Staffing Management – Page 10

February 28, 2020June 29, 2023

What is workforce management? Different departments have different ideas

time clock, workforce management, scheduling, time and attendance

The term “workforce management” may be a common term around the office, but that doesn’t mean it’s well understood.

A major challenge is that IT, HR, Finance and Business Operations — the departments that each have control over some aspect of workforce management — think about it differently. There is not a consistent definition among professionals in these groups, said Lisa Disselkamp, a managing director in Deloitte Consulting’s Human Capital Practice.

While workforce management used to be a more simple term — mostly encompassing payroll, timesheets and scheduling — now it encompasses a broader array of duties including recruiting, onboarding, training, technology and more, she said. Some of these duties are owned by HR, while others are owned by IT, finance or operations.

Now, workforce management is a business function with many stakeholders, and this can cause confusion or disorder among these departments, Disselkamp said.

Meanwhile, workforce management has also shifted from purely transactional to strategic, she said. When she talked to clients 5 to 10 years ago, conversations revolved around issues like, ‘‘I have to fix my timekeeping because payroll is not right or there are errors.”

“You were trying to fix broken processes,” she said. “Today the difference is the outcome. The outcome is ‘I’m spending too much on labor and workforce management. I need processes and I need to hold people accountable to the results the business is interested in.’ The transaction is just how I get the result,” she said. Essentially, workforce management now hinges on owning specific business outcomes versus owning processes.

Conflicts of ownership

Disselkamp explained how different departments may look at workforce management: HR looks at it from hire-to-retire and the HR functions in between like onboarding, training and scheduling. IT thinks about the platforms used to enable workforce management and think about questions like “Am I delivering good technology? Is the system performing properly? Am I assigning people access to the system?” Finance deals with costs and funding. And business operations thinks about the day-to-day tasks and how to allocate work.

Also read: Workforce management takes time and effort

Different departments can share a set of metrics to show how they’re performing rather than relying on different numbers, Disselkamp said. Shared metrics helps unify departments under the same workforce management goal.

For example, grocery stores are famous for bad schedules, she said. From the workforce management perspective, some grocery stores just don’t honor that social contract with employees who need predictability and good schedules to plan their life around.

Management can ask themselves the question, “Can I translate good schedules into financial outcomes?” Disselkamp said. And the answer is yes. This provides the HR and finance departments to work together toward a common goal, combining scheduling and finances. They can connect data like schedule scores versus turnover, which has the potential to make the case for better schedules because turnover costs a company a good amount of money.

Juggling 4 types of employees

Not only does workforce management mean different things to departments, but it also means different things for hourly/shift workers, salaried workers and contingent workers, Disselkamp said. Front line managers may struggle when they manage all three types. Their definition of workforce management might be how they, on a day-to-day basis, allocate the work that must be accomplished and by which type of worker. Does the company have the right systems in place to manage all three employee subsets? How do you allocate shifts and adjust workloads for types of workers for whom you have different legal obligations?

Further, the rise of nonhuman labor through automation, artificial intelligence and robots complicates workforce management more, Disselkamp said. Sometimes bots need system access just like human users do, and so they need their own individual “identity” to enter a system and do certain work. In situations like this, Disselkamp said, a front line manager essentially must manage four types of workers — robots included.

“I think it’s a fascinating issue, and we don’t have the leading practices yet,” Disselkamp said.

Potential solutions for modern workforce management

While labor has traditionally be thought about from a supply-and-demand perspective, now the interesting thing about workforce management is the trend of looking at it more from the perspective of the employee experience, Disselkamp said. Employees need to work a certain number of hours a week and know their schedule ahead of time so that they can plan the rest of their life around it.

A principal called “schedule equilibrium” — an employee-focused way to score workforce management from an employee’s perspective — can help with that, Disselkamp said. There are three main ideas behind schedule equilibrium: predictability, stability and adequacy of hours.

In workforce management today, companies need to honor the social contract with employees and contractors and create good schedules, she said.

“A schedule is like a purchase order for your labor, and timesheet is like an invoice. So if we think about workers like we do suppliers, we want to develop good relationships with them. And that means we have a business relationship with them where we are providing work and income and workers are providing us with their labor and availability. People want to be empowered to say when I work, how much I work [and] what I earn,” she said.

Another leading practice in workforce management is developing a workforce management office, or WMO, she said. A WMO is a department that sits high enough in the organization to have executive-level availability, and they’re in charge of tasks like what the organization’s best practices for workforce management are, what enabling technology there needs to be and which staff members will take on specific duties or responsibilities. Further, the WMO department is held accountable to certain metrics and performance outcomes, like any other department.

“Staff it with people who specialize in workforce management. That’s their job. It’s not part of their job,, it’s not something they do as part of a committee — it is their full-time day job,” she said.

Further, this could help organizations whose operations, IT, HR and Finance departments are not on the same page about workforce management.

“[It’s] being managed by all kinds of people and we don’t know what good looks like. We don’t have standards, and it’s hard to come together and agree on what should happen first and where we should spend money to improve workforce management,” Disselkamp said.

Also, a trend that has emerged in the past five to 10 years is the position of Director of Workforce Management, she said.

Daniel Smitley, director of workforce management and analytics at World Travel Holdings, has worked with the organization for five years but became its first director of workforce management only three years ago. Prior to that, the highest person in the organization with “workforce management” in their title was a manager.

Smitley’s team is responsible for scheduling call center agents and forecasting calls, he said. They also manage agents’ time off and any reporting associated with that, and their team is directly invested in the finances behind the schedules.

Similar to Disselkamp’s “schedule equilibrium” solution, employee experience is a consideration for World Travel Holdings’ workforce management team when it creates schedules, Smitley said. The call center environment can be rigid, and he wants it to be more relaxed for these employees. Depending on the season, there are about 700 call center employees, most of whom are hourly, he added.

“Work-life balance is my passion, and as the director of workforce management, I make sure that’s a key lens that my team looks through,” he said. “We’ve always cared about our agent experience, and we’ve continued to progress toward giving them more autonomy and empowerment to create their own schedules.”

February 21, 2020June 29, 2023

Effective onboarding can be done on a budget

Design Interactive, Inc.’s Cheryl Strizelka.

Creating an effective onboarding process is vital when it comes to employee engagement and retention. While it may seem tedious and time consuming, there are many ways to implement a successful onboarding program without breaking the bank.

The onboarding process should be well-thought-out and not done on a whim. Keeping in mind the new employee and the nerves that come with starting a new job goes a long way.

Cheryl Strizelka, director of human resources at technology company Design Interactive, Inc., said that it is essential to consider the little things. New hires should be equipped with all the tools and information they need to easily transition into their new position. This includes everything from the smallest details like providing pens and notepads to the bigger priorities like making sure they have a dedicated person to guide them through their transition.

Giving a facility tour early on in the process and providing the new hire with several points of contact in case they have questions also helps make them feel more at home as quickly as possible. “These intangible considerations don’t cost a penny, yet make a huge difference,” Strizelka said.

Also read: How to create a formal onboarding program

One of the most vital parts of onboarding is introducing the new employee to their team. It’s also common for managers to take their new employees to lunch or for the company to host a breakfast on their first day to get to know the new hire better. “Those things cost money, but you wouldn’t believe how much it changes somebody’s first day and their first week because they’ve met everybody,” Strizelka said. “You want to get them integrated as quickly as possible, creating some familiarity so they feel like they’re a part of the company, even if it’s early.”

There are also crucial conversations to have with new employees that give them a sense of what their role’s purpose is in the company, as well as what workplace culture is like.

“New employees should know almost immediately how their role directly impacts the company’s vision and mission,” Strizelka said. “It’s also important that they understand how they will interface with colleagues that aren’t in their immediate circle.”

One invaluable gift that Strizelka advises all organizations to take advantage of is employee feedback. Asking employees who have recently started their positions to look back at their onboarding experience and give input on what was good and what needed improvement can be helpful. “I see a lot of HR professionals who get offended by that. They take it personally,” Strizelka said. “But when it comes down to it, that’s a gift they’re giving you. They’re giving you your next hack for your next onboarding.”

Also read: Constant connection is key to engagement of a global workforce

An onboarding program is usually owned by both the operations and HR teams within an organization. Strizelka said. While it’s common for these teams to feel like they’re going head-to-head, it is important for both to continuously work hand-in-hand, since this process exceeds much longer than just an employee’s first day or week.

“Sometimes we find ourselves performing onboarding activities well into the first year of employment, and the [operations] team plays a huge role in this if executed successfully,” Strizelka said.

Churning people through the onboarding process just to check off all the boxes and get it over with quickly will only hurt the organization in the long run as high turnover rates are extremely costly, Strizelka said. It is essential to think about each person as an individual when going through this process and not just something to check off of a list.“The most expensive part of onboarding is doing it wrong,” she said.

An effective onboarding program will protect the company’s investment in new employees and help create engaged and motivated team members, ultimately boosting employee retention, she said.

“The onboarding experience for an employee sets the tone for an entire employment experience,” she said. “It may be cliche, but it’s true — you never get a second chance to make a first impression.”

February 20, 2020June 29, 2023

How to create a formal onboarding program

Brad’s Deals didn’t always have a formal onboarding program. New hires would have meetings with the hiring manager and HR, but there was something lacking that could improve the employee experience, said Jessica Adams, vice president of people at Brad’s Deals and 2018 Workforce Game Changer.

“You spend a lot of time trying to find the right fit for your organization in a really competitive recruiting environment,” she said. “So you need to work to make [new hires] feel welcome and incorporated as a team member as soon as possible.”

Employee engagement starts at the beginning of the recruitment process and continues through onboarding, said Jennifer Duff, co-founder of Totem Consulting, which has built many onboarding programs for its clients. These experiences that happen early on set the stage for the way in which employees will engage with the organization moving forward.

New hires partly assess their new job by asking themselves if working at this company was really what they were promised during the recruiting process, Duff said. This is why employees should think more broadly about onboarding, past the basic HR tasks like signing forms. Consider “whatever you want your employee experience to look like as an organization and your employer brand, and then weave that into your onboarding,” she said.

If employees are sold on a company through the recruiting process and then their onboarding experience does not live up to their expectations, there may be some negative impacts for employers, she said. Employers may see high attrition rates because new employees leave after a few months.

To avoid this, employers have the power in those first few months to shape a new hire’s employee experience during onboarding rather than letting other parties set the tone.

“If you’re not managing that conversation up front and if you’re not owning that conversation, that conversation will get owned through water cooler conversation, and that can undermine what the employer is trying to do in terms of the employer brand or the employee experience they’re trying to create,” she said.

Your Onboarding Timeline

Brad’s Deals’ onboarding process has changed over the years through a process that allows for actionable feedback and constant improvement.

Also read: 5 easy onboarding strategies for small businesses

Before a new hire starts, they receive at least three phone calls or emails from HR about how excited the team is to have them on staff, what time they should come in and how to dress on their first day, Adams said. Meanwhile, before the employee’s start date, the head of each of the organization’s eight departments sit down and decide, based on the role of the new hire, the most important people they should meet in each department during their first, second and third weeks.

The questions people have in their first week versus the end of the first month are very different, Adams said. While they tend to have more general questions at first, the longer they’re at the organization, the more focused their questions are based on what they’ve observed about their job or around the office. This is why meeting with people from each department on a weekly basis is valuable.

Jessica Adams, Brad’s Deals

In addition to these meetings, Brad’s Deals does check-ins with new hires after week one, week two and week four through online surveys. Questions include: How are you doing? Who have you met? How else can we support you? And, what questions do you still have?

New hires also have face-to-face meetings with their manager after three months and after one year, Adams said.

“Traditional literature says that someone is considered a new hire for three months, but I think there is also some benefit to looking at someone as a new hire for their first year,” she said. “Every company has their busy season, [and] they have their slower season. You want to give that new hire the opportunity to experience the entire cycle your organization goes through each year.”

Brighid Courtney, client leader at Wellable and a WELCOA Institute faculty member, built Wellable’s first onboarding packet and procedure, and she also included a well thought-out timeline.

In their first two weeks, Wellable’s new hires have “highlighted meetings for the day” in which they meet with the different departments and learn about what they do and how they contribute to the overall goals of the company.

Then, the new employees receive a task for the day, based on these meetings. For example, a new project management hire meets with the customer support team one day. They may sit in with support employees and learn about some of the user issues people have with a type of software. Then, their task would be to answer some user tickets to help them further understand the user experience.

Also read: Onboarding tips HR leaders can adopt from the first day of school

“As you’re looking to build a collaborative environment, it’s important for people coming in to be able to build those relationships early on to make sure they can always go there for help or for resources,” Courtney said.

The company also makes sure to space out these meetings and tasks so that the employee is not overwhelmed with new information, she added.

Value of Constructive Feedback

While employee feedback is valuable to any process, it’s especially important when an organization is starting something new, Courtney said. There’s room for growth, and tweaking anything that needs improvement will help the program grow in the right direction.

Brad’s deals uses its regular new hire check-ins both to make sure the employee has their questions answered and to get feedback on where there’s room for improvement in the onboarding process, Adams said. But the company also uses feedback from candidates who did not receive job offers to make improvements.

“Getting feedback from people who were not hired is valuable to us to ensure that we are being clear, authentic, and realistic about the projects and the opportunities and our expectations of someone in the role,” she said.

One time, the company received feedback that a candidate had to wait 15 minutes for their second interviewer to come into the room. Learning this, Brad’s Deals was able to ensure that they could improve the process and not make any candidate have to wait anymore.

“Onboarding is so greatly impacted by the preboarding phase and the recruiting phase that you really have to keep it in mind before someone’s even walked through the door of your organization,” Adams said.

Big Picture Guidance for Employers

While this process may seem overwhelming to employers who are creating their first formal onboarding program, Duff recommends that organizations try not to take on too much, overextend themselves and underdeliver. The best thing an organization can do is create small improvements consistently and iteratively over time, she said.

Practically, how this might pan out is that once every month, the organization makes one change in the onboarding process. That might mean something as manageable as starting to have the CEO send a welcome email or regularly send a simple pulse survey.

“People get daunted easily by overhauling a program, and I try to encourage my clients to look at it through small impactful changes, because it gets people used to seeing [that] small things can be done, and you can implement feedback quickly,” she said. “It’s about building small wins.”

Creating a flexible timeline is one of the most important parts of making a formal onboarding program, Courtney said.

“For anyone with a limited budget, time is such a valuable resource,” she said. Organizations must make sure they give new hires enough time to work on the tasks they need to complete. It also helps if there is room built in their schedule to make adjustments and change the timeline, if necessary.

She suggests that employers carefully plan out that first month with flexibility in mind and come up with the most vital objective and goals for new hires to reach in that time frame.

Using consistency to help with retention and attrition rates is a major part of Brad’s Deals overall strategy, Adams said. Their process in which new hires meet with people in every department ensures that every new employee has the same meetings that last the same amount of time and gets the same information. The importance of consistency starts well before these meetings, though.

“If we’re not level-setting with someone during their interviewing process, they’re going to be surprised or they’re not going to be happy when they get here,” she said.

And as HR professionals, we know the worst thing is for an employee to be surprised about what they’re experiencing or the message they’re getting.”

February 18, 2020June 29, 2023

Workforce time clocks keep punching away. Thanks, Coldplay

My stove and kitchen radio decided to simultaneously conduct a household appliance assault, which triggered a mini-obsession with clocks.

When I set the timer on my stove, the time of day on the clock disappeared, which for some reason bothered me to no end. Already irritated, the annoying Coldplay song “Clocks” blared from the radio.

Nice. Now I don’t know what time it is, and I have earworm like “It’s a Small World” or “Viva la Vida” (ugh; Coldplay again), bobbling around my noggin. But then, would “Rock Around the Clock” have changed anything? Jim Croce crooning “Time in a Bottle”? Maybe it was just my time. Or that time of day. Whenever, wherever, I guess.

Unfortunately my fixation carried over to the next morning.

As I walked past a city water department crew hovering over a trench laying a water main, my time-sensitive brain set me pondering: Do these guys queue up at the crack of dawn, pull their paper time card off of a wall-bound time card rack, punch in on an old-fashioned workforce time clock and then pop it back in the rack before trudging out to a company rig and rambling off to the job site?

As I scurried to catch the train I drifted back to a time when I punched in and out on a workforce time clock for my dad as a plumber’s apprentice and again two summers later on his buddy’s road construction crew.

I got to wondering … what companies still use time clocks? After all, we are in an age where technology makes clocking in and out just an app away on our phones. So naturally, to satisfy my clock-obsessed curiosity, I googled time clocks.

Also read: Solving the concern over clean time clocks with a mobile solution

Do workforce time clocks still exist? Boy howdy, do they!

I was pleased to discover that there are several companies that still manufacture and sell the old-style workforce time clocks. I was particularly taken by the story behind Lathem Time Corp. The Atlanta-based manufacturer recently celebrated its 100th anniversary, and their company history page reads like the opening line straight out of a college class in Southern literature.

“In 1919, when George Lathem and his son, Louie P. Lathem began selling time clocks, the father and son sales team traveled by train throughout the Southeast, getting off at the whistle-stops of small towns and looking for the telltale smokestacks of local factories … .”

Which makes me want to add, “The sulphur burned their eyes as they strode toward the block-long red-brick building … ” OK, OK, snap back to 2020. Well, sort of.

Workforce time clocks — Plenty of workforce time clocks, like this one manufactured by Lathem Time Corp. in Atlanta, are still in use.

As many organizations move toward cloud-based, mobile time-and-attendance software, I asked Lance Whipple, Lathem’s vice president of sales and marketing, about the viability of using workforce time clocks of a bygone era.

Whipple assured me that plenty of punch clocks are still in use.

“There are likely a couple hundred thousand Lathem punch clocks still in use daily, and many more when you add in competitive products,” Whipple said. “We’ve sold millions of time clocks to small businesses in our history.”

Punch clocks remain popular with small businesses, he added, and when you consider business needs, workforce time clocks make sense. Sure, we can romanticize their use in the farms and smoke-belching factories of yesteryear, but time clocks are simple to use and as reliable as sweet tea on a steamy Southern summer day.

“As much as we love time clocks, it’s not a sexy or exciting purchase for most small businesses,” Whipple said. “It serves a utilitarian purpose. The low cost of ownership is key in the decision making process. A small business can purchase a punch clock for a few hundred dollars, have it up and running in less than 10 minutes and it will provide many years of reliable service,” he said.

So reliable, in fact, that Lathem has heard from customers with workforce time clocks they made more than 50 years ago.

And time clocks require virtually no training, Whipple said.

“Some small businesses are reluctant to move to more complex technology until they grow to a point where manual time tracking is too much to handle easily.”

Although workforce time clocks are used in primarily blue-collar work environments, Whipple said the size of an organization typically will dictate what type of time and attendance function is in place.

“The smaller the business, the more likely they are to select a punch clock solution over a software-based system,” he said. “There will always be a need for a traditional punch clock for small business. Some aren’t ready to give up pen and paper or commit to the ongoing subscription cost of cloud solutions.”

All that being said, Whipple added that cloud-based applications provide incredible value in managing employee time and attendance.

“We are in a unique position to upgrade a traditional punch clock or older desktop software customers to these new cloud solutions as they outgrow their current product,” he said. “Our cloud-based customers that have made the transition love the access to their employee’s time and attendance data.”

Armed with my new-found knowledge of time clocks, my obsession has been quelled. Wait, time clocks. Clocks. Clocks!! Arrrrgghh, now Coldplay is stuck in my head again!

Can someone sing “It’s a Small World,” please?

February 12, 2020June 29, 2023

Ready staffing: The growing influence of RPOs

Sector-Report-RPOs-Do-More-Than-You-Think-8b38574

Since its founding in the early 2000s, recruitment process outsourcing companies have expanded their services and are now used as less of a tactical approach for ready staffing and more strategically for company growth.

With that in mind, organizations with ready staffing needs have a choice as RPOs have evolved to become much more agile.

The Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association defines RPO as “a form of business process outsourcing where an employer transfers all or part of its recruitment processes to an external provider.” RPOs essentially serve as an extension of the human resources department with solutions that organizations can customize based on their ready staffing needs and resources.

However, RPOs should not be confused with staffing agencies. Unlike staffing agencies, RPOs take ownership of the management and design of recruiting processes, are responsible for the results and they promote the client’s brand instead of their own.

Jesse Silkoff, co-founder and president of MyRoofingPal, an online marketplace for residential and commercial roofers across the United States, said that his company switched from a staffing agency to an RPO because of the lack of results.

“They filled positions, but in a way I couldn’t engage with. And once the position was filled, they collected their payment and disappeared into the ether until we needed them again,” Silkoff said in an email statement. “They offered no help beyond the things we could have honestly done ourselves.”

After switching to an RPO, Silkoff said that he felt like the company had hired their best talent. “It took about twice as long to fill positions before, and now they’re filled at a lightning fast pace by quality professionals who are interested in the future of the company,” Silkoff said. “While there might come a point where I no longer need that partnership, right now it’s been invaluable.”

The RPO industry looked much different 10 years ago as using virtual assistance to fill positions was only an emerging market. Daniel Ramsey, founder and chief executive officer of real estate virtual assistant company MyOutDesk, LLC, highlighted the evolution of RPOs as he said that today, the applicant pool is almost limitless.

“This has allowed for true global businesses and an ever increasing workforce,” Ramsey said in an email statement.

Ready staffing not only has been serving an increasing amount of small and large businesses, but has also proven to be beneficial to small businesses in particular, according to Ramsey.

“A good RPO can find the right person for every business, regardless of the position or the size of the business,” Ramsey said. “This ability has opened up so many possibilities for small businesses to afford growth they might otherwise not be able to afford due to lack of time and money to interview and research potential new hires.”

Companies should also consider the size of the RPO firm, their service structure, cultural fit and cost before deciding which RPO to partner with. Courtney Cook, vice president of RPO strategic development at management consulting company Korn Ferry, said that establishing cultural alignment and trust is critical for mutual success for both the RPO and the buyer.

“Your RPO program and the overall talent acquisition process, from high-volume recruiting to professional hires and executive search, should fit together seamlessly,” Cook said in an email statement. “Instill a rigorous and regular meeting rhythm to measure performance, bottlenecks, best practices and market insights to drive continuous improvement.”

According to Joseph Quan, co-founder and CEO of HR software company Twine Labs, RPOs are not a one-size-fits-all solution. While RPOs can bring expertise around how to set up a recruitment process, help define a plan for how to analyze recruitment efficiency, and implement technology solutions that increase efficiency, Quan also said that they cannot change the culture of the organization.

“Lack of institutional support around the importance of recruiting, lack of executive buy-in or unclear internal expectations around hiring aren’t things an RPO can solve,” Quan said in an email statement. “We often see RPOs fail due to this mismatch in expectations.”

The companies that Quan sees getting recruitment right are the ones that have “true alignment from the CEO on down that hiring is a core competitive advantage,” he said. “Hiring managers are bought in to the importance of hiring and spend a substantial amount of time on it. HR teams are forced to be data-driven, not only looking at metrics like cost per hire but analyzing every element of their recruiting funnel, optimizing for efficiency and assessing true impact metrics.”

However, for those companies that find outsourcing their ready staffing to be the most beneficial option, there must be an understanding of each others’ core values, mission and vision, said Cook. “It really depends on the unique needs of a specific company, their culture, openness to partnership and their level of talent maturity,” Cook said.

“RPOs can be a viable long-term solution for organizations if you partner with the right one,” Ramsey said. “After all, if an RPO is sending you quality employees, saving you money and understands the needs of your business, why do it yourself anymore?”

February 7, 2020June 29, 2023

Labor issues when you acquire a company with a union

Spotify recently announced that it is acquiring The Ringer, one of the most prolific and popular podcasting networks.

Spotify also indicated that it intends to hire all of The Ringer’s 90 employees, most of whom work on theringer.com, which covers sports and culture and which Spotify indicates it will keep up and running.

Last summer, 66 of those 90 employees signed union-authorization cards stating their support for the Writers Guild of America East to represent them as their collective bargaining representative. Shortly thereafter, The Ringer management voluntarily recognized the Guild as the union representative for its employees.

What does this mean for Spotify? Is it acquiring a labor union as part of its purchase of The Ringer? Like most legal questions, the answer depends on a number of factors.
The primary question relates to the structure of the deal itself. Is it a stock purchase or an asset purchase?

If it’s a stock purchase — the buyer is acquiring all of the stock of the seller — this issue is much easier to solve. In a stock purchase, the buyer stands in the place of the seller and becomes responsible for all of the seller’s obligations, including its union-related obligations and any existing collective bargaining agreements. In other words, if Spotify purchased all of the stock of The Ringer, then Spotify is almost certainly acquiring its union and related obligations.

The fact that Spotify said that it intends to hire all of The Ringer’s employees, however, makes me think this deal is an asset purchase and not a stock purchase. And in an asset purchase, these issues are much more complex.

In an asset deal, the buyer assumes some, but not necessarily all, of the seller’s union-related obligations, but only if the buyer is a “successor employer.” A buyer is deemed to be a successor employer when it continues the predecessor’s business and hires a majority of its employees from the predecessor’s union employees.

A successor-buyer must recognize and bargain with the union, but it does not necessarily adopt the predecessor’s collective bargaining agreement. Instead, the buyer is usually free to set its own initial terms and conditions of employment before bargaining in good faith to a new collective bargaining agreement (as long as the buyer does not mislead employees into believing they will be re-hired without changes to their terms and conditions of employment, which will lock the buyer into the old agreement).

What I hope you take away from today’s post is the complexity of these issues. If you are involved in the sale or purchase of a business that has unionized employees, you absolutely need to involve labor counsel in the deal so that the parties understand what union-related rights are being bought and sold.

February 6, 2020June 29, 2023

Here’s why fair-chance hiring is a benefit to employees and employers

Many American companies are missing out on employees who have the potential to transform their perspectives and increase their profits. Specifically, they’re overlooking a significant swath of the U.S. population — the 70 million Americans who have a criminal record.

This isn’t to say progress hasn’t been made to re-integrate this group back into the working world. Recently, the Fair Chance Act was signed into law by President Donald Trump as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. The law prohibits the federal government and federal contractors from asking about an applicant’s criminal history prior to the conditional offer stage.

With this recent law, the White House is joining the 35 states and over 150 cities with similar “ban the box” policies. Such “ban the box” policies help remove barriers for people with criminal records during the hiring process by delaying questions about one’s criminal history from the initial part of the hiring process.

This is a part of a larger criminal justice trend taking shape across both the public and private sectors. Many organizations and corporations, including Coca-Cola, American Airlines, Google, Facebook, and others, signed on to the Fair Chance Pledge launched by the Obama Administration.

Slack, in partnership with the Kellogg Foundation and others, launched Next Chapter, a pilot program designed to help formerly incarcerated individuals succeed in tech. Providing these opportunities to qualified candidates adds stability to workers’ lives and, by extension, helps strengthen communities. That’s a message companies want to get behind, and with good reason.

After all, fair chance hiring is built on the premise that everyone, regardless of their background, should be fairly assessed for a role they are qualified for, including those with criminal histories. Candidates that fall into this category are often eager and driven but overlooked for past infractions that may or may not have any connection to the role for which they are applying.

Fair chance hiring lowers recidivism and enables individuals with arrest or conviction records — and their families — to get back on their feet and reintegrated into society. But in my experience, it benefits employers just as much, if not more.

Take my employer, for example. At Checkr, fair chance hiring is deeply embedded into both our culture and our process, which is fulfilling to me on a personal level as a former public service attorney for the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. In terms of hard numbers, about 6 percent of our employees are fair chance, and 72 percent have moved up at Checkr or gone on to new positions elsewhere.

If fair chance hiring is something you’d also like to consider at your organization, here are a few benefits you can expect.

Develop a competitive edge through a broader talent pool. Given how tight today’s job market is — the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the current unemployment rate is hovering around 3.5% — employers can’t afford to turn away qualified applicants. And because one in three American adults has a criminal record, automatically excluding anyone in this category necessarily means that you are missing out on good people. A broader talent pool means better, stronger hires, which in turn gives you a valuable competitive advantage.

Diversify your employee base. In America, the burden of incarceration is borne disproportionately by underrepresented minorities. When companies hire from this talent pool, they’re not just bringing on racial diversity, they’re also opening their doors to people who are likely to have different abilities, education levels and economic statuses. A more diverse team means different perspectives and new ways of looking at challenges, which ultimately lead to creativity, innovation and disruption.

Get a better return on investment. Fair chance hiring practices offer a significant return on investment, both from a performance and retention perspective. In fact, a study of John Hopkins Health Systems & Hospital (which has employed hundreds of people with criminal backgrounds since 2000, making up 5 percent of their workforce) found that, over a four-year period, fair chance employees had a 43 percent higher retention rate than employees without a criminal record.

If you truly incorporate fair chance hiring as part of your corporate mission, the positive effects will astound you. Not only is it the right thing to do, but you will reap rewards far in excess of what you sow through a diversified, loyal, and passionate employee base.

January 23, 2020June 29, 2023

The use of technology in managing burnout in your hourly workforce

Social psychologist Christina Maslach, known for her pioneering research about occupational burnout in the 1970s and ’80s, spoke at a conference for medical professionals in Chicago in 2017. I was lucky enough to attend.

I think about her session every time I read or research something about burnout — which, as most everyone on LinkedIn knows, is an increasingly common subject to come across in the news.

One of her most vital yet obvious points at the 2017 conference was that while the term “occupational burnout” wasn’t coined until the late 1970s, that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist before the ’70s. People just didn’t talk about it.

Not even academia took it seriously in the 1970s. Maslach first published her seminal research on burnout in a non-academic publication, resulting in a large amount of reader feedback from employees who had experienced burnout.

While the conference session focused on burnout among medical professionals, many of Maslach’s findings also apply to a group of employees that receive much less attention than salaried medical staff: hourly shift workers. Just like academia didn’t take burnout seriously decades ago, I wonder if some organizations still have the same attitude toward this hourly, generally less-educated group of employees.

“As technology and automation advance to simplify the lives of skilled laborers, the needs of low-wage hourly workers are forgotten,” wrote WorkJam CEO Steve Kramer in a recent article. He stressed a few reasons why low-wage workers might be experiencing burnout and what their needs are. He also noted that increasing productivity expectations, no predictable hours and chronic understaffing are a few of the major reasons for hourly employee burnout.

Employers are not powerless against this burnout, though, he wrote. He suggested technology as a potential solution for managing burnout.

Some digital tools, for example, allow frontline workers to give feedback and constructive criticism to managers and higher-ups. Other tools allow employees more agency in the scheduling process. Also, digital, personal training exists that can help employees learn new skills.

Also read: Employee Burnout Is No Fairy Tale

I would like to argue that managing burnout among hourly workers is not as simple as “run to the shiny new technology.” If a manager gets anonymous feedback that they’ve created a stressful work environment, what if they’re the type of manager that wouldn’t do anything to change?

If employees express that productivity goals are unrealistic for individual employees, what if the company sees that as employee laziness rather than a valid concern? If an employee has issues with whatever digital tool is used by their manager, will company decision makers actually think about replacing it with something less problematic?

As Vox writer Emily Guendelsberger points out in her essay, “I was a fast-food worker. Let me tell you about burnout,” enhanced technology has improved the lives of many skilled, educated workers. Meanwhile, the same advancements allow employers to track worker productivity down to the second — a reality that helps create burnout in hourly workers.

In 2019, after the newspaper she worked at closed, journalist Guendelsberger decided to work three different hourly jobs (in an Amazon warehouse, at a call center, and at a McDonald’s) to see how tech was now being used and to gauge how working in these jobs had changed over the years.

Here’s one of the changes she noticed:

“When I used to do service work, we still mostly used paper time cards; you could make your case to the manager if you were late, or maybe stay a few minutes beyond your shift to make up for it. At many modern service jobs, the digital time-clock system will automatically penalize you for clocking in a minute after the start of your shift or after a break.”

This is just one example, but it shows how the lack of humanity in digital systems could potentially punish someone for being human and making a small mistake occasionally. Could there be any way for digital tools to treat employees like people and give them some leeway? Not leeway to come in 15 minutes late every other day, but to come in five minutes late every once in a while.

While I don’t doubt that technology has the potential to help any type of employee, I’d encourage company decision makers to think critically about the impact of certain technology on low-wage employees. Rather than romanticize the potential of tech, try thinking about it rationally. Ask yourself a few questions: How are my expectations impacting employees’ stress levels? Could this burnout lead to health problems in my employees? Do I expect my hourly workers to work like humans or machines? Are the hourly wages my company offers keeping up with the rising expectations of how much these people must do on a daily basis?

The modern working class of America are fast food, retail, warehousing, delivery and call center workers, as Guendelsberger noted. “These jobs are not just a source of teenage pocket money; they’re something adults are trying to survive on,” she wrote. Burned-out fast food workers might suffer physically by accidentally burning themselves or suffer mental stress from constantly putting up with rude customers.

Just like we should care that white-collar professionals and medical professionals may make mistakes due to burnout, we should care that working class employees go through the same. Burnout isn’t just an affliction of the middle or high-class employee.

January 22, 2020June 29, 2023

On-shift scheduling doesn’t have to be a headache for managers or employees

shift scheduling for hourly restaurant workers, shift swap

Most hourly employees have dealt with shift scheduling problems at one time or another.

I’ve witnessed it first-hand with my kids. After a 10-hour Saturday night shift at a restaurant slinging beer and burgers until 2 a.m., I would hear one of them quietly creep into the house. OK, they were actually pretty noisy coming in and banging around in the kitchen. As I dozed back off I just prayed that they wouldn’t fall asleep after popping a frozen pizza in the oven.

The good thing was they got home safe and sound. And the kitchen was not charred to an ember when I woke up the next morning. After that kind of a late-night shift I expected them to sleep in late.

Nope. No sleep for the weary in the restaurant biz.

Somebody had to pull themselves out of bed and work brunch at 10 a.m., and guess who was on call? Yep, my sleep-deprived, bleary-eyed child. Not just once. Or twice. This insidious sleep deprivation technique was a regular occurrence.

I mean, who is doing this on-shift scheduling? What sadistic clown is shift scheduling an employee who closed at 2 a.m. the night before to be back on the clock to pour mimosas and serve bacon and two eggs over easy at 10 a.m. that same morning? Oh, right. A restaurant owner. Or the manager, who likely is on the same scheduled shift because, well, restaurant managers are just a different breed.

I know, restaurants and hospitality exist in the fast lane — fast cash, fast life for many employees. Seriously, how many industries lavish itself with weekly industry nights?

The cruel and unusual shift scheduling was a regular occurrence back in the day when I punched a time clock as a bellman at a resort hotel in San Diego. Work the late shift until the final check-in at midnight then back in at 6 a.m. for the early checkouts.

I’ve even heard the mad scramble to find replacement workers when I’m getting a roll of quarters at the service counter of my grocery store. The manager, who is a really kind, caring woman, is frantically on the phone to staff her Saturday evening shift because so-and-so just called off sick and two others are already on vacation. (Why am I getting quarters on a Saturday evening? Don’t ask.)

Unfortunately, it seems that pretty much every hourly employee short of a union pipefitter is subject to such short-sighted shift scheduling. Want to burn out your hourly employees and watch them leave for greener pastures? Give them a day’s notice, schedule them that evening and then tell them they need to be back in bright-eyed and bushy-tailed early the next morning.

We are finally seeing a groundswell of support from many states and municipalities for predictable shift, or fair workweek legislation but any sort of federal fair workweek law is unlikely for years to come.

Come on, people! This is not complicated! Your employees have lives. You have a life. Well, unless you’re a restaurant manager. Make the shift scheduling process as painless and humane as possible. For starters:

No on-call shift scheduling. Ever. Telling employees to call in before a shift to see if they are needed and then sending them home if the shift turns out to be slow is incredibly hard-hearted. Don’t be hard-hearted.

Provide your employees with work schedules well before they are supposed to show up. Like two weeks before. Minimum 10 days. That gives them time to switch shifts should an emergency or a really good party pop up.

And you know what? Go digital. Paper-based timekeeping? Really? I know, it’s hard to break a routine that’s been in place since, oh, the Bicentennial. But seriously, check your timekeeping software options.

One thing that I constantly harp on is engagement and communication. Engage your employees through sensible, predictable shift scheduling. Your workers are happier because they’ll have a predictable life. As predictable as life can be, I guess.

And it’s not a stretch to say that a happier workforce means a more engaged workforce, which cuts down on burnout and puts the clamps on the bane of all hourly employers – turnover.

It may not prevent your kid from torching the kitchen with that forgotten frozen pizza in the oven, but they won’t be nearly as bleary-eyed the next morning, either.

January 14, 2020June 29, 2023

DOL Provides Employers Much Needed Clarity on Joint Employment

employment law, labor law, overtime records

Joint employment is a legal theory in which the operations of two employers are so intertwined that each is legally responsible for the misdeeds (and the liabilities that flow from those misdeeds) of the other. It’s also a legal theory with which federal agencies and courts have struggled over the past several years.

The struggle started at the NLRB’s broad expansion of the definition of “joint employment,” continued with OSHA, and ended with the Department of Labor, in early 2016, announcing a similar broadening of the definition for wage and hour claims.

More recently, however, more measured and business-friendly federal agencies have ratcheted back these expansions. In December 2017, the NLRB announced that it would require “actual … joint control over essential employment terms” for a finding of joint employment. A few months earlier, the DOL pulled its joint employment rules, leaving the issue in limbo in wage and hour claims.

Earlier this week the DOL announced a final rule to update the regulations interpreting the definition of joint employment under the FLSA.

According to the DOL:

In the final rule, the department provides a four-factor balancing test for determining FLSA joint employer status in situations where an employee performs work for one employer that simultaneously benefits another entity or individual. The balancing test examines whether the potential joint employer:

Hires or fires the employee;

Supervises and controls the employee’s work schedule or conditions of employment to a substantial degree;

Determines the employee’s rate and method of payment; and

Maintains the employee’s employment records.

The DOL adds that this rule “will add certainty regarding what business practices may result in joint employer status,” promote “uniformity among court decisions by providing a clearer interpretation of joint employer status,” and “improve employers’ ability to remain in compliance with the FLSA.” I cannot agree more.

This rule (available here) becomes effective on March 16, 2020.