HR Solutions Weblog

The subject of web surfing doesn’t come up weekly from our clients, it comes up daily!  What are you employees doing while they should be working?  The numbers are staggering:

• 70% of all web traffic to Internet pornography sites occurs during the work hours of 9am-5pm.
• 64% of employees say they use the Internet for personal interest during
  working hours
• 37% of workers say they surf the Web constantly at work.
• 77.7% of  U.S. companies keep tabs on employees by checking their e-mail, Internet, phone calls, computer files, or by videotaping them at work.
• 63% of companies monitor workers' Internet connections and 47% store and review employee e-mail.
• 90% of employees feel the Internet can be addictive, and 41 percent admit to personal surfing at work for more than three hours per week.
• 60% of Security Breaches occur within the Company - behind the Firewall
• 30-40% of lost productivity is accounted for by cyber-slacking.
• 32.6% of workers surf the net with no specific objective; men are twice
  as likely as women.

Can you really afford to not be monitoring your business internet and e-mail usage?

Some, and I do emphasize some, of the criteria to classify an employee as Exempt:

·      Must be paid at least $455 per week

·      Primary duty must be to perform work requiring advanced knowledge, also defined as work that is “ predominantly intellectual in character and which includes work requiring the consistent exercise of discretion and judgment

·      The advanced knowledge must be in a field of science or learning, AND it must be “customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction” typically at the college level.

Again, the criteria above are just a starting point and it is always better to err on the side that benefits the employee, i.e. classifying them as non-exempt where they would be eligible for overtime.  Do you want to ensure your employees are properly classified to meet FLSA exempt and non-exempt status, contact HR Solutions, LLC for an audit of your jobs?

RELIGIOUS ACCOMMODATION IN THE WORKPLACE – HOW MUCH AND WHEN?

How should an employer respond when a religious accommodation is requested?   HR  Solutions, LLC suggests you discuss the employee's specific bona-fide  religious needs and accommodations options with them.  We also believe it is critical to completely understand the specific religious requirements of the employee’s religion – all easy information to access via internet or a phone call.  However, employees do not have to justify or prove their religious belief to the employer; but the employer is required to accommodate – subject to undue hardship – any of the employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs. When considering potential accommodations, you should evaluate any impact an accommodation would have on your company and determine whether it fully eliminates the conflict.   Let’s review the law:

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of l964 (“Title VII”) prohibits employers from discriminating against individuals because of their religion in hiring, firing, and other terms and conditions of employment. Title VII also requires employers to reasonably accommodate the religious practices of an employee or prospective employee, unless to do so would create an undue hardship upon the employer.  This means that:

• Employers may not treat employees more or less favorably because of their religion.
• Employees cannot be required to participate—or refrain from participating—in a religious activity as a condition of employment.
• Employers must reasonably accommodate employees’ bona-fide held religious practices unless doing so would impose an undue hardship on the employer.
• Employers must take steps to prevent religious harassment of their employees.

But the burden to accommodate isn't always entirely on the employer!  A good-faith attempt to meet their religious requirements must be made by the employee within their religious guidelines first.  Note that employers aren't required to give the employee his preferred accommodation just to meet religious needs.  Often, a special request for religious accommodation is too burdensome for a small business and a reasonable “half-way” request may be all the company is capable of giving.  It is then the employee’s responsibility to be flexible as possible in a mutual good faith negotiation with the employer.  

Religious accommodations for work schedules
The most common religious accommodation conflicts occur over work schedules.  You may need to deviate from your standard scheduling practices slightly;  however, I wouldn’t do so until you have verified that this is a true bona-fide requirement of the religion.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that you need not violate a valid labor contract, force other employees to work undesirable shifts, or hire substitute or replacement workers if that accommodation would require more than a minimal monetary cost.

This past week has been an interesting one in the number of client issues all centering around the client allowing the employees to “run the show”.  Employees coming and going as they please with no regard to Business Needs, Policies and Procedures, disregard for Safety Policies, or inappropriate behavior in the workplace.  As I have talked about many times before on this blog, we come back to the question; “What Does Your Employee Handbook Say”?  It is critical for businesses to not only have a solid handbook in place but equally important to ensure that your business is enforcing those Human Resource policies consistently and regularly.  Often we find that our clients just need our guidance on either rolling out their Employee Handbooks or teaching them how to deal with disciplinary issues; other clients have HRSolutions, LLC come in and carry out all the disciplinary problems directly with the employees.  The real question for this week is:

Are you comfortable that you are recognizing and addressing employee disciplinary problems or do you need some assistance?  Did you know that unaddressed disciplinary issues can impact your business revenue by 20% or more?

Scenario:  An employee has been with you for 2 years.  In the past their work has just been so-so, but you felt it was better to have a body in the role than to start recruiting.  Lately, however, the employee’s work habits have steadily gotten worse and you want to just fire them.  You call us for assistance in this termination, here are the questions we will ask:

• What does the employee’s most recent performance review state about quality?
• What documentation do you have of subsequent conversations about performance?
• Are there employees whose performance is the same or worse than this employee?

If you do not have documentation on the above bullet points it is critical that you start to gather this data.   Documentation is the name of the game, and that is written documentation.  Even if you talk to an employee verbally you should have documentation of that conversation.  Systematically documenting poor performance, along with a solid policy on your disciplinary structure provides a solid and legal foundation for terminating a long-standing employee.

At least several times a week, we are asked questions about employees' breaks.  Every state is different, but in Maryland, there is no law that states you must give employees a break!  Yes, I said, “there is no law requiring breaks in Maryland.”  An employer who chooses to provide a break, however, does not have to pay wages for lunch periods or other breaks in excess of 20 minutes where the employee is free to leave the worksite (or workstation if leaving the workplace is physically impractical), in fact takes their lunch or break (whether freely choosing to leave or remain at the worksite), and the employee does not actually perform work.

If employees are told their pay will be reduced each day by one-half hour for lunch, and they are not free to take this lunch period without an expectation or reasonable understanding that they must work or be on hand to work, they must be paid for the time. A "reasonable understanding" that they must work or be on hand to work is a condition in which it is generally known, or the employee reasonably believes, that failure to perform work (or be available "on hand" to perform work) during their break will result in some negative effect on employment.

Consistency is the number one priority in managing your Human Resource issues!   We do strongly believe in solid employee handbooks for a reason….they are the number one foundation behind ensuring you are consistent in your HR Practices.

Here is a great example of why consistency is so important:  Consider a small business owner (less than 50 employees required for FMLA).  Employee #1, a 31-year-old white male that has been with the company for 9 months, Owner grants 12 weeks of FMLA so employee can buy a house and be home with his new baby.  Employee #2, a 63 year old female, has been with the company for 9 years puts in a two-week-in-advance request for a particular day off and is turned down by the owner because “we are too busy.”  When Employee #2 complained to the owner, we were called. 

Those of you who are our clients know what our first question was:  “What does your handbook say?”  In this case, since we wrote the handbook, I knew for a fact that this company’s policy stated:  PTO would be granted with two weeks advanced notice.  I also knew there was no policy for FMLA, as government regulations require 50 or more employees and I knew we had written a policy stating this company did not allow unpaid leaves of absence.  This employer has not set a precedent for any future unpaid personal leaves, despite what the company handbook states.  In other words, inconsistency in this case has potentially left the employer vulnerable to any employee claims that they may have been treated unfairly.

The lesson?  Being consistent with written HR policies (or at the very least, from situation to situation) will help protect your company, and help your employees know what is expected of them at all times.

What is the real cost of recruiting?  Most businesses only think in terms of the cost of running an ad.  But I’d like you to think about the following:

• Yes, there is the cost of the ads, but there are many more creative ways of recruiting than by just posting on Careerbuilder or Monster.com.
• The cost of sorting through what - in this economy - could be hundreds (even thousands) of resumes. Who on your staff is equipped to properly review and sort resumes?  What is the cost of productivity for the time spent on this process?
• Do you have an inside employee capable of doing a proper phone screen, and have you factored in their time to conduct this process?
• Can you ensure that your recruiting process does not discriminate? Discrimination charges in 2009 hiring practices totaled more than $82M.  Can you afford to make any mistakes?

All of the above is even before the candidate has walked in the door for an interview!

Then even more costs are accumulated by on-boarding costs, ramp up costs for the the employee coming up to speed, training, and administrative costs for responding to candidates not selected.

Tie in the above with the potential waste of total dollars if you don’t have the right people advertising, sorting through resumes, phone screening and ultimately in person interviewing and end up hiring the wrong person.

HR Solutions is your single source for recruiting for your high level executives, managers, supervisors or even your front-line hourly employees.  We are experts at finding the right person for the position and for the long haul.

In all business, small and large, we have to keep our eye on unnecessary loss and employee theft.  A few key areas where we see repeated theft are:

Time theft:  Employees that repeatedly come into the work area at exactly starting time, but then proceed to make coffee,  chat with co-workers, use the restroom and then eventually make it over to their work station.  We also have the issues of time spent on Facebook, the Internet, etc.  This is stealing time, and can easily be controlled through enforced policies and treating this, as it should be, a disciplinary issue.

Payroll theft: Often in small businesses one person is responsible for Payroll and there is not a solid backup and audit process.  No business should allow one person to be solely responsible for managing the payroll system without a backup audit system in place.

Office Supplies theft:  Believe it or not 67% of all employees steal office supplies! Post-it notes are the #1 item stolen by employees when it comes to office supplies.  We are not suggesting you micro-manage down to whether or not your employees are walking out the door with a Bic pen; however we are suggesting you pay attention.  Example:  Which employee orders your office supplies?  Do you ever conduct an audit or even look at the invoices as they come across your desk?  We once had a client whose Administrative Assistant was over ordering supplies, small amounts at a time, then would immediately return them and request a gift card for the credit.  As the gift cards piled up, she would trade them in for big items, such as a laptop, and then sell it on Ebay.  She did this for ten years before she was caught with a simple audit.  In the end, if your employees know you are (at a minimum) monitoring the office supplies, they are less likely to risk taking more than they need for their actual work. 

Full Product Theft: If your business produces an actual product it is very likely you have some type of theft occurring.  Often we find company owners that are making some small product that perhaps has pieces that can become something more valuable and they think “why would my employees steal these?"  If that is what you are thinking, run, don’t walk, to Ebay and do some searches on items similar to what your company makes. You will be surprised at the number of small items that are broken down for copper, stainless, etc. and are just sold in large lots to companies that manufacture something else.  

Why do employees steal?

  There are a myriad of reasons but some of the key ones are:  

• They feel the company owes them because they are not paid enough
• They are concerned about losing their job – for reasons other than stealing
• They feel the company is mismanaged and no one will notice

What can managers do to prevent theft?

• Have a solid disciplinary plan to address issues as they arise
• Monitor your workplace and processes for equipment and office supplies
• We believe in and suggest often to our clients to install Webcams in critical areas of your workplace
• Audit!  If your employees know there are random audits, they are less likely to steal

Recently we had a 40-employee client where a supervisor knew he had an employee that was bullying another employee.  The supervisor, rather than bringing it to the Manager’s attention or to us, thought he could handle it on his own by coaching the bully rather than protecting the employee being bullied.  By the time this came to someone’s attention, the victim employee had quit, was seeking legal damages and the company was negligent.  

This was a true form of harassment and should have been dealt with swiftly and specifically after the first incident. 

Questions that should have immediately been asked:

• How did the supervisor know? 
• Did he witness the harassment on a regular basis? 
• Did the victim bring it to the Supervisor’s attention? 
• Did all employees know if they brought an harassment issue to a supervisor and felt it was not resolved, they had recourse through another avenue? 
• Was there harassment training on a regular basis?

Are you comfortable identifying harassment issues?  Do you have questions that need answers for your business on all forms of harassment?  April 22, 2010 our monthly live Webinar will be on Harassment. Please join us.