We have a remote employee who is working through their lunch break. Can we require them to take it?

Yes, generally you can and should require an employee to take a lunch break. In many states, employers are required to provide employees with rest breaks, meal breaks, or both, and are sometimes even required to provide them at specific times.

We need to terminate an employee due to poor performance. Should we give them a letter outlining why we are terminating them?

There is no federal requirement for employers to provide written notice about why someone is being terminated, but we do recommend providing written notice as best practice. This reduces the likelihood of the terminated employee spinning up their own (possibly illegal) reason for the termination and then claiming there is no documentation to the contrary.

We are considering having different employee handbooks for our exempt and nonexempt employees. Can we have multiple versions of our employee handbook?

There’s no rule against having multiple employee handbooks, but there are some factors to consider. Having multiple versions would lead to more administrative work to ensure all handbooks are up to date and consistent. If you have separate handbooks for exempt and nonexempt employees, or for employees in different states, each handbook would need to be updated any time your policies or practices change. This extra work would increase the likelihood of omissions or errors, potentially causing confusion for employees and managers alike. One alternative to having two separate handbooks would be to add an appendix that provides relevant information specific to exempt and nonexempt employees.