since 1934. Sarbanes-Oxley addresses a w...

Every year in the U.S., communication gaps between nurses and doctors cause medical errors that lead to needless deaths of thousands of patients. Although healthcare professionals are routinely trained on how to communicate with patients, training on how to communicate with each other had remained rare until the introduction of the SBAR Technique. The SBAR Technique provides a framework for healthcare professionals to communicate with one another in emergency situations. Developed by the U....

Since the early 1990’s, U.S. federal laws governing telemarketing have become stricter and more complex. Both the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have the authority over telemarketing law and each has its own set of regulations. Ensuring compliance is more challenging now than ever before. This course is designed to inform employees who handle telemarketing calls how to remain in compliance of FCC and FTC regulations and to provide guidance o...

Protecting trade secrets is more important than ever today, as companies look for ways to get ahead and stay ahead of the competition. Prudent companies are recognizing the need not only to protect their own confidential business information as trade secrets, but also to guard against the misappropriation of others' trade secrets. In most cases, it is an act or omission of a company's employees that leads to a loss, theft or misappropriation of trade secrets. More and more companies are...

The rules regarding what is fair and unfair competition affect virtually all of a company's business decisions — hiring, marketing, sales, customer-relations, and research and development, among others — and are important for employees to understand. Violations of these rules can be very damaging to a company generally and, in some cases, to individual employees. Course Summary The law of unfair competition is the product of many years of state and federal court decisions and, more r...

Customs laws cover a wide range of subjects, from country-of-origin marking to smuggling. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) enforces laws at the border that are administered by other federal agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). CBP has many enforcement tools in its arsenal, including civil and criminal penalties that can be imposed on both your company and employees personally. If your company is involved in importation, t...

The federal government spends half a trillion dollars annually on medical care - one-quarter of its budget, and fraudulent claims may total $50 billion this year. One major source of fraud is the submission of false claims for government funds, such as Medicare and Medicaid. In 1986, Congress enacted amendments to a Civil War Era law called the False Claims Act (FCA), which penalizes those responsible for submitting false claims for government funds. These amendments were designed to streng...

According to a recent poll, 37% of workers in the U.S. reported that they've been bullied at work. Some 29% of HR managers report that one or more employees in their workplaces have quit as a direct result of bullying. Between 12% and 18% of psychological-based disability claims are directly related to bullying. Books and movies such as The Devil Wears Prada are raising awareness about an issue that is anything but fiction. Both business executives and lawmakers are taking action to define ...

Dramatic cultural and social changes in the mid-twentieth century altered Western society in a way that affected the workforce and the customer base companies serve. The emergence of a global economy and revolutionary advances in telecommunications later in the century made the world a much "smaller" place. In the new millennium, the corporate world finds itself in an environment in which people of a wide variety of races, cultures, religions, ages and lifestyles interact regularly on the...

With the increase in litigation — especially employment litigation — in the 1990s, the time from inception of a lawsuit to decision continued to grow, as did the costs (both actual and "lost opportunity" costs), giving new meaning to the phrase, "Justice delayed is justice denied." Companies began to re-examine their objectives and view their desired outcomes not so much from a legal standpoint, but more from a business perspective. ADR, with its efficiency, speed and cost-effectiveness,...

Dating back to the late 1800s, common law in the United States defined the employment relationship as "at will," meaning that employers were free to hire and fire at will. Employers could, for example, refuse to hire minorities, segregate the work force, assign unpleasant work to women, and deny such groups opportunities for advancement. That's all changed. Federal and state laws prohibit discrimination and harassment in the workplace on the basis of age, sex, race, religion, national orig...

Advances in "information technology" have enabled companies to collect, compile, analyze and deliver data around the world much more quickly and cheaply than ever before. These advances have given consumers better access to information, and they've given companies lower-cost and better-targeted opportunities to market and provide their goods and services. But these technological advances have also brought new challenges to protecting information privacy. In response, Congress recently pa...

Corporate fraud is on the rise. Losses attributable to corporate fraud were estimated at $600 billion in 2002, up from $400 billion in 1996. Employee theft alone costs American businesses between $60 and $120 billion a year. Aside from unscrupulous employees and third parties, a major contributing factor to corporate fraud is simply a lack of awareness of it. Dishonest employees prey on unsuspecting co-workers and supervisors, and clever third parties use so-called “social engineerin...

With the increasing globalization of our economy, companies are faced with new challenges as well as new opportunities. Part of this new environment is compliance with laws such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or FCPA, which regulate the way U.S. companies transact international business. Enacted in 1977, the FCPA was a response to government findings that hundreds of U.S. companies, including many of the Fortune 500, were using cash and "slush funds" to make questionable or illegal p...

Federal regulations require companies that contract with the federal government to take "affirmative action" to ensure that job applicants and employees are treated without discrimination based on their race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability or because they are a veteran. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Courses (OFCCP) oversees the federal-contracting process, offering technical assistance, conducting compliance evaluations and investigating complaints regarding f...

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was passed in 1993 to address what workers perceived as the untenable choice between caring for their families or keeping their jobs. The FMLA guarantees employees of companies with more than 50 employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave annually for certain medical reasons or for the birth or adoption of a child. Generally, employers must maintain insurance coverage for employees who are on FMLA leave and must reinstate them to the same or equivalent j...

Consider this: In a recent decision, a federal appellate court upheld a $24,000 judgment against a property-management company for failing to pay an employee overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Imagine a company that fails to pay more than one employee overtime as required by law. A major bank recently agreed to pay employees $3.8 million that it owed in unpaid overtime in a settlement with the Department of Labor. The FLSA is arguably the labor law most often violated by em...

As environmental regulations become more voluminous and complex, so do the opportunities for businesses to run afoul of the enforcement authorities on both the federal and state levels. One of the most complex areas of regulation is the handling of hazardous wastes. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has stepped up enforcement of hazardous-waste laws, making it crucial for businesses and their employees to educate themselves on the proper handling and disposal of hazardous waste. ...

According to the Government Accounting Office, healthcare fraud and abuse account for three to ten percent of all healthcare costs — well over $100 billion annually. Whatever the cost, fraud and abuse waste badly needed resources and seriously undermine our healthcare system. The healthcare industry is subject to many different laws that concern fraud — including the False Claims Act, the Stark Law, the Anti-Kickback Statute, HIPAA and the Prescription Drug Marketing Act. On top of...

Rapid advances in "information technology" have led to growing concern for the privacy and security of personal information. This is especially true in the area of healthcare, where individuals share details of their health, personal lives and finances when they are at their most vulnerable. New regulations under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act ("HIPAA") address these issues by imposing stringent record-keeping and security requirements on healthcare providers and re...

The U.S. immigration laws are increasingly important as companies compete in the global marketplace. In a nutshell, it is against the law for a foreign national to enter the U.S. to work unless that individual has obtained a valid visa. Likewise, it is against the law for an employer (1) to hire a person who has not actually received an appropriate visa, or (2) to hire or continue to employ a person whose authorized stay to work has expired. Compliance with these basic rules can be tricky a...

Along with music and movies, information is increasingly digital, making it easy to transmit and copy -- and easy to misuse. While the entertainment industry scrambles to find ways to protect its copyrights, corporations are likewise struggling to protect their confidential information and to keep pace with the increasingly stringent laws that protect consumer and employee privacy. Although teenage hackers from Singapore to Helsinki make the headlines, ordinary breaches of information ...

Effective management is vital to a successful company. Too often, individuals who have excelled in a company due to a specific skills set are promoted to managerial positions before having adequate management training or any at all. As a consequence, many managers lack the interpersonal skills, sensitivity, legal awareness and professionalism necessary for effective management. The result can be disastrous: endless conflicts; low morale and productivity; wasted talent; high and costly tur...

This course is intended to help employees recognize the outer and inner sources of job stress, and to provide strategies that they can implement immediately to prevent job burnout. Did you know that work is the biggest source of stress for American adults? Consider these facts: In recent surveys, 78% of the respondents said that work was their biggest source of stress, and more than half reported that their lives had become more stressful over the past ten years. Stress is increasin...

Have you ever seen a drug dealer pull out a credit-card machine to accept payment? Ever known someone to pay for a TV they bought off the back of a truck with a personal check? Probably not. Most criminals conduct their business in cash. This creates an obvious problem - cash is bulky, heavy and risky to carry around. (One million dollars in twenties weighs about one hundred pounds.) As a result, criminals need to find a way to "launder" their ill-gotten gains. "Money laundering" is the pro...

Exporting - that is, the shipment or transmission of items or material outside of the U.S. - is heavily regulated by federal laws and regulations referred to collectively as "export controls." These controls affect the export of commodities (goods and materials), technology (technical data and know-how) and software from the U.S. to a foreign country. They also affect the re-export of any such U.S. items from one foreign country to another, as well as products made outside the U.S. by or fo...

As the complexities of the business world multiply and commerce becomes increasingly global, the need to understand issues of antitrust law — commonly referred to as "competition law" in the European Union — becomes more important. A web of international rules poses significant dangers for both intentional and inadvertent competition-law violations. As importantly, businesses and their employees become afraid to be inventive, aggressive and competitive in completely legitimate ways. ...