talent acquisition – Page 2

February 7, 2020June 29, 2023

From boomers to Gen Z: How to engage a multigenerational workforce

Five generations are now represented in today’s workforce as millennials and Generation Z continue to make their mark.

Millennials will soon be the largest living generation in the U.S. labor force, while the number of people 65 years and older is expected to nearly double. At the same time, digital technologies are changing how these generations collaborate and work together, as well as how organizations engage, manage and retain employees.

Because of this, employee expectations across the board have evolved and no longer does a “one-size-fits-all” approach work when it comes to employee engagement. In fact, failure to meet these expectations can result in decreased productivity and high turnover in an increasingly competitive economy.

In a world of #okboomer memes and “Me Generation” stereotypes, organizations should explore ways to better unify employees and harness the power of a diverse workplace. Here are three ways that HR and communicators can accommodate employees across generations and gain a competitive advantage in the market.

Speak Their Language

First and foremost, HR and communications leaders must identify who their audiences are and what content will resonate the most, as the context and tone of a message can impact how employees receive and choose to engage with it. Even when providing the same information to all generations, communicators should explore ways to share that message to younger versus older employees.

For example, a more detailed email about new company policy might translate better with baby boomers, while it could be ignored by millennials and Gen Z who tend to prefer more informal, casual language. In contrast, a conversational tone may not translate for older demographics who might see it as blurring professional and personal boundaries.

In a multigenerational workplace, HR and communicators should find ways to personalize and distribute content based on employee types and preferences quickly and easily. This plays a major role in making workers feel more valued, drives feelings of inclusion and has a direct impact on productivity and satisfaction.

Once the content is in place, it’s important to consider the distribution strategy and the cadence or frequency in which content is shared. In the past decade alone, the workforce has become infinitely more connected with digital reminders, near-instantaneous updates, collaborative calendars and more. From intranet platforms to multidevice and direct messaging applications, each generation will find different methods better suited for them and employers need to adapt to this digital shift.

As digital natives, millennials and Gen Z are likely more comfortable and familiar with mobile and chat platforms, and may prefer receiving information and updates via mobile app. Conversely, Gen Xers and baby boomers may want to receive information via email or hard copy and hear feedback face-to-face.

Finding a balanced cadence of communications that appeases all employees can be tricky, but is foundational to building and maintaining a unified company culture. In this sense, it’s important to remember that every employee interacts with technology differently. When thinking about how best to disseminate the “nice-to-know” versus the “need-to-know,” evaluate consumption preferences and habits across all employees and tailor communication methods based on this assessment.

Keep Employees Motivated

A third factor to keep in mind when engaging a diverse workforce is that employees want different things from their employers and from their career paths, regardless of demographic. Internal communications directly impact employee motivations and their level of productivity, and leaders will need to invest in ways to empower everyone in their organization.

Research has shown that millennials and Gen Z value work-life balance more so than their older colleagues, and may not want to receive communications from work outside office hours. Gen Xers and boomers also don’t require constant feedback, while younger demographics are motivated by words of encouragement from superiors on a regular basis. Some employees might appreciate reminders to complete surveys or program registrations, while others might find anything more than a weekly reminder overwhelming.

And, while many see technology as a key divider among generations, that’s far from the case. Employee engagement tools and technologies can help managers, supervisors and the C-suite share their mission and messages with all employees in a personalized way. Providing channels to ask questions, share advice or collaborate on work can also energize employees and foster relationships between generations. With the right tools in place, HR and communications teams can measure and analyze the impact of their engagement strategies to adjust over time.

Employees of all ages seek workplace satisfaction and it’s up to HR and business leaders to provide the tools, resources and strategies that empower them to define their own experience. As workforce demographics evolve, organizations must create a space for a variety of work styles to flourish and ultimately position their employees – and the business – for success.

February 4, 2020June 29, 2023

The evolving role of a chief people officer

Late last year McDonald’s Corp. Chief People Officer David Fairhurst left the fast-food giant just one day following Chief Executive Officer Steve Easterbrook’s termination after violating company policy by having a consensual relationship with an employee.

The sudden departures caused a major shift in the McDonald’s C-suite, leaving new Chief People Officer Mason Smoot to deal with the fallout. When that kind of responsibility falls to the chief people officer, what should they do?

Eugenie Fanning, vice president of people at commercial real estate company SquareFoot, looks at the chief people officer’s overall role in the workplace before diving into the nitty gritty. According to Fanning, a chief people officer owns the strategy and execution in bringing and retaining top talent to the workplace.

“They must be able to see the business from the perspective of each employee — both new hires and veteran leaders — and to represent all of those views when coaching senior leadership on communication, management and planning,” Fanning said in an email interview. “This all feeds into the maintenance and care of culture, which everyone contributes to in their own way.”

In recent years, there has been some rebranding around human resources, Fanning said. HR is now often labeled as “people” with the emphasis being more focused on employee engagement rather than paperwork and bureaucracy. “CPOs are emerging as stakeholders in the overall long-term success of companies,” Fanning said. “The evolution of this role is a long time coming. While it may crop up more in growing companies looking to standardize processes, it’s a growing trend everywhere.”

While CPOs generally tend to operate behind the scenes, they play an important role in coaching and directing the behavior of those within the organization. If a scandal does occur, the counsel of the CPO decides what should be said and done going forward while also focusing on how well employees will receive the message.

Also read: Tesla’s CHRO pick points to a new era

“With the appointment of a CPO, the organization has brought on someone they believe embodies their culture, vision and values and who can reinforce those values at all times,” Fanning said. “Whatever the message is, it should represent the views of the company and its leadership.”

Fanning also emphasized how vital it is that the chief people officer be secure in their morals and messaging when put in such a situation.

“There is no black and white answer in many situations and never a set process that guarantees to work all the time,” Fanning said. “You need to be able to analyze what’s happening, detect its impact on the company and employees and help manage the best course of action to rectify the situation in a timely manner.”

Fanning suggests three basic best practices for chief people officers to keep in mind if they ever find themselves or the organization in a scandal:

Don’t panic. Employees look to the CPO to know how they should feel and react to the situation and will emulate their behavior.
Understand the repercussions. Look at the situation from all perspectives and make sure to have the vision to see what could happen in the coming weeks.
Earn a seat at the table. Once the company is back on solid footing, the CPO can emerge as a reliable voice of skepticism.

The chief people officer is seen as a partner to everyone in the company. Whether there is a scandal, they are there to help guide internal and external communication and to maintain a support system for all employees.

“The CPO is someone you’d turn to as a key stakeholder to ensure that the messaging communicated matches the company’s values,” Fanning said.

December 9, 2019June 29, 2023

When You Tell a Job Candidate, ‘You’re Probably Not Going to Like This Job’

When hiring is brisk, it’s easy to rush the process and end up with mismatched employees. So it’s important to know what motivates them — not just how they behave, but why they do what they do. With today’s labor market, finding the best match for performance and retention pays for itself in retention alone.

A majority of Fortune 500 companies use assessments for selection and companies of all sizes can benefit from emulating the practice. To ensure the best talent selection and long-term match, HR should go deeper than personality types and behavior.

With assessments that determine what motivates candidates, HR can be more assured in choosing — or passing on — any individual.

“Selection is very different than just hiring,” said Brett Wells, chief science and consulting officer at Talent Plus Inc. “Selection means you’re making a sound judgement based on validity and science, based on what’s the very best in a role or an industry and how they will respond versus what you think your gut reaction should be. It’s predictive.”

It’s a Good Time to Be Choosy

“People can answer interview questions very well,” said Alison Nolan. “People are fantastic at answering interview questions, but it doesn’t always tell you the truth.”

Nolan is HR partner for the public health NGO, FHI 360. Previously, she did the same job with Volvo Group Trucks. With her 18 years of talent acquisition experience, she recommends an assessment-based hiring process.

“With an assessment, if they’re trying to fake it, it shows up,” said Nolan. “It’s very clear if they’re trying to skew the answers. If you’re honest it just gives you so much more insight. It saves the employer and the employee.”

In Nolan’s experience, only about 25 percent of employees who are put on a performance improvement process end up keeping their jobs. So why not make it a goal to avoid performance improvement interventions?

Right now, two competitive factors make it more important than ever to assess and understand employee motivation in hiring so great performance is the norm:

Near full employment. With full employment, talent acquisition is more about who you don’t hire than who you do hire, because you want to be selective and find people who will thrive in your organization. And once they’re hired, retaining those employees also becomes a competitive necessity in a tight labor market.
Career trends. People have become more selective about what jobs they take. Once upon a time, job seekers considered just getting a job a societal responsibility. Today, they are more attracted by intrinsic factors — in other words, corporate culture and corporate responsibility — than the need to simply find a steady income or a job for life.

Personality assessments that identify motivation can make all the difference in matching candidates with the jobs in your organization.

For Wells, who researches and builds assessments, carefully matched talent has never been more important for retention.

“With a tight labor market for candidates, the world is their oyster right now and ‘fit’ is key for retention,” said Wells. “If they don’t have that fit for the role or the organizational culture, they will leave. If they’re in a role where they’re not getting that intrinsic satisfaction they’re at risk for being disengaged and, again, at greater risk for leaving.”

Finding a Motivational Match

When you’ve done the work to accurately assess candidates, you can honestly say to those who aren’t a match, “You’re probably not going to like this job.”

How come?

You can answer, “Well, you’ve got the work ethic and the skills to do the job, but after a year, you’ll be exhausted because this job is all about engaging with clients daily in a strictly established corporate structure and you’re more motivated by thinking outside the box and coming up with new ways to accomplish tasks.”

On the other hand, for the candidate who assesses as a good fit, you can offer the job with assurance and negotiate as necessary to get them on board: “I really think you would love working here.”

Nolan has seen how this can be a positive experience for people who are not hired as well as the company.

“They get to hear why they didn’t get selected and they get that review,” said Nolan. “They have something tangible to walk away with. And sometimes, we say, ‘Hey we have this other position where you’d be a great fit.’ ”

You’ll know this because you’ve used a scientifically valid instrument that goes deeper than simple behavioral traits to find out things like:

Do they like to develop their own way of working or do they prefer to have it laid out for them in a prescribed manner?
Would they rather help others succeed or do they prefer monetary incentives?
Can they focus on their job with no environmental distractions or do workspace aesthetics energize them?

There are no right or wrong motivations. It’s all about congruency between what your organization needs and what it can offer the candidate.

When you assess a person’s motivation, you gain a deeper understanding of them so you can either lead them into a fulfilling and satisfying position or honestly wave them off, so they don’t take a job that will ultimately frustrate them and send them looking elsewhere.

“This is where that motivational piece comes in,” said Wells. “We often see potential wasted because they’re in roles spending time just doing things that they’re excellent at, but they don’t necessarily enjoy it.”

For Wells, it’s about talents versus strengths.

“A strength is something I’m good at, but I might not enjoy doing it, e.g., balancing a checkbook,” said Wells. “A talent is something I have the potential to do with excellence and is something I’m going to enjoy doing.”

The Perils of Using Gut Instinct

Outside of HR, not all managers are believers. Or maybe they’re just not aware.

“With some hiring managers, it can be them saying, ‘Okay, I want this person’ even when it didn’t make sense from the assessment to take that person,” said Nolan. “And nine times out of 10 they would end up on a performance improvement plan since they could not do the job, because they were not motivated by what it took to do the job.”

The best way to bring hip-shooting hiring managers into the fold of scientific talent selection is to give them the assessment that’s being used, including the feedback session. They’ll see how in-depth and revealing it is, firsthand, and they’ll be inspired by what can be achieved with a more careful hiring discipline.

Nolan has worked with managers who have a certain feeling and until they’re proven wrong — and it could be a hiring mistake that ends badly and could be costly — the task becomes how do you convince a hiring manager.

“I gave my hiring mangers the assessment and told them to take it,” said Nolan. “With them taking it, it was an eye-opener. Like someone peeking inside of you. They do it themselves and see how accurate it is.”

Why Touchy-Feely Matters

Assessments differ, but terms like “harmonious” and “altruistic” are common. This may strike old school hiring managers as a little too soft-skill or “touchy-feely” to be practical.

What does it matter if a worker cares about the number of windows and art installations in the office? Or if they’re indifferent to status and recognition?

Plenty, according to most science on the subject, but it’s also basic psychology. People function at their best when they’re at ease. If an organizational structure or a particular job aligns with motivational preferences, the employee will be more comfortable and more able to do work in a way that gives them fulfillment.

People need to be able to be themselves at work. You can fake it for a few months in a mismatched position, but not for long.

And outside-the-box thinker isn’t going to be happy if they have to support the status quo. A person who puts himself first, will burn out in a customer service job where altruistic motivation is more valued. An employee who is highly receptive to new ideas won’t fare well in a position that demands adherence to a standard process.

A motivational assessment gives you a reliable picture of what situations are best for any job candidate.

Behavior is easy to assess. If you’ve been in talent management or training for a while, you’re probably pretty good at determining a person’s way of doing things without an assessment and through good interview questions.

Motivation, however, is deeper and you’ll need a sophisticated assessment instrument to divine it.

Motivation as a metric goes back to the work of Eduard Spranger who identified six types of motivation: theoretical, utilitarian, aesthetic, social, individualistic and traditional. Today’s motivational assessments adapt this taxonomy with more workplace-specific terms.

First Step: Assess the Job

Knowing a person’s motivational make-up won’t help if you don’t know the motivational realities of your organization and the specific jobs. So, it’s important to document the chemistry of your company first.

What is the work environment like? What are the workday demands — strict office hours, telecommute, work from the field? What are the job categories? People focused? Process focused? Creative driven or analytical?

Doing this homework will allow assessments to work as talent matchmakers.

“At Volvo, we interviewed a lot of senior buyers in our purchasing group and we benchmarked what our needs are for this job,” said Nolan.

This included requirements such as working independently, working with vendors all day long, negotiating pricing, giving presentations, and being driven by metrics in working with other people.

“Once we did the interviews, we would give the assessment and it would show us how good of a match are they for the position,” said Nolan.

Wells says it’s absolutely vital to baseline the culture before assessing talent.

“In any organization there are likely pockets of success or teams that are very successful and also pockets or teams that are struggling. With a validated assessment and research process you can discern those reliable patterns, thoughts, feelings, behaviors that drive success vs. failure in those roles,” said Wells. “So, bringing those to the forefront and making them part of your selection process will help replicate that success, selection after selection, and mitigate future failures.”

Wells recommends starting with the company’s mission statement, vision statement or a competency model, then mapping out what behaviors the company rewards, ignores and punishes. And ultimately, who gets promoted.

It’s a process of defining the culture and identifying what it takes to thrive within it. Once this is known, any number of scientifically valid assessments can be used by talent professionals to dial in the optimum profile of the candidates to hire.

Finding the Right Assessment

Once an organization knows “who it is” the process of choosing an assessment can begin.

Fortunately, the assessment industry has evolved to a point where there are many accurate, reliable and powerful instruments from which to choose.

Across the board, Wells advises that there are three basic factors to always evaluate:

1) Reliability: How consistent are scores over time and across situations. If I test you today, if I test you five years from now, am I going to get roughly equivalent results?

2) Validity: How strong is this assessment result in predicting something I care about that’s going to impact my business?

3) Fairness: To what extent do individuals from protected classes perform on the assessment compared to their majority group counterparts?

Nolan has a couple of preferred assessments and both have multiscience features that include what metrics of what drives the candidate, along with a DiSC component, and have been proven over time.

It’s always been important to match employees with positions that suit their personalities. However, now it’s more of a competitive advantage than just an employee satisfaction exercise.

In the current talent market you can afford to be more selective, which will pay off in worker retention.

As younger generations redefine why we work, there’s a little more care and feeding of talent we have to accept as employers.

Matching talent with positions by motivation helps assure success on both fronts.

November 19, 2019June 29, 2023

A Pox on Ban the Box

I am a podcast fanatic. It’s the best way to spend time on my daily commute and to fill the speakers of my car stereo, I have an unending list of podcasts to which I subscribe.

They run the gamut from music related (“Wheels Off With Rhett Miller”), human interest (“Terrible, Thanks for Asking”), travel (“Bittersweet Moment”), and technology (“Reply All”). But my favorite is “Ear Hustle.”

“Ear Hustle” is a podcast about “the daily realities of life inside prison shared by those living it, and stories from the outside, post-incarceration.” One of its recent episodes discussed the realities and difficulties the incarcerated face trying to find employment upon their release from prison.

Bottom line? Once an employer finds out you committed a felony and spent time in prison, your employment prospects drop dramatically. And most learn of this information by an applicant checking the “Yes, I’ve been convicted of a felony” box on their employment application.

Earlier this year, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction that blocked the EEOC’s guidance on criminal background checks as unlawful and banned its continued implementation or use.

That injunction is significant for many reasons, not the least of which is that the EEOC’s guidance opined that employment applications that ask whether an applicant has ever been convicted of a felony violate Title VII on their face. Why? Because blacks and Latinos are incarcerated at a rate that is statistically significantly higher than whites.

The movement against employers asking this question on job applications is called “ban the box” — cleverly titled after the box applicants are asked to check if they’ve been convicted of a felony. Nationwide, 35 states and over 150 cities have adopted ban the box laws.

So what’s wrong with laws that are intended to give those with felony convictions in their background a chance at getting past the application stage of their employment search? The laws don’t work.

As illustrated on “Ear Hustle,” ban the box merely moves the criminal background check from the application stage to the formal background check stage. Employers that are predisposed not to hire felons are not going to hire felons. They will just ding them later in the hiring process — after the expense of a formal criminal background check. These laws aren’t changing employers’ minds or attitudes. They are just giving felons false hope.

Moreover, according to two recent studies, ban the box laws are causing more racial discrimination by improving the hiring prospects for whites, while making them worse for blacks and Latinos. The conclusion drawn by these studies is that when employers can’t see who has a criminal record, they still avoid people they think are likely to have criminal records by resorting to guesswork.

As a result, racial discrimination against black and Latino job applicants (especially men) replaces discrimination based on criminal record. In other words, banning the box doesn’t just fail to help those its intended to help, but it also might hurt anyone who happens to be black or Latino.

Thus, if ban the box laws either create a more damaging reliance on unconscious racial biases (as these studies suggest) or push the consideration of criminal backgrounds to later in the hiring process, where employers will still use them to disqualify candidates (albeit with higher transaction costs in the hiring process), why do we have them?

If ban the box laws aren’t working toward their intended results of opening job opportunities for ex-cons, then what should we do to achieve this laudable goal? I suggest a three-pronged approach:

• Job training within the prison system to provide the incarcerated with transferable real-world job skills and a certification they can provide to a prospective employers upon their release.

• Tax credits to incentivize businesses to hire these felons.

• A privilege from negligent hiring and other liabilities for employers that hire certain felons for certain positions (i.e., We still don’t want sex offenders working in schools, but they might able to work in a manufacturing facility if they are otherwise qualified and sufficiently rehabilitated).

We need something to break the cycle of crime, and that something is jobs. Stable employment and steady income will help stem recidivism and keep people from returning to crime as a means of support.

If ban the box isn’t working toward this goal, then local, state and federal governments need to abandon ban the box and look for other solutions to this problem.

November 7, 2019June 29, 2023

Reports of the Death of the Job Board Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

The old-school job board model, where employers pay a website to post open positions and hope that qualified candidates will find and apply for them, may not be as flashy or talked about as some of today’s bright, shiny Generation Z gig-worker marketplace products. But since the dawning of the job board as we know it some 30 years ago they appear to remain a viable business model with plenty of life.

In 2018, online job advertising companies earned a total of $22 billion, according to Staffing Industry Analysts, an increase of 15 percent. And while many companies offer advanced services such as programmatic job advertising or social media tools, the leader in many markets “is a traditional job board that makes 70 to 80 percent of its revenue from job postings,” said Jeff Dickey-Chasins, principal of the industry consulting firm JobBoardDoctor LLC.

That doesn’t mean the industry has been complacent. Especially in markets like the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, job boards have been exploring new revenue models, new technology and new features. They have little choice, observers say. Recruiting practices are changing, the use of data has become more sophisticated and the demands of job seekers are continually evolving.

Also, the very culture of “being online” has changed. It’s now anytime, anywhere and includes multiple channels such as websites, email, social media and chat. That dynamic can work either for or against the job boards, said NelsonHall Principal Research Analyst Nikki Edwards. Those job boards that have mobilized their platform, integrated with social media, and incorporated other channels “will have greater audience reach, and are more likely to survive, than those who do nothing to adapt or who rest on their laurels.”

It seems like a far cry from the industry’s early days, when job boards were essentially “the old newspaper classifieds,” said Gerry Crispin, founder of CareerXroads, a recruiting-technology consulting practice. “Certainly, a lot of changes have gone on, but the fact of the matter is job boards are essentially the 21st century extension of classified advertising.”

Technology Draws a Circle

Initially, online job searching was relatively simple: Candidates searched, clicked on a job and applied to it — all without ever leaving the job board. Because applicant tracking systems were just gaining traction, companies around the turn of the 21st century relied on job boards to attract candidates while job seekers used them to deliver their applications to employers. Then, as ATS technology gained traction and more organizations built their own candidate databases, job boards began serving as gateways to corporate career sites.

However, “we’ve come full circle,” said Chad Sowash, a talent acquisition consultant and host of the recruiting-focused “Chad & Cheese Podcast.” Today’s corporate career sites, he said, are often clunky and not particularly attractive.

That encourages job boards to work harder to retain traffic. Rather than charge for how long a post remains online, pay-per-click plays a larger role in their business models. That, too, incites job boards to create simple, effective user experiences.

On another level, the evolution of the ATS changed many job boards from hunter-gatherers to sourcers. “There’s always been that component where if a company wants to source candidates instead of advertise jobs, they could go and look through a résumé database,” said Dickey-Chasins. “There are now job boards whose primary focus is sourcing candidates.”

As an example, he cites Hired. Founded in 2012, Hired offers seekers free profiles designed to match them with employers looking for a particular set of skills and experiences. It then screens those profiles to match a company in, say, Chicago with developers who’ve known the programming language Ruby for 10 years and previously worked at a video game studio. “They’re essentially doing what recruiters used to do, but they do it at a lower price point and in a more automated fashion,” Dickey-Chasins said.

Hired also illustrates how creating the right experience for recruiters is as important as attracting the right candidates. “We have to make sure that we have a seamless experience for the recruiter because they can’t be going to 12 different websites to look at stuff,” Sowash said. “What we need to do is integrate those platforms into whatever your core system is — if it’s an applicant tracking system like iCIMS or a CRM like SmashFly.”

Given the sophistication of today’s data-management systems and application programming interfaces, or APIs, “there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to funnel all of these vendors into one core piece of technology,” Sowash said.

The term “job board” has become a bit of a misnomer. For instance, Indeed describes itself as an aggregator that compiles jobs from a number of sources. BioSpace, which focuses on the life sciences industry, says it’s “a digital hub for news and careers.” LinkedIn is “an online professional network.”

These and other companies offer services designed to streamline their customers’ talent acquisition process, or at least portions of it. Such features include diversity products, job-advertising packages, employer-branding packages and other features that get folded into annual subscriptions, Dickey-Chasins said. LinkedIn Group Product Manager Kevin Chuang said his company is testing a short-form skills assessment to help it uncover more accurate matches.

Rise of the Lifestyle Platforms

Among the most fundamental drivers impacting the job boards’ landscape is the ever-changing dynamics of technology products, experts say. When sites like Monster.com first appeared in the mid-1990s, not only did the ATS not exist but the mobile phone was still a large plastic brick and the internet had yet to squash America Online.

Today’s world looks a lot different: Smartphones are ubiquitous, Amazon’s Alexa looks up recipes on command and Google’s Nest manages temperatures and monitors for smoke in homes around the world. Because of this, features like convenience, ease of use, speed and mobility count toward a job board’s success more than they ever have before. In particular, improved usability has become critical as candidates — who are essentially consumers — have come to expect simpler, slicker user experiences, Sowash said.

Advancing technology also spurred the rise of what Sowash calls “lifestyle platforms” — sites like Google and Facebook that fundamentally changed the way consumers regard online communications. “As soon as we roll over in the morning, we jump into them,” he said. Job boards can’t make the same claim because consumers “aren’t looking for a job every single day of their life.”

Job boards, then, must look for ways to leverage both consumer technology and lifestyle platforms.

“If you’re a job board today, you have to realize that people aren’t waking up in the morning thinking, ‘I’ve got to go to Indeed or I have to go to whatever your brand name is,’ ” Sowash said. “They’re thinking, ‘I have to go to Google, I have to go to LinkedIn.’ ” As a result, job boards “really have to think much smarter than they ever, ever had to before.”

For the industry’s big names — like Indeed, LinkedIn and IT-focused Dice — that’s meant building suites of talent acquisition tools, facilitating messaging between candidates and recruiters and aggressively developing AI-based search mechanisms and data-visualization features. At the same time, a number of startups are at work trying to solve different talent-acquisition pain points of specific industries.

Not only that, said Chuang, but the process of job searching has become more social and thus more personal. Social networks, for example, allow candidates to connect with workers at prospective employers or ask for referrals. “The job post itself has become one step in the overarching process of the job search,” he said.

“Job boards that are still exclusively focused on job postings and a singular product versus a [fuller] solution are the ones that are really struggling right now,” said BioSpace CEO Joshua Goodwin. “They’re not experiencing the uplift that we’re seeing from this labor market because of a very simple business principle: It’s about really understanding your customer’s pain point and their end goals. Our customers are about trying to hire the right candidates and not about trying to post an individual job posting.”

The Beauty of the Niche

With that thought in mind, niche job boards like BioSpace often focus their product development efforts to align with the behaviors and habits of their audience. Sites that serve truck drivers or skilled tradespeople tend to lean heavily on mobile-first approaches along with texting and universal application models, Dickey-Chasins said. “They try to do things like text-based assessments, to fit the way these people work,” he explained. “In certain sectors it’s super hard to find people, so you basically do whatever it takes to pull those people out.”

Goodwin agrees. “We tell clients that job postings are foundational,” he said. Besides posting open positions and publicizing them, he believes effective job boards provide solutions suites that help companies proactively identify and contact candidates on platforms they might frequent.

That’s particularly important in a job market like today’s, where the candidate pool is small and the most desirable workers are often “passive,” open to opportunities but only the right opportunities. Because those candidates don’t, to paraphrase Sowash, wake up and surf to a job board, sites must think of themselves more as what Goodwin calls “recruitment web sites” that offer “a lot more than job postings.”

On his site, that “a lot more” is content. BioSpace was founded in the late 1980s as a life-sciences media firm. Today, around 700,000 unique visitors access the site each month, mostly to read domain-related content. “They want to know about what’s happening in the industry. They may not necessarily be looking at jobs,” Goodwin said. However, BioSpace’s specialized information provides employers with a launching pad from which to reach candidates.

Successful niche boards, adds John Sumser, principal analyst for HRExaminer, succeed not because of better technology but “because they understand the niche that they’re operating in and they don’t go outside of it.” The moment they attempt to expand beyond their core market, “things fall apart because their expertise is narrow.”

October 7, 2019June 29, 2023

Google Cloud Hires McInnis-Day as New VP of HR

Brigette McInnis-Day has been named Google Cloud’s new vice president of HR.

Brigette McInnis-Day, vice president of HR, Google Cloud. — Brigette McInnis-Day, vice president of HR, Google Cloud

Bringing over 20 years’ experience, McInnis-Day previously worked as chief operations officer and head of the digital HR strategy and transformation teams at SAP Successfactors, one of the world’s largest cloud-based human capital management providers.

As COO, she defined and implemented business strategies that were needed to achieve sustainable growth and customer satisfaction across SAP Successfactors’ largest cloud organization. She was committed to establishing the right goals, culture and vision, and bringing them to life to effectively support 6,500-plus global customers.

While managing board level HR and digital transformation strategies, McInnis-Day also led global organizational change and redesign and consulted senior level executives. According to a press release from Google, she enjoys amplifying employee experiences, revamping compensation elements and stimulating people development. She is also passionate about working to build cultures that promote women and early talents in leadership, diversity and inclusion, pay equality and digital transformation, the release stated.

Aside from the workplace, McInnis-Day is also an author, speaker and contributor for several publications, including the World Economic Forum Agenda, Fortune, Forbes, HRExecutive and other innovation forums. She enjoys spending her free time with her family, and describes herself as a travel and fitness enthusiast, the press release stated.

Google Cloud is a suite of public cloud computing services offered by the search engine giant. It includes a variety of hosted services for compute, storage and application development that run on Google hardware. Google Cloud can be accessed by software developers, cloud administrators and other business IT professionals.

Also read: Taking a Page From the Gig Economy to Ease the Recruiting Process

As stated on its website, “Google Cloud is widely recognized as a global leader in delivering secure, open, intelligent, and transformative enterprise cloud platform.”

Taking on her new position at Google Cloud, McInnis-Day will continue to lead large-scale, global teams and help individuals succeed through innovation by overseeing HR with a focus on acquiring and developing talent and shaping the culture to drive business growth and transformation.

The release noted that she is looking forward to playing an active role among the growing Google Cloud talent pool.

September 16, 2019June 29, 2023

Remote Employees: Out of Sight, Out of Their Minds?

Barbara Fisher recalled a time one of her remote workers traveled to Hawaii yet called in to four meetings over two days.

“I asked, ‘How are you recharging? Why did you even take your computer?’ As a remote worker, it’s an extension of what she does,” said Fisher, chief operating and people officer for digital health company Aduro Inc. who previously was a vice president for Intel Corp. working in human relations and talent management.

“The reality is that weighs on you. You’re never able to refuel.”

Remote work has become the new normal for companies responding to workers’ desire for flexibility. In its “State of the American Workplace” report, Gallup polling found 43 percent of employees worked remotely in 2016 compared to 39 percent in 2012.

In its 2019 “Employee Benefits” report on leave and flexible working released in June, the Society for Human Resource Management noted that remote work continues to rise in popularity as a benefit. Telecommuting of all types is increasing as a result. Part-time telecommuting — now offered by more than 40 percent of organizations — is up 5 percent from 2018 and demonstrated the greatest increase.

Ad-hoc telecommuting is offered by 69 percent of organizations while full-time telecommuting is offered by more than one-quarter of organizations, SHRM reports.

“From a remote worker’s perspective, some of the positive aspects are flexible job schedules, work-life balance and the freedom to work from almost anywhere,” said Tina Garrell, director of the annual HR Florida Conference for the HR Florida State Council, a SHRM affiliate.

For companies, it means extending a footprint beyond its headquarters, saving on office space costs and keeping employees happy.

“But employers are sometimes faced with different challenges arising with their remote workforce, such as the health and well-being of those employees who do not come to the office every day,” said Garrell.

Studies show remote workers struggle with loneliness, isolation, an inability to unplug and ongoing distractions.

“Global Work Connectivity,” a recent study commissioned by Virgin Pulse and HR advisory and research firm Future Workplace, concludes many remote workers feel isolated.

“While remote workers gain freedom and flexibility, the study found they are disengaged and less likely to want a long-term career with their company because of their lack of human contact,” said Dan Schawbel, a partner with Future Workplace.

The survey of more than 2,000 managers and employees in 10 countries found almost half of an employee’s day is spent using technology to communicate. Slightly more than half always or very often feel lonely as a result.

Men, introverts and younger generations indicated a greater need for work companionship. Leaders can support employee relationships by encouraging connection in person over online, researchers said.

“Remote workers in some organizations are among the most stressed, which can seem counterintuitive. The perception is they have more time and are free from office politics, getting dressed up and commuting,” said Mary Marzec, senior health strategy scientist for Virgin Pulse, a part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group that designs technology cultivating positive employee lifestyle habits.

With most employees’ waking hours spent on work, the work culture has a significant influence on adopting and sustaining healthy habits, Marzec said. While technology has paved the way for more employees to work remotely, it also has contributed to that sense of isolation, leading to mental and physical health challenges.

“Technology has created the illusion that workers are connected when in reality they feel isolated, lonely, disengaged and less committed to their organizations when overusing or misusing it,” said Schawbel, who also authored “Back to Human: How Great Leaders Create Connection in the Age of Isolation.”

“Most remote workers have the flexibility to work in different areas — a coffee shop or the beach — and they still choose to work at home,” said Fisher. “The convergence of work and home into one space underlies the struggle to unplug.

“You have to be able to recharge. Not doing it definitely weighs on an individual’s health and how they show up.”

Remote workers can feel left out of key decisions, leading to stress, frustration and unhappiness, said Fisher.

Distractions are another challenge.

One of Fisher’s employees who asked to work remotely later expressed frustration that home tasks were distracting her from work.

“When you are a remote worker, it actually is more work because you have to think about how you balance your time to get things done and make sure you’re still connected,” said Fisher.

That necessitates discipline in meeting work milestones and personal goals, she added.

Air in the at-Home Schedule?

The perception that remote workers have more time at home to take care of family responsibilities essentially is false, said Marzec.

“Drawing boundaries can be very difficult,” she added. “If somebody sends you an email, there is internal pressure to answer that right away to show you’re working. Somebody in the office can be in a meeting for two hours, go to lunch, and even stop at the bank on the way back. A remote worker doesn’t feel that freedom.”

Lack of face time with team members is another challenge.

“You can’t just stop over to somebody’s desk or bump into someone in the hall and ask them if they’ve followed up,” Marzec said. “Emails and communications have to be constructed much more clearly because you’re not there to back it up in person. Communication can start a downstream spiral of lack of productivity.”

Remote workers don’t have the feeling of support one gets by standing around the office water cooler and soliciting ideas on how to deal with professional and personal struggles, Marzec added.

Feelings of isolation and lack of social support are linked to anxiety and depression, she added.

“Even though you think remote workers are not working longer hours, often that sense of being present at work is on their mind and can contribute to depression and anxiety,” she added.

Remote workers also don’t feel they have the freedom to work out or take a walk, said Marzec.

“When you work remotely, you’re not getting in the extra energy like walking from a parking lot to work,” said Marzec. “Someone who works remotely could have as few as 1,500 steps in a day. Whereas in normal workday walking, you’re going to put in 5,000 to 6,000 steps. It isn’t the 10,000 recommended steps, but it’s a lot more than 1,500.”

Health implications depend one’s go-to for dealing with stress when working alone and not able to walk over to peers to get advice on how to move a project forward, said Fisher.

“Whatever your vice is to manage stress is where you’re going to go. That’s just human nature. When you’re alone, going to that vice is likely easier than when you’re in an office where you can reach out quickly to the person sitting in the cube next to you, tell them you’re having a rough day and try to figure the problem out.”

Companies have a responsibility to take care of the workforce and remote workers have to put themselves out on the radar more, said Fisher. That entails remote worker access to wellness initiatives.

“Part of that responsibility if you decide to have a blended workforce is figuring out how what you offer at your headquarters is also what you offer to your extension sites as well as to your remote workers,” Fisher said.

While remote workers may not be able to access the gym at company headquarters or enjoy a healthy lunch at the in-house cafeteria, inclusive team challenges such as walking or drinking enough water “are a lot of fun and help everybody feel included no matter where they work,” said Marzec.

Technology makes implementing wellness programs for remote workers easier, said Garrell.

“These programs offer a variety of options both remote employees and employees who physically come to the office can participate in,” she said. “An example of a program that would work well for a remote workforce is providing partial or full reimbursement for various fitness activities in which they choose to participate.”

That can include sports leagues, gym memberships, yoga classes and other activities available in the remote worker’s area that keeps the employee active and engaged. By allowing them to choose activities in which they are interested, it helps ensure higher participation rates and long-term engagement, said Garrell.

Brian Rhonemus, CEO of Sanford Rose Associates — Rhonemus Group, said he encourages everyone on the recruiting firm’s remote team to manage distractions by being as disciplined in their work hours as they would if they physically drove to an office with a more structured schedule.

Rhonemus also said some of his company’s remote workers use stand-up treadmill desks to address the struggle with scheduling fitness time.

“We also schedule blocks of time out of the office to meet people face-to-face to fulfill the need for social interaction,” he said. “We encourage participation in coaching and other outside activities and allow time for that away from the office. We share our personal and professional success in our weekly update call.”

Joey Frasier, CEO of Shortlist, a San Francisco-based freelancer-management platform, suggested that hosting events in remote locations can ensure remote workers feel connected to the office community.

“We constantly remain in contact with our remote staff to make sure they are happy and have all of the support they need,” he said.

Frasier said his company helps its customers manage about 70,000 workers, nearly all of whom are remote.

“Remote workers are encouraged to participate in wellness programs in their areas or online using apps like Calm or MoveWith. HR managers also can provide access to places like One Medical, which provides wellness and mindfulness services.”

Management support is critical. A manager can discuss with a remote employee how to set up their work schedule in such a way they can block off time to engage in physical exercise, said Marzec.

“It relieves that pressure that if I take a walk and don’t answer that email within an hour, I’m not going to be punished for it,” she added.

Virtual Teamwork

Garrell said she ensures that the three remote workers in her business are included in as many office activities as possible through daily sales team conference calls, video conferencing training programs and a group messaging chat program to communicate with management throughout the day.

“This helps make them feel like they are truly a part of our organization as well as having a positive impact on their mental health, productivity and overall wellness,” she said.

Fostering a strong work culture that helps remote workers feel supported can be done through team-building activities, social events and workstations where workers can get to know each other on a personal level, said Schawbel.

An investment in the remote workforce yields positive returns.

“When you give greater autonomy, flexibility, responsibility but also greater support for employees, they feel it,” said Fisher. “We talk a lot about ‘I want to have a loyal employee who doesn’t want to leave.’ It’s a balance. The company needs to show how invested they are in the person and the person shows how invested they are into the company based on that relationship between the two of them.

“There is so much research that employees are looking to be heard and valued. When an employee feels that, they’re able to reach full potential because they’re being challenged and rewarded in ways that inspire and motivate them. The impact to productivity and the bottom line starts to improve.”

When a company addresses physical and mental health challenges faced by its remote workers, those workers stay committed, Marzec said.

“The manager doesn’t have to replace that talent,” she added. “Many times, companies focus on health care costs when it comes to health and well-being and overlook the important factor of employee satisfaction and intention to leave the company.

“Once somebody leaves, that impacts other people on that team who now need to work more to fill the gap of the person who left. The manager needs to put in time to hire somebody else. The training may take up to a year before a new person is really folded into the organization. In some cases, knowledge is lost when somebody leaves and we have a very knowledge-based economy. There can be client loss. Protecting against unwanted turnover is an important goal of health and wellness programs.”

July 16, 2019June 29, 2023

Playing the Game of Baby Boomer Bingo

It’s no secret that the retirement of baby boomers is contributing to a shortage of workers.

Recent reports show that the United States is predicted to see a 38 percent increase in the over-65 population between 2015 and 2025, while the U.S. population of those between ages 18 and 64 is only expected to rise by 3 percent. Baby boomers are estimated to comprise 15 percent of the total global population, according to a resource on website employmentcounselor.net.

Around the world, employers are trying to retain these tenured resources with creative incentives. Some countries are increasing wages, and others are increasing retirement ages.

At the same time, companies are finding that the work styles of baby boomers are changing. After long careers spent largely working as traditional, full-time employees, many in this generation are shying away from retirement and are instead looking for smaller, more flexible work as contractors or consultants. In a tight labor market, this shift can be a significant opportunity for employers desiring the deep level of subject matter expertise, hard and soft skills, and management experience that boomers carry.

Boomers’ preference to continue working can be a big win for any company. To keep this generation in the workforce, however, companies will have to embrace several basic approaches to improve worker engagement. These approaches include creating flexible schedules and engagement models, partnering with senior workers in their career progression, and empowering senior workers with technology.

Embrace Flexibility

As baby boomers find their own balance between easing into retirement and staying productive, employers can aid the transition by providing flexible work options and alternative engagement models. For example, consider the sales executive who looks forward to cutting the hourlong commute from her morning or evening schedule.

For the employee, retirement may be a big, drastic step, but the personal and lifestyle benefits of removing the commute, even if just a few days per week, outweigh the anxieties of not working. By engaging that worker in meaningful dialogue around her real needs and proactively offering remote work as an option, the employer can dramatically alter the equation, often resulting in the employee staying on board for several valuable years. Similarly, flexibility in scheduling may include four-day weeks or alternative hours.

Along with schedule adjustments, an open mind about engagement models is also an advantage. Talent may come in the form of consultants or contractors, allowing a more flexible engagement model.

Hiring managers need to become comfortable in looking at both traditional employees and flexible workers when considering talent needs. That level of comfort requires an environment that enables the employer to quickly and easily identify and access all available talent, including permanent employment candidates and contractors alike.

Become a Career Partner

When employing baby boomers, it is critical to partner with them in their career progression and understand what they want from the position, as well as their overall career goals. For example, they may be interested in expanding their skills.

From technology to processes and new fields of expertise, workers of all generations value learning, and employers would do well to meet their needs with appropriate resources and learning programs. Likewise, visibility into job openings across the company is also valuable to pre-retirement workers. What the boomers desire in development (or increased flexibility) may come simply in the form of a role in a different department or functional group.

Along with traditional training opportunities and job visibility, boomers can benefit greatly from the give and take of knowledge transfer among workers in the organization. Mentorships are an obvious option for knowledge sharing from pre-retirement workers to those of other generations. Less obvious, but just as important, are reverse mentorship arrangements that give pre-retirement workers a chance to learn from younger generations.

Provide Up-to-Date Technology

Employers wishing to continue working with highly skilled baby boomers should not only provide them with workplace flexibility but also enable them to do that work with easy and transparent digital interactions. While baby boomers may have lived a substantial portion of their lives before the rise of digital communication, they also have grown accustomed to the consumer experience of using applications for everything from shopping on their phone to using Facetime to connect with distant family members.

In the workplace, baby boomers can benefit from the same level of technology enablement. For example, the use of cloud-based technologies for collaboration should make workflow, documentation, feedback, and approvals on projects transparent and accessible any time, any place.

Likewise, telecommuting tools like videoconferencing are no longer new, but many organizations have not fully adopted the concept in their core business. As more boomers opt to avoid or reduce the number of days spent commuting to onsite locations, use of these tools will become more widely accepted as part of corporate cultures and more widely sought after by generations approaching retirement.

Make Workplace Accessibility a Priority

Regardless of age, employees need to believe that their employer is committed to their well-being, and removing barriers to access is an important part of that commitment.

For workers with disabilities, an employer’s commitment to improving employees’ ability to utilize physical and virtual resources can be instrumental to a positive work experience. Considering that the percentage of the U.S. population with a disability jumps from 10.6 percent for those between 18 and 64 to more than 35 percent for those over 65, according to research by the University of New Hampshire, the importance of access and accommodation for baby boomers is clear.

The most obvious example of accessibility is the corporate website. Captions with audio and video, along with visual options such as larger formats and contrasting color schemes, can help to ensure that the employer does not place unnecessary barriers to work and interaction for employees.

Many organizations can help companies assess their accessibility and provide paths for improvement. At the same time, employers should consider that accessibility often leads to a better experience for everyone and not just workers with disabilities.

Engaging Talent of All Ages

Organizations will continue to compete for valuable baby boomer talent. The competition may come from different employers, or it may come in the form of competing life choices, from full retirement to relocation. In all cases, core principles that drive great talent engagement will make the difference between employers that successfully engage baby boomers and those that miss out on the opportunity these workers present.

These commitments — being flexible, empowering their careers, and providing the right tools and technology to get work done — are more than strategies for recruiting senior workers. They are basic paths for any company to become a better employer to the people it hires and aims to retain, whatever their age and experience group. When it comes to attracting and retaining talent of any age, what’s good for people is good for business.

Keep Looking Ahead

Companies face persistent challenges in attracting, finding and retaining critical talent. They are struggling to get work done in a market where demographics are shifting, and the technology is constantly evolving.

When positioning a talent acquisition strategy to better engage the workforce, regardless of generation, an open mind for change is essential. A new solution may supplant the technology that works today for virtual work.

The model that engages pre-retirement professionals as consultants may evolve as part of a total talent approach. Amid such conditions, the leaders, today and in the future, will be the employers that continually question how work gets done, who needs to do it, and how they will go about securing that talent.

July 10, 2019June 29, 2023

Why Are Employers Testing Job Applicants for Prescription Medications?

During a pre-employment medical examination and drug screen, an applicant tests positive for Alprazolam, the generic form of Xanax (a medication commonly prescribed for anxiety), a fact she had already disclosed during the examination.

The doctor performing the medical exam and reviewing the drug screen concludes that the applicant is medically acceptable for work as an intake specialist at an inpatient mental health facility. The employer, however, has other ideas. It withdraws the job offer without providing the applicant any opportunity to discuss the results.

The applicant sues, claiming disability discrimination.

Who wins?

(a) The employer, because the ADA permits pre-employment medical examinations and drug screening, and further because there exists a nexus between the applicant ’s underlying mental impairment (anxiety) and her fitness to work at a mental health facility.

(b) The employer, because the ADA only protects physical and mental impairments, not drugs used to treat them.

(d) The applicant, because the only logical explanation for rescinding a job offer after an applicant tests positive for a prescription drug commonly used to treat anxiety is that the employer regarded the applicant as disabled.

While we may eventually find out the official answer to this puzzle (the EEOC recently filed suit alleging an ADA violation arising from these facts), if you answered (d), grab yourself a Kewpie Doll.

Still, the answer might not nearly be this cut-and-dry. The ADA is remarkably silent on the issue of testing for legally prescribed medications.

Thankfully, courts have stepped in to fill in the ADA’s omission. For example, Bates v. Dura Automotive Sys. (6th Cir. 8/26/14) [pdf].

1. Does the ADA permit an employer to test for prescription medications?

Whether the ADA permits an employer to test employees for prescription medications will hinge on whether the test is a “medical examination.” If the test is a “medical examination,” then the ADA only permits it during employment if the test is “job-related and consistent with business necessity.” According to the Court, whether the prescription-drug screen is a “medical examination” will hinge on whether the test “is designed to reveal an impairment or physical or mental health,” which examines both the employer’s reasons in using the test and the test’s typical uses and purposes.

2. Does the ADA permit an employer to require employees, after a positive test, to disclose medications to a third-party administrator?

The court concluded that there exists a huge difference between a general requirement that employees disclose a list of all prescription medications taken (possibly illegal), versus a policy that only requires the disclosure of job-restricted medications after a positive test.

How can an employer make sense of this discussion? These are difficult issues that balance an employer’s right to maintain a safe workplace against an employee’s right to medical privacy. What is an employer to do?

1. Limit testing for the use of prescription drugs to safety-sensitive positions, and then only for those medications that could pose a safety risk.
2. Do not ask employees to disclose the underlying medical condition for which they are taking the medication.
3. Be consistent in your treatment of employees who test positive.
4. Only disclose the results to those who need to know.

In conclusion, I want to focus for a moment on point No. 1 — limit testing for the use of prescription (any?) drugs to safety-sensitive positions and then only for those medications that could pose a safety risk.

Unless one is applying for a job that poses a safety risk, why are we drug testing at all? If you don’t want those who use illegal drugs to work for you, I get that.

That’s your right and your decision. But prescription drugs?

What are you hoping to learn from those tests? Unless you have a legitimate reason to hunt for medications that could impair an employee’s ability to safely perform their job, the risks of the test severely outweigh any benefits to gain.

You’ll learn a heap of protected medical information (or make assumptions based on the physical or mental impairments the drugs are used to treat). Either way, you are opening yourself up to a difficult disability-discrimination lawsuit if you rescind a job offer, as Rogers Behavioral Health in the lawsuit the EEOC recently filed.

Is this risk worth the minimal benefit?

June 1, 2019June 29, 2023

When Job Applicants Lie: Implementing Policies to Protect Your Company

A recent study revealed that 85 percent of employers have caught applicants lying on their résumés or job applications.

The most common lies involve modifying dates of employment, falsifying credentials, training or degrees, inflating prior earnings, or hiding a criminal history.

Throughout the past several years, there have been several stories of prominent executives and CEOs, across many industries, whose careers were cut short for lying on their job applications or résumés.

What should human resources professionals do when they discover that an employee has lied on their job application or résumé? How can employers avoid liabilities stemming from application falsification? What are the legal consequences for employers?

Preemptive Measures

The first step employers should take to avoid potential pitfalls is to implement a clear and uniform policy about the consequences of providing false information on an application.

For example, a brief disclaimer can be included near the signature line of the employment application, in which the applicant affirms and agrees that providing false, misleading, or incomplete information on an application, in a résumé, or during the interview process is grounds for disqualification from employment or termination if hired. The disclaimer should also expressly waive any liability for the employer if the applicant is not hired or is terminated for providing false information.

More importantly, employers should be consistent in enforcing this policy. Consistency can protect the employer from legal liabilities — and countless headaches — down the road. To accomplish this, employers should document every applicant’s receipt of the policy.

If a background investigation reveals that an applicant or employee clearly lied on his or her application, the applicant should be rejected or the employee terminated immediately. If the employer only suspects a falsification, HR should engage in a fair and impartial investigation and document its findings. Depending on the results, disciplinary action should be taken.

When assessing an applicant’s background, employers should focus on convictions and not arrest records. Otherwise, applicants may be unfairly prejudiced in the hiring process based on unsupported criminal allegations.

Conducting Pre-Employment Background Checks

Recent federal and state laws have presented hiring professionals with new compliance challenges when conducting a background screening. For example, while there are no federal laws requiring home health agencies to conduct criminal background checks or disqualify applicants from employment based on the results, there are 41 states that require these agencies to conduct criminal background checks.

Those requirements in those 41 states vary widely, including when the background check must be completed, what sources of information must be checked, which positions require background checks, and which convictions, if any, result in disqualification from employment.

The benefits of conducting criminal background checks in the hiring process often outweigh these challenges, especially in fields — such as health care or government contracting — where a failure to conduct screenings can result in hefty consequences.

While many employers may prefer to use social media to research an applicant’s background, employers should exercise caution when using an applicant’s protected characteristics (like race, religion, age or gender) as a basis for refusing employment.

Understanding the legal landscape as it relates to information an employer may request of an applicant is also key. For example, some states have laws that prohibit employers from requesting an applicant’s social media username and password. Additionally, some states have legislation referred to as “Ban the Box,” which prohibits employers from asking about criminal history on a job application.

Unforeseen Benefits of a Consistent Policy

In most cases, implementing a strong application falsification policy can result in some unexpected positive benefits. For example, many states have laws prohibiting employers from revoking job offers based on the discovery of a misdemeanor or other types of conviction with no relevance to the applicant’s suitability for the position.

Nonetheless, even though the employer cannot revoke the offer because of the conviction itself, the employee’s misrepresentation about the existence of the conviction is grounds for revocation.

For example, in a Pennsylvania case, the plaintiff only disclosed two convictions — stalking and harassment — on his application. But a background investigation revealed that he had pleaded guilty to eight additional crimes, including public drunkenness, disorderly conduct and drug crimes.

The company revoked his offer. The district court determined that the company did not violate Pennsylvania’s criminal background check statute because the termination was not for the employees’ conviction, but his lie about it. Importantly, the district court relied heavily on the company’s implementation and communication of a consistent policy forbidding applicants from lying on their applications.

In a similar vein, companies faced with discriminatory failure to hire claims have successfully argued that the later discovery of falsified job applications is a complete defense against the claims. In other words, if the company would not have hired the employee had it known of the applicant’s lie, the applicant cannot later claim that he or she was not hired because of a protected characteristic.

Here too, courts look closely at the company’s fair, equitable and consistent enforcement of its application falsification policy to establish that the company’s decision was not motivated by discriminatory intent.

Another benefit of maintaining a strong background check policy is that it can absolve or limit the company of liabilities down the road if the employee is terminated. Oftentimes, in the course of litigation over wrongful termination or discrimination claims, exhaustive background checks into the plaintiff reveal criminal histories previously unknown.

While an employer may still be on the hook for some damages if the decision to terminate was indeed discriminatory, the Supreme Court has held that a reward of back pay can be cut off completely — and the plaintiff’s potential damages significantly limited — if the employee’s wrongdoing was so severe that the company would have terminated the employee in any event if it had been uncovered. As a result, employers can potentially limit their exposure to liability in later wrongful termination claims by consistently enforcing a no-tolerance policy for application falsification.

While not every application falsification results in a high-profile CEO or executive separation, the problem is common across industries. HR professionals should take care to review their company’s job application process with the help of legal counsel to implement a fair and equitable policy that is compliant with state and federal regulations and train interviewers and hiring professionals of what they can and cannot ask.

The fix can be quite easy, and the benefits are great.