Employer Solutions Blog | Sage HRMS

Today’s guest post comes to us from Brandon Smith. Therapist, professor, consultant and radio host, Brandon brings an upbeat, witty approach to the challenges of workplace health and dysfunction. Brandon is the founder of theworkplacetherapist.com – a resource dedicated to eliminating dysfunction at work, improving workplace health and restoring optimism and focus in the workplace. Brandon also currently serves as faculty at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School where he teaches and researches on topics related to leadership, communication and healthy workplace dynamics.

My Work Place is Negative

I get it. The last several years have been tough. “Do more with less… there won’t be any raises this year… you are lucky to have a job… we may have to close our doors tomorrow…” Working day-in and day-out under these conditions can get to anyone. A therapist colleague told me a story that I think captures this sentiment perfectly. Several years ago he had a client who was in a highly toxic, negative and abusive relationship. No matter what he did, he couldn’t get her to change her perspective. One day he finally came to a realization. Here’s what he told her, “I’m a very healthy person. And yet, if I were in the relationship you are in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, I would be just as broken-down, lost and as negative as you are.” Workplace negativity can get to us. To that point, here was a question I received over the past week from a reader that I think sums up many of our collective feelings of frustration at the office:

Where we work, the morale is terrible. Everyone is overworked, frustrated with our demanding customers and generally burned out. As a result, we are handling stress in negative and unhealthy ways. What specific tools can we use to change the negative and unhealthy ways we are handling stress? For example, I would like to put a punching bag in the back so we can hit it as a way to vent and then hopefully go about our business a bit happier.

To feel so stressed and frustrated that the idea of hitting something sounds like the perfect cure truly says it all. And to the reader’s question, what is the right solution? Is a punching bag in the back room the answer or is it something else? While a punching bag may sufficiently empty out the negativity from our veins, it doesn’t resolve the core issue. Negativity has infected our workplaces and unless treated, no amount of punching bags are going to fix the problem.

Stomping Out Negativity At Work

Below are a few different treatment options for eliminating negativity at work. Feel free to take them in combination. Daily doses are recommended.

• Leadership needs to declare war. A critical starting place for eliminating negativity at work is for leadership to take a stand and declare all-out war against any forms of negativity at work. This can be the boss or a team decision. Regardless, those who lead need to announce that negativity is no longer welcome and they must be prepared to confront it at every turn. What does this mean? I’ve seen leaders who are serious about fighting negativity send an employee home when they become “infected.”
• Make it a game. A second treatment option is to turn the negative moments at work into positive events by reframing them. In other words, make it a game. For example, I worked with an insurance company several years ago that had developed an interesting way to combat negativity at work. During the week, customer service reps would take a beating with disgruntled customers. At the end of each week, reps would meet and share their most difficult customer interactions. Whoever had the most difficult or challenging encounter won the “crazy customer” trophy. A huge oversized trophy, the “crazy customer” trophy would live at the desk of the rep who won it until the next week when more stories were shared. Games and fun competition can take a negative event and create a more playful team experience.
• Throw out all the bad apples. Sometimes negative work environments are the product of a bad apple – an employee who is so negative he / she is poisoning everyone else. If there is a bad apple coworker in your midst, inviting them to leave is a necessary first step.

There you have it – strategies for eliminating negativity at work. Feel free to combine any of the above remedies. Take regularly and often.

Of course, if nothing else works throw up the bag in the back and wear it out. Who knows? You might find you have a future in the ring.

Technological innovations have played a crucial role in shaping the work environments of modern offices. While HR software solutions have streamlined processes and freed up resources, advances like mobile communication and video conferencing tools have enabled more workers than ever to craft their own schedules and work from outside the office while still being connected with coworkers and others every step of the way.

The trend in a mobile-enabled workforce is gaining steam among businesses in surging numbers. A recent survey by Challenger, Grey & Christmas found 80 percent of HR executives said their organization extends telecommuting options to employees in some capacity. Other findings indicate telecommuting isn’t a passing fad, but an increasingly essential aspect to a talent management strategy: 97 percent of respondents that offer telecommuting options said they had no plans to cease such benefits.

Yet for all the popularity and growing acceptance of telecommuting, such policies have become a lightning rod for controversy recently. The most notable example of this contentious issue was the refutation of work-from-home options by Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, who ordered company employees to stop telecommuting. In the process, she ignited a debate on the merits and detractors of telecommuting. Through it all, at least one insight was gleaned: Telecommuting, no matter the personal opinions of a select few, is here to stay.

As such, HR professionals and company management need to address the issue of telecommuting by developing a strategy that is aligned with talent management aspects and employee needs. Policy-making is essential to maintaining a beneficial telecommuting position, and below are a few steps to take to ensure organizations reach that goal.

Keep Data Security in Mind
While new technology has been a boon to businesses and employees, it has also been a revelation for less scrupulous individuals. The issue of privacy and data security must be a primary concern for any firm that allows telecommuting.

To ensure data security is addressed, the first step is requiring employees who use personal devices to access company and client information to lock their devices with passwords. While that may seem like a simple enough function, it’s important that firms require alphanumeric keywords to lock personal devices. Consisting of capital and lowercase letters and numerals, such passwords are the hardest to crack and are needed to safeguard private data.

It’s also important for companies to weigh the pros and cons of storing information on public cloud platforms. Such channels for data storage are susceptible to breaches, and firms may do better to store and allow access through a virtual private network with a more secure connection.

Formulate Policy so Benefits Aren’t Diluted
One common problem that businesses run into when crafting a telecommuting policy is balancing the benefits of working from home with the needs of the office. Ensuring productivity is not lessened, while still maintaining a level of freedom, is paramount to a successful policy.

To do this, it’s critical that HR decision makers do not limit the aspects of telecommuting that make it attractive to workers, like requiring employees to check in on the hour. Instead, it should be sufficient that an employee is simply available through online messaging or video conferencing if others need to get in contact.

Additionally, the inherent flexibility of telecommuting needs to be protected under the policy to have it work toward better employee engagement. Having a schedule of planned work-from-home days is neither constricting nor hurtful to the effectiveness of a policy. Rather, it keeps everybody on the same page.

Before employers can even begin to think about putting a new hire to work, it’s essential that they run an onboarding program to help newbies get acclimated to their work environment.

However, it’s crucial that businesses don’t equate onboarding with mere orientation training. While the latter provides new hires with the most basic of details on their new surroundings and job requirements, a true onboarding program accomplishes much more with an eye turned toward the long term.

An effective and refined onboarding strategy may prove to be one of the most integral factors that go into securing company success, generating a positive return on employee investment, and ensuring the workforce is knowledgeable and motivated.

The key to implementing a beneficial onboarding program lies in understanding the needs of new employees and balancing that with what the company wants to achieve through greater employee engagement and talent management. While it may seem like a banal chore to employers, with consideration of the talent gap in mind, advanced onboarding strategies have never been more important.

Components to a Successful Onboarding Program
Even though onboarding programs have evolved to become a more valuable employee engagement tool, recently, the basis for such initiatives is still drawn from fundamental introductory steps that employers have taken for ages.

These include simple actions like familiarizing new employees with coworkers and colleagues they’ll interact with on a daily basis, ensuring they have completed vital HR and employment verification documents, and raising awareness about company benefits. Creating a drop-in schedule to check in on progress during the hire’s first days, week, and month with the organization can also help.

But these are common steps to take that HR can do in its sleep; while they constitute the basic workings of an onboarding program, they do not represent the crux of a successful one. That added value lies in the strategic elements employers incorporate into their existing onboarding regimen.

For example, two guiding principles to a tactful onboarding program are folding the new employee into the corporate culture in order to foster talent development and utilizing the transition as a means to generating a return on employee investment that benefits both employee and employer in the long term.

There are several different ways in which that objective can be accomplished, like introducing the employee to the brand in an informal and educational manner. In order for employees to strengthen their brand through work, they must first know it like the back of their hand. By simply discussing brand image, integrity, profile, vision, and mission, employers can engage new hires and sufficiently immerse them in the brand and prepare them for meaningful work in the field.

New Tech Strategies Boost Onboarding Effectiveness
HR software solutions that automate payroll and other functions aren’t the only technological advancements that have spurred innovation in onboarding; increasingly, employers have turned to social media in order to welcome new hires and familiarize them with the company, its people, and its culture.

Especially considering the influx of millennial generation talent into the workforce, social media has become a primary channel for onboarding at forward-thinking organizations.

The benefits of social media-integrated onboarding structures are many. Employers and employees are afforded an interactive, personable, and casual environment in which to interact and build relationships with one another. Social media use also helps streamline processes and communications and makes new hires feel welcome and appreciated, which primes them to deliver to their fullest.

“If you want to enable those new hires to make a difference as soon as possible and fit into the culture of the company, go social: Give them the kinds of communication tools they are already using outside work,” Karie Willyerd wrote for a recent Harvard Business Review article on social and onboarding.

Onboarding Still Needs to Approach Greater Company Goals
Even though the onboarding process may be dismissed as a routine training program or taken lightly because of the honeymoonesque feel to it, in order for onboarding to be successful, it must reflect the goals and aspirations of the company.

This new and improved onboarding has become a major strength to employers, which have seen results when aligning onboarding with organizational objectives.

A recent investigation into the process of advanced onboarding published in the MIT Sloan Management Review outlined some of the ways companies can engage employees through onboarding while still focusing on the company as a whole.

For instance, connecting with employees and discussing their own identity and strengths and skills as people can benefit both employer and employee. The latter is happy because he or she feels valued as a talent asset and not a mere cog in a machine, while the former benefits from gleaning greater insight into the employee’s abilities and motivation, which can be applied in future initiatives.

Research, experience, and just about every sign there is point to a new age of onboarding wherein employers and employees are holistically more supportive and interactive. Better onboarding leads to better recruiting, retention, and return on employee investment. Advanced onboarding strategies are proven tactics, ones increasingly important to the overall success and well-being of the business and the employee.

If you’d like to learn more about the critical components needed for a successful onboarding program as well as strategies for how to implement one, register now for our webcast Employee Development Begins with Onboarding which is available for 1.00 recertification credit through the HR Certification Institute.

  Today’s guest post comes to us from Brandon Smith. Therapist, professor, consultant and radio host, Brandon brings an upbeat, witty approach to the challenges of workplace health and dysfunction. Brandon is the founder of theworkplacetherapist.com – a resource dedicated to eliminating dysfunction at work, improving workplace health and restoring optimism and focus in the workplace. Brandon also currently serves as faculty at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School where he teaches and researches on topics related to leadership, communication and healthy workplace dynamics.

Is your boss listening? Do you feel heard?

Before we start down the path of how to be heard, we need to assess the situation. How bad is it and is it the boss that’s the problem or is it you? Consider the following telltale signs that your boss is a poor listener. Any of these signs by themselves are indicative of poor listening habits, however in combination the results could be disastrous. Note how many behaviors you see from your boss.

• Your boss never asks your opinion
• You meet with your boss less than once a month
• Your boss never does what he / she agrees to doing in your conversations
• When your boss paraphrases what you said to him / her, they almost always get it wrong
• When your boss asks you a question and you answer it, they ask it again as if your answer never happened
• When you talk, your boss does any of the following: stare at you blankly, type, check their phone, simply get up and walk away
• Your boss talks and talks and talks… at you

Signs You Don’t Feel Heard

Equally important is how you experience this behavior. To what degree is this behavior affecting you, your performance and potentially your career? Note the following “costs” of having a boss that is a poor listener. The more statements you answer “yes” to, the more likely your mild frustration will turn to feelings of not being valued, cared for or seen. Deep stuff for certain.

• Your ideas go unrecognized or unacknowledged
• Your are only seen a certain way in the organization (your job / role… not what you are capable of)
• Your career progression has stalled
• You don’t think your boss cares about you

Looking in the Mirror

Now that you have assessed your boss’ listening skills as well as your own experience of being heard, there is one last question to ask yourself: Is it your boss that’s the problem or is it you? That’s a complicated question but an important one. It could be that there are things you aren’t doing to get heard and as a result you are really to blame for this dynamic. Or perhaps you are projecting historical patterns and beliefs onto your boss. In other words, do you have a life pattern of no one listening to you? As one client shared with me, “I grew up with stable but disconnected parents that never really listened to me. They never put forth the effort to get to know me as a person and what I thought. On top of that, I was the youngest of six children so my siblings never listened to what I had to say. As a result, I walk in the world doubting any one really wants to listen to what I have to say. Believe me, it has caused me more than one problem at work particularly with bosses.”

How do you tell if the problem is really you? Simple. Look around. If you co-workers have the same issue with your boss, it’s probably not you. However, if you seem to be the only one struggling with being heard by your boss, look in the mirror. The culprit may be staring right back at you.

Do you think there are some signs that I missed? Let me know via Twitter by mentioning @theWPTherapist.

Today’s job market is almost unrecognizable compared to what it was just a few years ago. The Great Recession came and went and took with it millions of jobs and left the labor market in dire straits.

Fast forward to 2013. On the back of a sustained economic recovery and steady job creation, businesses are engaging in more recruiting and hiring initiatives to spur growth and shore up human capital lost in the throes of the economic collapse.

However, despite the much improved business conditions and labor market, firms are still often perplexed and frustrated when recruiting for jobs. The number-one gripe many have with the current state of recruiting? Talent scarcity.

In a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, 66 percent of HR respondents said recruiting was challenging for them, up from the 52 percent who said the same in 2011. The talent gap was the prime culprit behind the difficulty: 48 percent said recruiting was hard because applicants did not have the right skills, while 40 percent cited a lack of job experience.

However, in trying recruiting times, the answer to the vexing talent management question is not simply throwing money at the problem, a tactic some companies might resort to.

A study conducted by consulting firm Mercer found 60 percent of organizations polled in the report said they have increased their investments in talent, yet only 24 percent believe their plans are effective and helping the company meet long-term human capital needs.

Suffice it to say, businesses in the United States have the positions that need filling but cannot find qualified enough applicants to hire. Yet that doesn’t mean such employees aren’t out there somewhere. Recruiting is not only more challenging for firms at present, but also competitive; considering the essentiality of workforce talent management, firms need to develop a solid recruiting strategy. Now that might be easier said than done, but here are three tips to help you on your way to solidifying a superior recruiting program in today’s job market:

Leave No Stone Unturned
Recruiting isn’t so much a science as it is an experience. There’s no one measure or equation that indicates this candidate is the best for the job or this other one shouldn’t be considered.

That’s why it’s important that recruiters don’t get lazy when vetting and analyzing job applicants. Shutting the book on an applicant based on a resumé or job history before he or she even gets a chance to interview—and perhaps demonstrate personality characteristics the business values or make a particular skill known that was not documented on his CV—is a losing strategy for everyone.

Salary history won’t convey what intangibles a candidate possesses, nor will a lousy attitude make up for exemplary resumé credentials. Talent in today’s job market is diverse, spread out, and often hiding in the places recruiters would least expect it.

Use Social Media
Social media isn’t solely used for posting cat pictures and live-tweeting a high school prom. As social media matures, so too does its application to business processes, especially recruiting. The research done on candidates has transitioned into the socialsphere, and platforms like Facebook and Twitter have proved to be valuable tools for recruiters.

It’s not just the big two in the social arena that recruiters are using. Increasingly, professional social networking sites like LinkedIn have become a recruiter’s best friend.

Indeed, LinkedIn recently relaunched an offering that caters to social media-savvy recruiters, reinforcing the sentiment that technology—like HR software—is providing recruiters with modern solutions for modern recruiting problems.

Clearly Communicate With a Target
Recruiting is a two-way street, and the interactions between the recruiter and the recruited are crucial elements of the entire process. The object of recruiting people is persuading them, and without an incentive or sufficient information, those being recruited are unlikely to derive much value from the situation.

That’s why it’s important for recruiters to communicate what they are looking for in an individual, what skills they prize, what the job will require—not just in terms of duties and obligations, but time commitment and other personal considerations—and what a candidate can expect if he is hired.

It’s also becoming increasingly more important in today’s world of recruiting that the process isn’t so cut and dry, rigid, and uberprofessional with little room for maneuvering or honest communication. The recruiting itself needs to be done in an environment that encourages gainful interaction and conversation that helps each side understand the other better.

There’s a lot of attention to detail and careful planning that go into hiring decision making. And for good reason: Businesses aren’t just on the lookout to land a job applicant who satisfies requirements and interviews well. All that meticulous preparation is also undertaken to ensure employers don’t corner themselves into a bad hire.

As much as a good employee can play a part in helping the business achieve growth and better numbers, so too does a bad hire have the capacity to throw operations off track, put a drain on company resources, and create a swirling black hole of unproductivity that hampers talent management.

Indeed, bad hires can prove to be costly in a number of areas for the business, making it crucial that companies understand what they put at risk when they make a bad hire and what strategies they need to take to prevent the situation from happening.

Pocketbooks Take a Hit
The most commonly cited problem businesses have with a bad hire is the negative effect he or she can have on what matters most: the bottom line. But it goes much deeper than lost wages and wasted recruitment efforts. Talent is what powers the business, and by investing in human capital, firms can improve the prospects. Yet that investment is rendered a holistic loss for the company when it makes a bad hire, costing more than it might know.

An infographic prepared for Resoomay, an online applicant matching service, found that in a scenario in which a midlevel manager making $62,000 a year was fired 2 1/2 years ago, the business would incur bad-hire costs of $840,000 and generate a negative 298 percent return on employee investment.

As evidenced, bad hires not only cost the business in the short term by, in essence, wasting dollars spent on wages, benefits, and recruitment, but they also put the company in a perilous position moving forward because of the rotten investment a bad hire turns out to be—one that can plague the company for years to come and force it into taking action on corrective measures.

But Just What Is a Bad Hire?
Already, it’s been proven that bad hires can negatively impact business finances, but how do firms know when they have such a case on their hands? Telltale signs like disregard for the dress code may work to identify one on the surface, but there are other indicators businesses need to take note of before bad hires sabotage employee engagement strategies.

A recent CareerBuilder survey investigating the costs of a bad hire offered organizations a glimpse of what the term really means. The most commonly cited characteristic of a bad hire was poor quality of work (67 percent), which was followed by not working well with others (60 percent) and having a negative attitude (59 percent). Immediate attendance problems (54 percent) were also a theme found through responses, as were customers’ complaining about an employee and not meeting deadlines (both 44 percent).

Other Employees Negatively Affected
Not only are the harmful effects of bad hires well documented, but so is the damper they can put on officewide productivity. Recent research from recruiting firm Robert Half International found managers dedicate 17 percent of their time to coaching or guiding bad hires, a fruitless endeavor in many cases. The same research found 98 percent of managers thought bad hires sap team morale, with 35 percent responding they do so to a great extent.

So What Can You Do?
As a cautionary tale, the same CareerBuilder survey also detailed the many coinciding factors that businesses often attribute to pushing them into a bad hire including: needing to fill the job quickly (43 percent), insufficient talent intelligence (22 percent), and not following up with references (9 percent).

Oftentimes, these are circumstances that cannot be rectified overnight, or at all, but there are still a number of strategies business can employ to ward off making a bad hire, including:

• Never lose focus on quality. The key to making a beneficial hire for the entire company is bringing on an applicant who distinguished him or herself from the rest of the pool. Settling for a lower-quality candidate because the position needs to be filled is a recipe for disaster.
• Look at the intangibles. Applicants can show off their laurels and accolades on their CVs, but when it comes down to brass tacks, qualities and personality traits like work ethic and ambition are more valuable to the company and more present in good hires.
• Make it a collaborative approach. Hiring managers who operate solo are more likely to miss something that might indicate an applicant would not be a good hire. Involving HR and other departments in the hiring process can help make the hiring process more efficient.

Have you made bad hire before? If so, what do you think it cost your business? Let us know on Twitter by mentioning @SageHRMS in your tweet or by commenting on our Facebook page.

This guest blog post is courtesy of Mary Anne Osborne, SPHR, and principal of the Osborne Group. Mary Anne is a people-centric HR professional and consultant with over 25 years of HR experience in telecom, finance, manufacturing, healthcare and higher education.  Mary Anne presents monthly on our complimentary Sage Refresh and Recertify Webcast Series that are approved for 1.00 recertification credit hours toward PHR, SPHR and GPHR recertification through the HR Certification Institute.

One of the top concerns among human resources and businesses across the nation is talent management—or lack thereof—within an organization. If your company is struggling to attract and retain talent in the workplace, it may be time to reevaluate the way your human resource team is going about the recruiting process.

The Cost of a Bad Hire
A strong recruiting process is essential to help foster growth and sustainability within a business. Without a strong recruitment process in place, organizations face the consequences of a bad hire. According to a recent CareerBuilder survey, more than 40 percent of employers in the United States have made bad hiring decisions. These bad hires not only waste precious company time, but they can also cause a huge financial loss within the business. In fact, respondents to the CareerBuilder survey reported that they lost an average of $25,000 in 2012 because they selected the wrong candidate for the job.

Too often, organizations pressure the human resource team and hiring managers to find a candidate and get them into the workplace “ASAP!” Instead of trying to fill a vacancy as soon as possible, step back and take a look at the organization’s current recruitment practices.

Twenty-two percent of hiring managers from the survey said they hired a new employee even though they didn’t really get to know them well enough during the interview process. Meanwhile, 9 percent of respondents admitted that they didn’t even check a candidate’s references. Stop the cycle of a bad hire and save your company the trouble of losing time and money by reevaluating your organization’s current recruitment strategy. Here are a few ideas that bring tried-and-true recruiting practices and blend them with new, effective talent management methods to build a soundproof recruitment process that is the perfect combination of old and new methods.

Best of the Oldies
The most successful, business-savvy HR managers know that you don’t fix something that isn’t broken. In that case, these tried and true talent management practices have continued to help companies across the globe recruit the best of the best.

Start from the bottom line: In order to attract the right talent, you need to address what divisions are lacking within the company. What departments are falling behind? Are any of your employees staying late on a continuous basis because they are swamped with a work overload? These are the questions you need to ask yourself if you want to help your business grow. Aimlessly hiring employees won’t help the organization meet or exceed business goals.

Have a succession plan in mind: One of the most common mistakes companies make is that they overlook talent within the workplace. Before you start recruiting to fill a vacant midlevel or high-profile position, scan the office and asses the current workforce. This is an HR solution that can save time and money that is often wasted on trying to recruit outside of the company. Why extend your efforts if you already have the talent right under your nose?

Foster an employer culture that encourages employee engagement: During the interview process, it is likely that you’ll show a few of the final candidates around the workplace to help them gauge whether or not it’s a good fit.

New Recruiting Tactics
As organizations bring in new talent, human resource managers recognize that a return on employee investment has become increasingly difficult to maintain thanks to multiple generations working in one office. As baby boomers retire and Generation Y workers apply for their first jobs, human resources needs to assess what it is that job candidates are looking for in a place to work, what sort of benefits they value, and a way to blend these new ideas with older workplace traditions. Here are a few new practices business organizations are using to help meet the expectations of younger employees while maintaining the peace with loyal, long-term employees who are a few years from retirement.

Office Design: Cubicles and individual office spaces are becoming more obsolete in the workplace but are not completely extinct. Older generations, like the baby boomers, relate a personal office space as a means of recognition and reward for their hard work within a company, while Generation Y workers want an open-concept workspace where they can communicate openly with other coworkers. Consider combining an open floor concept in the middle of the office space to entice new employees and line the perimeter of the workplace with closed office spaces for mid- to senior-level executives and employees who have been with the company for a long period of time.

Make use of technology: Graduates entering the workforce are more technologically savvy than any generation before them. If you want to recruit top talent, your company needs to be stay on top of the latest technology trends and developments. This also means providing tools such as the latest payroll software solutions and employee self-service software. These tools help managers stay on top of employee management so they can better assess what areas of the company need to be improved.

Work-Life Balance Starts With Good Leadership

It’s the employer’s responsibility to set the stage regarding the business stance on work-life balance because the company culture begins with strong leadership, Josh Mendelsohn wrote for The Wall Street Journal. Building a good employer culture takes time and should be a frequent discussion between business leaders and human resource managers. Businesses that do not focus on their return on employee investment are likely to hit a plateau not because of the economy, but because they fail to create a sustainable employer culture, states Mendelsohn.

Before a company starts hiring, the human resource management team and other business leaders should sit down to develop an official plan to enact a formal work-life balance policy. Take the time to discuss the type of return on employee investment programs you as the employer believe will best benefit employees and help them succeed in the workplace.

Creative Work-Life Balance Policies

The first way to find out what sort of benefits would really help employees keep a better work-life balance is to ask them. As the human resource manager, make sure to emphasize that you and the employer are looking for real solutions to consider and help return on employee investment—hopefully workers will see the company is making that effort and try to come up with reasonable solutions, rather than unattainable dreams.

Some common work-life balance programs are now incorporating flexible work arrangements for their employees. The idea behind flexible work arrangements is that this type of work policy allows employees to make their own hours or schedule a compressed work week, which maintains work tasks, added the source. This type of policy gives some freedom to employees to make plans of action on their terms, with the permission or approval of the employer. These “part-time” schedules are alternative options to standard working hours.

Other employer work-life balance policies include the option to work from home or as a “mobile workforce.” This type of program may enable workers to stay home a few days a week instead of commuting to the office every day, which can increase productivity and gives employees more time to get their work done since there is no interference of a commute time. Mobile workforce policies are springing up everywhere as more employers use this as part of their work culture. “Bring your own device” (BYOD) policies, or providing employees with company mobile technologies such as smartphones, tablets, or laptops helps workers stay connected with coworkers, managers, and the business if travel is a big part of the job description.

Managing the Work-Life Balance Policy Risks

Having a work-life policy or program in place comes with a certain amount of risk for any organization. A mobile workforce can make it difficult for human resources to manage and measure employee performance. According to Mendelsohn, employers need to have faith in their workers as new members join the company—building an acceptance and trust is the key to a successful work-life balance program, he wrote.

Human resource management system (HRMS) solutions can help HR personnel stay on top of employee management. These systems are useful tools for state and federal payroll compliance and can help HR managers navigate through the FMLA and ADA regulations in conjunction with the employer work-life balance policies.

One of the reasons businesses employ a human resource management team is to help organizations stay on top of employee management issues. Although companies do their best to avoid problems in the workplace, conflicts are bound to arise sooner or later between coworkers, which is why managers fear the day when an employee voices concern about an issue. The conversation to follow needs to be handled in the most professional means possible to come up with an effective solution that will take care of the employee complaint. There are several steps managers can use to create an effective HR solution for handling issues and keeping the peace in the workplace.

Handling the Request to Talk
Sometimes, an employee’s request comes at a time when you really don’t have a minute to spare. If this is the case, don’t immediately dismiss him or go into defense mode—it’s your responsibility as the human resource manager to have a positive, open-door policy so employees come to you with problems and concerns rather than letting them fester in the workplace. Show that you take your employee’s request seriously by designating a specific time within the next 24 hours to discuss his concern, Business and Legal Resources advises. This is an effective way to show that the organization as a whole is interested in a good return on employee investment and that you as the human resource manager value the fact that the worker came directly to you to discuss an issue you may not have been aware of.

HR as the Unbiased Party
It can be very easy for a manager to take sides depending on who is issuing the complaint and who the accused party is. Some employees will work any angle to advance their personal agendas and get ahead in the workplace, while other employees are generally interested in looking out for the company’s best interests. Although you may want to pass judgment right away based on your history with the employees involved, it’s important to take an unbiased stance and conduct a thorough investigation regarding the complaint about one of your staff members.

Using the Facts to Employ an Effective HR Solution
Conducting a full investigation is the best employee management strategy you can use to address the issue at hand and ensure good return on employee investment practices in the workplace. Managers can use these steps to come up with an effective HR solution to the issue at hand:

• Start your investigation by interviewing the employee filing the complaint. You need to ask questions and keep a record of your discussion. This will serve as proof that the complaint didn’t go unanswered and will be a reference point for the workplace investigation.
• Use employee performance data as a reference tool when applicable. A sufficient employee management software system should be able to record data regarding employee engagement to help get to the heart of the problem.
• Bring in the alleged offender and present him or her with the data you have acquired to open the floor. It’s important to present the information without immediately accusing the employee or placing blame. Instead of throwing accusations around, start the conversation with an observation followed by an open-ended question. This strategy helps strengthen employee engagement whereas blatantly throwing down the cold, hard facts can cause an employee to shut down, which won’t help the situation at all.
• Determine whether or not the employee who filed the complaint needs to be brought in so the two parties can engage in a conflict resolution conference. If either party is not open to peer mediation, you may need to take a different route to come up with a resolution.
• After the conflict has been addressed and a solution has been reached, HR needs to record the exchange. This documentation should include information regarding the origin of the problem, if any employee policy was violated, and what the consequence and/or solution to the issue was.

Following Up
The severity of the complaint, the evidence presented, and the consequence or solution will greatly affect the timeframe of a follow up to the initial investigation conducted by HR. It may be a good idea to conduct a follow-up interview regarding severe policy violations within two weeks—check in with both parties to get additional feedback as to how the employees are doing post investigation and what steps they have taken to make the changes discussed during the report. For a complaint that was concluded to be a misunderstanding or resulted in a first-time offense or warning, human resources should follow up within 30 days. This period allows enough time to pass where both parties can cool off. It may also yield additional information as to whether or not the offender has taken the appropriate steps to change his or her behavior.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) have come out with a revised I-9 Form for employers to use when verifying employment eligibility for new hires. The revised I-9 Form took effect March 08, 2013, and will be used from here on out in order to reduce errors and provide clearer instructions for human resource managers filing paperwork for new hires. Although some older I-9 Forms can still be processed, the new I-9 Form will become widely used starting May 7, 2013, reported the USCIS.

Establishing Credibility With Old I-9 Forms
Employers that wish to continue using old I-9 Forms until the new revisions go into sole effect need to check the lower left corner of their forms to make sure their version is still in compliance with the Federal Register, the agency noted.

In a brief posted on JD Supra Law News, Manuel Cairo of Snell & Wilmer LLP provides a list of past I-9 Forms that are no longer accepted by the government, including those papers bearing the following revision dates:

• May 1987
• November 1991
• May 2005
• November 2007
• June 2007
• June 2008
• February 2009

Cairo points out I-9 Forms that will be accepted until the cutoff on May 7, 2013, include those marked with the following dates:

• February 2009
• August 2009

Employers that have filed the proper I-9 paperwork for current employees do not need to fill out a new form, stated the USCIS.

Purpose of the I-9 Form Revisions
The revised I-9 Forms include updated information since the last major revision, which occurred in 1991, added Cairo. The updated forms were created to help organizations and human resource managers practice better employee management strategies. The new forms are an HR solution to help keep businesses in compliance with immigration laws, antidiscrimination rules and regulations, as well as payroll compliance.

Training to Learn the New I-9 Form 
In an effort to help human resource managers adjust to the new I-9 Form rules and regulations, the USCIS offers two types of training to help further an organization’s understanding regarding the revised forms. HR, managers, business owners, payroll administrators or anyone else who is interested in learning more about I-9 Form procedures can access training through webcasts on the USCIS website.

USCIS webcasts are live, interactive training sessions that allow users to interact with presenters to ask questions and engage in discussions to better understand the I-9 Form revisions. These training webcasts help increase personnel management skills and promote federal government rules and regulations regarding payroll compliance, discrimination regulations, and best hiring practices without leaving the office.

If organizations prefer that their staff attend live presentations, they can send managers, human resource managers, and any other administrative employees to conferences, meetings, and panel discussions held by the USCIS.

What Do the I-9 Revisions Include?
The revised I-9 Form is now two pages long instead of one. The form requires employees and employers to provide additional new employee information. This includes a recent hire’s foreign passport information (if applicable), telephone number, and email address. The new forms offer improved filing instructions to make the application process easier for both parties.

The I-9 Form can be submitted by mail or through electronic verification systems. The USCIS understands that organizations need time to adjust to the I-9 revisions and has provided a 60-day period to help aid the implementation process of the new forms.