If you employ one person, listen up. This matters to you. As the "boss" or employer, you care what your employee is doing on the job. Is he/she doing the assigned job, taking personal phone calls, checking e-mail, making sales, whatever. You care because you are paying this person to perform a specific task that's important to the functioning of your business, right?
Well, here's another reason you care. You, as the employer, are also legally responsible for the employee's actions. The legal concept is called respondeat superior or vicarious liability. Acts or omissions by the employee committed in the scope of employment are charged to the employer.
What am I talking about? If you send someone from your office to Staples (no, they are not paying me to name them) to pick up office supplies and they get into an accident, guess whose getting named in the lawsuit (especially if your company is worth more than your employee)?
Exception time - you are not liable for the intentional acts of your employee, though. If Jim over in accounting gets into an argument with Eugene over who was properly the mvp of last night's basketball game and Jim whacks Eugene with his keyboard, you are not vicariously liable for the battery. You might get sued for negligent hiring and retention of Jim, but that's tomorrow.
Got to run. I have an all day construction lien seminar I have to go to.
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