Your Employee Matters

The December HR Magazine shared these statistics from a SHRM survey:

• Companies doing criminal background checks? 73% all, 19% selectively, 7% no
• Companies doing credit background checks? 13% all, 47% selectively, 40% no
• Companies conducting pre-employment drug testing? 55% all, 17% selected, 21% no

As with most SHRM surveys, most of the companies surveyed are very large. Usually less than 15% are the size of our Member base. Nevertheless, where does your company fit in this? We’d advise you to do criminal background checks and drug tests on everybody, and credit background check on everybody you’re allowed to by law. This will eliminate exposing yourself to unnecessary risks.

(Note: The EEOC is severely restricting credit background checks on a disparate impact basis. Work with our partner, www.globalhrresearch.com to get it right!)

The bottom line goal of most business is to make money. Well-run businesses make their money more efficiently and last longer than their competitors (Southwest Airlines offers a perfect example). Michael Gerber taught us in The eMyth that we should build our business as if we’re going to franchise it. Dr. Deming taught us about systems, systems, systems. Theoretically, we want to rid our organizations of any unnecessary or wasteful dramas. Ideally, we’d cut out all the nonsense and become increasingly productive. Workers would support each other as team members and continually educate themselves because that’s the smart and logical thing to do. That makes sense, doesn’t it.

As Mr. Spock on Star Trek never fully grasped, much of what goes on in organizations today is nonsense! As I state in my workshops, “If it doesn’t make sense, don’t try to make sense out of it!” Every day we bring to work an emotional self that needs drama and connection in order to express itself. Shrewd executives and managers realize the power of tapping into this need, rather than trying to control or dampen it. They know that while systems are important, people are not robots and their emotions need, demand, and deserve attention.

We should address this emotional need by creating great employee experiences – and do so with as little energy, effort, or dollars as possible. At first, this thought might seem Scrooge-like. However, it’s far from that. Any marketer will tell you the importance of trying to get the highest return on marketing dollars by creating great client or customer experience as efficiently as possible. There’s absolutely no reason not to apply this principle toward motivating your workforce too!

There’s a two-step approach to getting this right. The first is to identify the basic needs of each group of employees. The easiest way to do so is through understanding Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (click here to watch my quick video on it). After identifying these needs – in a sense, understanding your marketplace – analyze your efforts, using the formula of cost, ease, and impact, just as a marketer would. For example, a marketing firm might determine if they want to use a direct mail approach or telemarketers. They can identify the cost of each approach, evaluate the ease or difficulty of implementation, run test studies to identify the impact, and then roll out the more efficient program, while continually testing to improve it. A perceptive employer will take the same approach when marketing to its employees. What’s the cost of the program? How difficult will it be to implement it? What will its impact be? You can easily identify the first two and survey for the third, eliminating any guesswork.

Consider two examples. In the first, I recommended that one of my clients, who was going through difficult times, assemble a “fun committee” to balance out the negative dramas with some positive ones. I suggested that the company contribute $10 per employee per week toward this committee. The employees could implement any program they wanted, as long as they followed the “formula.” They decided that they were either going to provide healthy lunches every Friday or wash people’s cars at the end of every other Friday. The cost was the same for both programs, as was the ease of implementation. The carwashes won out over the lunches 2 to 1. Now that’s a 100% and enormous distinction when it comes to the ROI of those dollars!

In the second example, the owner of a temporary construction firm told me one of his employees wanted a full-blown Health insurance program, understanding that he would have to pay a portion of it. Up to that point, the owner had provided employees with a medical services discount card that cost him $50 per month. Of course, he was shocked when he saw Health insurance would cost him and his employees roughly $300 per month each! When confronted by the high expense of these plans, he decided to give me a call before he made any decision. I began by asking him how many employees had made this request. He told me it was only one. Based on a hunch from the first example, I suggested that he ask his employees (almost every one being someone who drove his truck to work every day), if they’d rather have a co-pay medical plan that would cost them $300 a month or have their trucks washed for free every Friday. As you can probably guess, these employees preferred having their trucks washed (there’s a reason that most of them were temporary workers). This solution saved the business owner thousands of dollars, and created some very happy employees, driving home with a clean truck every Friday.

The bottom line: Bring good strategic thinking to your soft stuff, as well as the hard stuff. Building great employment relationships is essential if you want to have a great company.

None of us can ignore the safety issue that distracted drivers present. The CDC and DOT are campaigning to reduce distracted driving. The federal government has a Website devoted to this danger. How distracted are your employees – or you – behind the wheel?

Employee personnel files contain documents that track the “vital statistics” of employment, such as new hire paperwork, background check records, handbook receipts, payroll withholding and benefits election forms, and disciplinary and performance related documents. However, these files should not include certain types of records:

• Documents that reflect medical information should go in separate files in order to comply with the privacy provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Genetic Information and Nondisclosure Act also requires that information about an employee’s genetic makeup be treated as private (family medical history might reflect such information and must be treated accordingly). Self-insured employers are also subject to the privacy rules of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
• Records of investigations of complaints – Witness statements, employee complaint forms, investigative notes, etc. Keeping these in personnel files means that an employee’s request to review his/her file will require you either to disclose witness statements that might have been taken in confidence or remove them from the file, which could create questions of integrity.
• I-9 forms and the associated backup records. Keep these in a separate file to ensure that if the company undergoes an audit, it will not have to provide an investigator with access to entire employee personnel files (or, alternatively, require HR staff to cull through personnel files to retrieve all I-9s).
• Employee EEO-1 or other government required self-identification forms that reveal race, national origin, and gender.
• Other sensitive information, including e-mails between company officials and legal counsel or notes of conversations with counsel, should never go into an employee’s personnel file. Otherwise, the company might unwittingly waive the attorney-client privilege when affording the employee access to his or her file (or producing it during litigation to the plaintiff’s attorney).

Article courtesy of Worklaw® Network firm Shawe Rosenthal.

For more information on record retention, check out the Form of the Month.

According to the Department of Labor, more than four in five employers don’t comply with wage and hour requirements. Furthermore, wage and hour class actions (referred to as “collective actions”), outnumber all other employment class action lawsuits combined. Yet for employers, wage and hour compliance too often fails to receive the same priority as concerns about workplace harassment and discrimination. Employers know that problem prevention and management training reduce the risk of employment claims and help achieve a favorable outcome if claims arise. Let’s discuss such an approach concerning wage and hour requirements.

If there’s a single issue that every employee has in common and one question that most employees raise at least once a year, it has something to do with pay. Yet, many employers state that pay should not be discussed, which usually intends to cover confidential salary information. However, a by-product of this culture might be that employees don’t raise concerns about pay within the organization but instead, go directly to a plaintiff’s attorney or the Department of Labor. Note that unlike other employment claims, there is no legal requirement that an employee file a complaint with the Department of Labor; he or she may proceed directly to court.

Wage and hour claims often involve multiple individuals and can quickly add up to a lot of money. For example, if an employer is inappropriately docking an employee for a break, chances are this employer is doing the same thing with several other employees. Multiply that by the three-year “look-back” period for wage and hour violations, by the number of hours of the violation, and the number of employees involved. Then double this total and add interest and attorneys’ fees, and it won’t take long before the employer faces a six-figure risk.

So what to do about this? As a threshold recommendation, we suggest that you elevate pay issues to the same level of culture, compliance, and concern as workplace harassment and discrimination. Provide employees with what the DOL refers to as a “safe harbor” policy, employer pay practices, which practices are prohibited, and directs employees to whom within the organization to ask about pay. The objective should be that no employee ever needs to take a question about pay to anyone outside of the organization. For a copy of our Model Safe Harbor Policy, please click here.

Employers should also audit their wage and hour practices thoroughly on an annual basis. Are exempt employees classified properly? Are independent contractors bona fide independent contractors (in business to make a profit), or are they misclassified? Do you provide breaks, for how long, and with or without pay? If your organization pays an incentive, do you calculate this incentive in determining an employee’s overtime compensation? If an employee’s pay may be docked, is this in writing and applied consistently?

Article courtesy of Worklaw® Network firm Lehr Middlebrooks Vreeland.

If you missed the webinar, “Are You Ready for a Wage & Hour Audit?,” a recording is available in the HR That Works Webinar area or Media Library. During and following the webinar, the presenters received numerous questions about wage and hour law issues — unfortunately many more than they could respond to during the program.

Here’s a response to two questions about deductions from the salary of exempt employees:

Q. When an exempt employee runs out of sick pay, can an employer deduct one day’s pay for the sick day?

A. Yes. Generally, you must pay exempt employees on a “salary basis,” meaning that they must receive a guaranteed salary for each workweek, without any reduction due to the number of hours worked or the quality or quantity of work performed. However, deductions are allowed in certain limited circumstances, such as the absence of an exempt employee for one or more full workdays due to personal reasons other than sickness or disability, or illness or an accident for an employee covered under a sick-pay policy. If an exempt employee uses up all of their sick days under the sick leave policy, you may still take deductions for any further full-day absences.

Q. Can we allow exempt employees to take sick or vacation time off by the hour or in half-day increments?

A. Yes. However, once an exempt employee exhausts available sick leave, you can only take deductions for any future absences if the employee is absent for a full day, unless the absence is for intermittent or reduced-schedule FMLA leave. Watch the FMLA Webinar for more practical insights on intermittent FMLA leave.

The law requires that employer and employee engage in an interactive dialogue concerning accommodating a disability. This process includes these issues:

1. The employee’s limitations.
2. The nature and requirements of the job.
3. Identification of essential job functions versus marginal ones.
4. Modification of the job to meet the employee’s limitations.
5. Distribution of certain duties to other employees or dispensing with them entirely.
6. The employer’s record of requiring jobholders to perform certain disputed duties.
7. Possible undue hardship on the employer from granting certain accommodations.
8. Provision of an alternative vacant position for which the employee is qualified.

The courts have been quick to recognize that much of the data is in the employee’s hands when it comes to their disability and in the employer’s hands when it comes to possible accommodations. Remember, the side that gives up on the accommodation dialogue first generally loses.

For accommodation support, go to the Job Accommodation Network website or contact the HR That Works Hotline.

One of the most difficult challenges managers or executives face is having their days ruled by “got-a-minutes.” The executive or manager is usually more proficient or knowledgeable about a certain subject, which makes it tempting for employees to avoid taking personal responsibility for finding an answer and going to an “easy” source. All too often, this source is you. Answering a “got-a-minute” is like throwing that employee a fish: It disrupts your concentration and prevents them from learning how to fish.

To help avoid interruptions to your days by “got-a-minutes?,” tell your subordinates that you’re willing to give everyone at least five minutes between 4:00 and 4:30 to discuss any issues that are semi-urgent in nature, leaving less serious issues for the regular weekly meeting. The only immediate “got-a-minute” questions permitted will be those rated as “emergency issues” (9 or above on a scale of 10). Work with your team to define these issues. Let employees voice their concerns and reach a consensus. Agree that you too will refrain from throwing “got-a-minutes” their way.

This approach should eliminate more than 80% of the trivial “got-a-minutes” that knock you off course. Moreover, during these 4:00 meetings, employees will be more focused on their requests. Let them know that if they think the matter will take more than five minutes they should be prepared and perhaps even use an outline. Encourage them to tell you what efforts they’ve made to deal with the issue and where they’re “stuck.” Perhaps all they need is permission to move forward.

Empower employees to figure things out for themselves. If your time is worth $100 an hour and theirs is worth $20 an hour, let them take a few hours to figure out the answer for themselves.

Seth Godin defines the new American Dream as: “Be remarkable. Be generous. Make art. Connect people and ideas.” Today’s strategic HR executive embraces this concept. As I see it, four attributes or characteristics make or break an HR executive’s ability to generate powerful relationships (of course, these four factors apply to everyone else, too). They are: Trust, direction, communication, and commitment:

Trust. The first concern every business owner or executive should be to surround themselves with people they can trust. What makes a person trustworthy is the fact that they can do something and have a desire to do so because they have the skills, training, and experience.

One way to become a trustworthy human resource executive is to become a PHR or SPHR. Another way is to be a constant learner: Turn off the TV and pick up a book, or read one of the many reports on HR That Works. Desire motivates the successful HR person to get things done – new things, not just familiar ones.

Direction. Superstars have a clear sense of their direction, vision, mission, values, goals, and plans. Unfortunately, as Mary Kay was famous for saying, “Most people plan their vacations better than their careers.” Just how good do you want to be? What do you have to do to get there? Have you mapped out a plan to get you there step by step? Is your plan in alignment with the greater needs of the organization? Have you had this conversation with your boss or the owner?

Then, give yourself benchmarks to determine how you’re doing. How would you know if you were on course? What results must you achieve, and by when? Break these benchmarks down into a clear plan for the week. What are your typical recurring tasks, and when will you perform them? What value-added tasks will you accomplish this week? When? How long will they take? At the end of the week, evaluate how you did, make adjustments, and set your plan for the next week.

Remember, successful executives have a clear sense of direction. As Napoleon Hill stated in Think and Grow Rich, “They have a burning desire for a particular purpose.”

Communication. One of the top challenges in any relationship involves communication, including how you talk with yourself. To be a good communicator is an inside-out job. What’s your daily “self-talk”? One business school study found that 80% of self-talk is about what we want to have that we don’t, or who we want to be that we’re not. What an incredible waste of time!

Instead, look to the Scriptures. For more than 2,000 years, the 23rd Psalm has reminded us that we “shall not want.” Focus on your gifts: Your intelligence and drive, the people around you, your clients, the fact that people need your work, and so forth. When my self-talk focuses on glorifying what I’ve been given, life becomes far richer both emotionally and financially. That’s good self-talk.

What’s the value of your communication with others? If I asked your significant other, BFF, or a colleague what you could do to communicate more effectively, and then asked you to guess what they said, you’d be fairly accurate. Most of us know what we can do to become better communicators. For one thing, we can listen more closely. This requires us to be present and stop running for a moment so that we can focus on the other person. Try this for five minutes. You’ll be amazed by how others respond to it.

Next, focus on making more positive deposits than negative ones. The authors of the excellent book Leadership and Self-Deception point out that most people deceive themselves into believing that they do more positive communication than negative. This is a natural by-product of running 75 miles per hour. Ask yourself this: When you’re running 75mph and someone’s trying to talk to you, how does it feel to them? Does it feel like a positive experience? Does it feel like you care? Probably not. This is why, although you might have good intentions, your outcomes might not be good. Finally, focus on creating a positive experience in your relations with others by making them feel good about themselves – finding the good that’s in them. Then you might even laugh together.

Commitment. Successful executives are committed. Good old Zig Ziglar provided me with a favorite quote about commitment: “Commitment is doing those things you said you were going to do long after the mood you said them in has worn off.” How committed are you? You might get the things I’ve stated above, but are you committed to delivering on them? Think in terms of rainy day commitments. Successful people commit to getting things done even when it doesn’t feel good to do them. “Sunshine commitment” is always easy. Our personal culture shows up when things feel unfair, not when everything is nice and sunny.

If it feels unfair that your success isn’t coming fast enough, consider the “flywheel effect.” As Jim Collins states in Good to Great, success doesn’t happen overnight. Like a flywheel, it takes some time to kick in. Then you’ll wonder what took it so long. Commitment requires a balance between urgency and patience. Because nothing happens without people taking action, we need a sense of urgency. At the same time, like a Zen master, we have to allow things to unfold as they are – not necessarily as we wanted them to be. I can tell you from personal experience that if you remain committed to something long enough, you will achieve success — just not when or how you expected it!

So, let’s sum up.

If you’re in the HR role, what makes you trustworthy to your superiors? They can trust you with payroll and benefits administration, but can they also trust you to think strategically in a way that helps grow the bottom line? Do you have a written plan for this, with short and long-term goals, and specific benchmarks? Just how good do you want to be? What expectations do you have of yourself? How well do you work with others? Do you play team? Are you a pleasure to work with? Do you give as much as you take? Are you capable of being present and in the now, if even for short periods? Just how strong is your commitment? How would your superiors know this without you saying anything about it? What actions would they expect to see? What bridges are you willing to burn and what are you willing to stop doing as part of this commitment?

Here’s hoping that this either confirms the path you’re on and helps to reinforce it, or alternatively, serves as the good swift kick you might need. Success is a choice. Every one of these strategies should inherently feel right. Apply them toward your success.

Here’s a list of inexpensive accommodation examples published by the Job Accommodation Network (JAN):

Situation: A production worker with mental retardation, who has limited fine motor dexterity, must use tweezers and a magnifying glass to perform the job. The worker had difficulty holding the tweezers.
Solution: Purchase giant tweezers. Cost: $5.

Situation: A teacher with bipolar disorder, who works in a home-based instruction program, experienced reduced concentration, short-term memory loss, and task sequencing problems.
Solution: At one of their weekly meetings, the employee and the supervisor jointly developed a checklist that showed activities for both the week’s work and the following. The company adapted forms so that they would be easy to complete, and developed structured steps so that paper work could be completed at the end of each teaching session. An unintended bonus to the company was the value of the weekly check-off forms in training new staff. Cost: $0.

Situation: A garage mechanic with epilepsy was unable to drive vehicles.
Solution: The employer negotiated with the employee’s union and reached an agreement that any qualified employee, regardless of job held, could drive the vehicles to the mechanic’s work station. Cost: $0.

Situation: An individual with a neck injury, who worked in a lab, had difficulty bending his neck to use the microscope.
Solution: Attach a periscope to the microscope. Cost: $2,400.

Situation: A catalog salesperson with a spinal cord injury had problems using the catalog, due to difficulty with finger dexterity.
Solution: The employer purchased a motorized catalog rack, controlled by a single switch via the mouth stick, and provided an angled computer keyboard stand for better accessibility. Cost: $1,500.

Situation: A field geologist who was deaf and worked alone in remote areas was unable to use two-way radio communication to report his findings.
Solution: The company installed text telephone technology which allowed the geologist to communicate using a cellular telephone. Cost: $400 plus monthly service fee for the phone.

Situation: A saw operator with a learning disability had difficulty measuring to the fraction of an inch.
Solution: The company gave the employee a wallet-sized card that listed the fractions on an enlarged picture of an inch. This allowed the employee to compare the card with the location on the ruler to identify the correct fraction. Cost: $5.

Situation: An accountant with HIV was experiencing sensitivity to fluorescent light, which kept her from seeing her computer screen or written materials clearly.
Solution: The employer lowered the wattage in overhead lights, provided task lighting and a computer screen glare guard. Cost: $80.

Situation: A custodian with poor vision was having difficulty seeing the carpeted area he was vacuuming.
Solution: The company mounted a fluorescent lighting system on his industrial vacuum cleaner. Cost: $240

Here’s the point: Accommodations don’t have to be expensive. Remember to engage in a true dialogue involving the employee, his or her physician, and any support you might need from the HR That Works hotline, Job Accommodation Network, or your own attorney.