There are so many great songs about defying authority. What’s the best? Hard to say. The best video, though – that’s easy. We’re Not Gonna Take It by Twisted Sister. (Watch here, then thank me later. I could watch the first minute a hundred times. Say it with me: “What do you want to do with your life?”)

Rock may about breaking rules, but business is not. With your employees, there are lots of rules you want them to follow, and you probably list them in painful detail in handbooks, posters, flyers, brochures, catalogs, signposts, compendiums, directories, and mandatory worker inner eyelid tattoos.

What about independent contractors, though? To preserve independent contractor status, you already know you want to try to minimize your exercise of control. But some rules are needed, expecially for contractors who work on your site.

Here are some guidelines to consider:

Rules appropriate for employees, but not well-suited for contractors:

• Employee Handbooks
• Policy Manuals
• FMLA Policy
• Vacation and leave policies

Applying those employee-specific rules to independent contractors would tend to support an argument that contractors are being treated like employees.

Some rules, though, are more appropriate to ask on-site contractors to follow.

Examples of rules that are generally suitable to apply to contractors:

• Safety rules, especially those related to ensuring safety at the facility (e.g., must wear hard hat, please do not flick matches at that industrial-size fuel tank, keep your fingers clear of the 4000 ton forging press)
• Emergency evacuation or exit procedures
• Anti-Discrimination Policy (if drafted broadly, to cover employees, contractors, visitors, interlopers, outerlopers, sidelopers, etc.)

These types of rules can be applied to contractors because they do not tell the contractor how to do the work. Instead, they are designed to ensure a safe and productive space where no one gets hurt.

© 2017 Todd Lebowitz, posted on WhoIsMyEmployee.com, Exploring Issues of Independent Contractor Misclassification and Joint Employment. All rights reserved.