What Great Managers Do Differently

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We have all had that one boss – the one who is exhausting to work for, who can never be pleased and who generally makes you hate your job even if it is something that you are passionate about. It happens to the best of us and the only thing we can all do is learn. In life, it is just as important to learn what not to do as it is to learn what to do.

We wanted to share with you a list of 5 things that great managers do differently. At Employer Solutions Plus, we are experts at hiring great people, so we know what differentiates a fantastic manager!

  1. Believe. Great managers believe in their employees. Believing in your employees means being confident in their abilities and trusting them. You know that when they make decisions they will be making the ones that are in the best interest of the company. By believing in your employees, they will believe in you as a leader.
  2. Empower. They empower their employees. Giving them the authority to act independently and grow as a leader will ensure that you succeed. It will also remove obstacles for your clients – by giving the authority to your team, you will ensure more fluidity in operations.
  3. Advance. They promote from within. You groom your employees for success and advancement. Do not see them as a threat – they go up, you go up – everyone wins. Being a manager with stagnant employee growth is a direct reflection on you!
  4. Develop. They give their employees development opportunities. Personal and professional development will help your employees grow and achieve. Identify programs that would be beneficial for them to participate in and make it happen. They will be better employees if you do!
  5. Engage. They stay engaged. Just because you have a well-oiled machine for a department doesn’t mean that you should disengage. Be involved and stay involved. Whether it is periodic check-ins or happy hours or working lunches, be present and engaged. This helps with communication and team camaraderie.

Looking to build a team of great managers? We can help you! Contact us today to find out how.

What to Say and What Not to Say During a Job Interview

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In this two part series we are going to cover the do’s and don’ts of job interview dialogue. We like to lead with our best so this first blog will cover the “do’s” before moving to the don’ts!  

These days landing an interview can be a challenge in and of itself.  Not only is the job market highly competitive but recruiter’s only see your resume if it passes through an algorithm in a software program.  This means that if you do get a seat at the table for an interview you need to bring your A-game!

So how do you make sure that your rhetoric is up to par?  First things first – do your research.  You should be able to talk about the company fluently and the market in which they operate.  Know the names of the senior leadership and any major (and current) news about the company.

Next – be authentic. Don’t spend the interview tossing around business jargon and buzzwords that you don’t normally use.  Be professional but avoid being stuffy.  People, especially recruiters, can see right through that.

Talk strategy – when you tell them what you will bring to the table, don’t just say “I have a strong work ethic.”  Give them some real, concrete ideas or examples of how you have been an innovator or a leader. 

Close the sale – an interview is essentially you selling yourself to the prospective employer.  In sales, you want to be emphatic about the next steps, the future and speak to the close.  Talk about what comes next in the process and offer follow up actions.

Want to learn more? Follow our blog each week or contact us today to learn more!

Do Job Titles Deliver Worker Satisfaction?

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Employee satisfaction is a complex dynamic that has seen a steady decline over the last 15 years. While this is not true for all employers – or even most, as a general population employees are less satisfied at work than they were a decade ago.

This is likely related to many factors – including but not limited to cultural shits, the recent recession, an increase in telecommunications and constantly being tied in to work and of course, being expected to do more for the same salary. Of course – all businesses are interested in how they can improve worker satisfaction. Happy employees always outperform unhappy employees.

Unfortunately – we are often trying to increase employee satisfaction without detracting from our bottom line as business owners. With that being said, we have asked questions like “Do job titles deliver worker satisfaction?” and while the answer wasn’t exactly what we hoped, it was promising. Our research shows that while job titles contribute to employee satisfaction, they are not solely responsible for generating happy employees.

As we previously mentioned – employee satisfaction or “ESat” is a complex dynamic that includes the following:

  • Compensation
    • Job title: Directly effects – especially in large companies where there are pay thresholds based on titles.
  • Workload
    • Job title: If you call someone an analyst but they’re also managing people, they will likely feel as though their workload is not commensurate with their job title.
  • Work Perks
    • Job title: Things like tickets, flexibility, working from home, etc. Perhaps your company has a policy that only directors can work remotely – yet your analyst regularly is stuck working in the office until 8pm simply because of a title.
  • Career Pathing
    • Job title: Building your resume – a more impressive title leads to a better career path.
  • Workplace Environment/Culture
    • Job title: Respect – titles relate to the respect that individuals can command from their peers and colleagues.

We essentially identified that an individual’s job title has a trickle effect – we have shown how job titles impact the areas listed above. Particularly important is that job titles directly relate to the respect and authority – perceived or actual – that an employee has and this DOES weigh heavily on their satisfaction. Having a job title that is correctly aligned with their responsibilities and authority is extremely important and critical to an employee’s satisfaction.

Not sure how to align your job titles with responsibilities? Do you need more information or guidance on how to manage the complex structure of Esat? Contact us today for a free consultation!

Current Employment Statistics

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At Employer Solutions Plus we know how critical it is to stay on top of current topics, statistics and reports that come out of the Department of Labor. We know that employers are also interested in this information but that navigating the reports, outputs and government speak can be exhausting and often pushed to the back of the to-do list.

Need a quick update? You’re in luck! This week we are spotlighting highlights from the latest reports on employment statistics, published May 16,2014. These reports are important as they give us insight into state-wide and national employment trends.

  • Regional and state unemployment rates were generally lower across the United States during the month of April. 43 states saw decreases, two saw increases and five had no change.
  • The national jobless rate fell to 6.3% percent, which was 1.2 percentage points lower than April of 2014.
  • Texas led the way in job growth, adding over 64,100 jobs over the month.
  • Illinois lost the most jobs month over month seeing 6,800 jobs lost.
  • The west continued to lead the way in regional unemployment, 7.0%
  • The south continued to have the lowest regional unemployment at 6.9%

Employment trends are important pieces of data for you and your business. Staying abreast of unemployment numbers on a local, regional and national level helps you understand the labor markets available to you as a business owner.

Stay tuned in to our blog for changes in the Consumer Price Index and other HR related topics! Contact our team if you have any questions.

How to Verify Education and Employment

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It has become a common employment practice to conduct background checks on potential employees. Some background checks are more extensive than others but at the most basic level, verifying education and employment are critical to ensuring you are getting what you are about to be paying for.

We wanted to share with you the process for completing these checks:

Education Verification:

Verifying an individual’s educational background may seem simple and straightforward – right? The truth is it consists of far more than just being able to pick up the phone and call their alma mater. The first step is to ensure that you obtain written consent to pursue this information from the employee. Once you have that, you will likely need to provide this to the educational institution who will likely only verify if they attended, not that they graduated, their GPA or provide a transcript. The schools are generally prohibitive from allowing individuals access to additional records or files and often charge fees for obtaining what information they are willing to provide. This can take as little as 3-5 days or weeks, depending on what you require and the policies.

Employment Verification:

Could you pick up the phone and call the references? Certainly. However if you are calling on behalf of the company as a third party vendor you are likely to get more honest and accurate information than if you call saying “I’m <Joe/Jane>’s new boss, I’d like to verify their history and references. Having a third party presents a level of trust and anonymity that is not present when you just pick up the phone yourself. It can take a significant level of effort to get people on the phone these days, taking away from valuable (and profitable) time you could be spending elsewhere.

Both processes are fairly tedious, require effort, follow up and also financial investments. And then what happens if the facts don’t check out? You have wasted all of those efforts. A simple way to circumnavigate this tedious process is to outsource it to a third party.

Employer Solutions Plus is an experienced HR solutions provider and we can help you choose the perfect partner for outsourcing employment, education and additional background verification in an efficient, effective and affordable manner. Consider us your HR “easy” button!

Contact us today for a consultation!

The Benefits of Hiring Veterans

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Do you want to hire a veteran to play your part in honoring their service? That’s awesome for so many reasons! But were you even aware of all of the business benefits? Here are just 3 of them…

  1. The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA) offers a Work Opportunity Tax Credit to those that have already employed a targeted group member (hired after Dec.31, 2011, and before Jan.1, 2014). For specific information surrounding this tax credit and the steps necessary to file, visit IRS.gov. As of February 2014 there is no new information available surrounding the extension of tax credits, but we will work to keep our clients and site visitors informed as new information is released. Contact Employer Solutions Plus at 727-698-6207 with any specific questions.
  2. The majority of veterans in the U.S. have unbelievable work ethic. As an employer, one of the most difficult challenges to overcome in hiring is determining what the worker will be like once they are hired and have already started the job. Referrals and references are only accurate if the previous employer or contact provides honest answers as you conduct your background check. Veterans know the importance of adhering to a strict schedule and performing the very best they can all of the time; the military wouldn’t have it any other way!
  3. Research and employer feedback has shown that loyalty and teamwork are among the top qualities exhibited by veterans. Veterans understand diversity more than most and understand that good communication is critical to success. Many have traveled all over the world and can speak more than one language. They easily work alongside people of all backgrounds and in addition to great communication skills, most veterans are extremely committed to the organizations they work for. This can translate into longer tenure and less turnover at your company.

Have you hired a veteran? What were the benefits your workplace experienced? To learn more about hiring, visit our “Hiring & Firing” section of the Employer Solutions Plus blog or call our team at 727-698-6207.

 

What Are Pre-verified Resumes?

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As HR or hiring managers we’ve all been there; staring at a stack of resumes and not sure where to begin. We go through a “weeding out” phase that aims to eliminate anyone that is not qualified. But then we still have a stack of candidates that need to be verified. Did they really get a master’s degree from Boston College? Does this person really have 8 years of real-world experience in IT? Do they really have a clean record? Verify all of these details for all candidates and by the time you’re done days will have gone by!

This is exactly why many companies are gravitating toward pre-verified resume services. Pre-verified service providers are third parties that certify a person’s credentials before he or she advances in the application or interviewing process.

An employer signs up for this service, and then the service provider confirms important details on the resume surrounding work history, educational background, and certifications. The candidates that “pass the test” are passed along to the employer. This not only saves employers time in the hiring process, but also prevents companies from getting too far along only to realize that certain information was fabricated or false on a candidate’s resume.

But are these services all they’re hyped up to be? It certainly depends on what type of business you are and what types of positions are available at your company. A pre-verified process by a third party is not as customized or specific as the process you may currently have in place. It’s much more black and white, whereas you may “bend the rules” every now and then if a candidate lacks a degree but makes up for it by being a great cultural fit with lots of determination and a track record of success on the job. If someone else was screening these resumes, would you ever get the chance to meet this person? Or would they disappear in the pre-verification process?

However, if you’re a staffing company that needs 60 bartenders within the next 5 days, all having a minimum of 5 years of experience, a pre-verification service may be the perfect tool for moving things along quickly!

Did you know that Employer Solutions Plus represents various types of outsourced HR solutions? Through partnerships with PEOs, HROs, and various project-based service providers, we’re able to find the perfect fit for businesses of all shapes and sizes!

Call us at 727-698-6207 if you want to learn more about solutions in hiring.

 

Social Media Screening – Is it Legal?

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We live in a very digital world today where information about anyone or anything is often very accessible. So let’s chat about that recent graduate who just applied for an entry level position at your company … As a potential employer, can you view her Facebook profile or Twitter account that’s published for all to see?

You can, yes, but it’s certainly not recommended. Here’s why:

Social profiles contain information that you as the potential employer would never see on a resume or cover letter. Social media opens the door to learning much more about a candidate such as their religion, sexual orientation, and race – things that are irrelevant to filling the position and adequately performing the job’s functions.

In “researching” this particular information, you can put your company at risk for various discrimination claims. Online employment discrimination is sometimes conscious and sometimes unconscious, meaning that a hiring manager or HR professional might innocently check a Facebook profile or Twitter account without realizing the page’s information affects their hiring decision.

Current policy does create legal risks for those scanning through social media pages during the hiring process IF managers are caught using that information in a discriminatory fashion. Here’s an example: let’s say you’re an employer in the state of Minnesota that prefers to employ healthy and responsible individuals. You decide not to hire a specific woman because her Facebook profile has countless pictures of her drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes.

In Minnesota, it is unlawful for an employer to prohibit a prospective employee from using lawful consumable products, such as alcohol and tobacco. If your candidate catches wind of why they were not hired, or someone on your team accidentally lets them know – you’re in big trouble! And, Minnesota is not the only state. More than half of the U.S. states prohibit employers from taking an adverse employment action based on an employee or potential employee’s lawful conduct on their own time.

Because fairly (and legally) monitoring a candidate’s social media profile is difficult to monitor and manage as an employer, it is recommended that companies explicitly instruct and train hiring teams to not look at a candidates’ online presence. More often than not, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

If you need to access online information for any reason, employers should consider hiring a third-party to review the candidate’s social media profile and filter out any information about membership in a protected class, so that the profile and information you are looking at as a hiring manager is only information that can be lawfully considered in the hiring process.

Social media compliance is sticky, as is employment law. If you have a question or need help with a particular situation, contact Employer Solutions Plus at 727-698-6207.

 

HR Salaries Are On The Rise

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Here’s some great news for HR professionals: HR Salaries are on the rise!

While HR professionals’ salaries depend heavily on their employers and locations, as well as their education and certifications, we’re seeing an overall increase within the industry for the second year in a row. Average base pay will increase 3 percent in 2014 according to the seventh annual Compensation Planning Survey by Buck Consultants.

Numbers vary though. Earlier in the year (June of 2013) we shared a blog titled “How Much Does a New HR Manager Cost?” Salary.com stated that the median expected salary for a typical Human Resources Manager in the United States was $88,408. That number is now $88,960 – a smaller increase than what’s predicted in the Compensation Planning Survey, but an increase nonetheless.

If you’re an employer you may be trying to justify the expense of a fulltime HR professional, or an internal HR department. Not every small to medium sized business has the resources to support their own group of HR professionals at $80,000+/year, especially since these positions fall outside of the company’s core competences.

Even large companies may not be able to justify hiring an internal HR team; the amount of employee management necessary within the workplace may be tremendous, requiring a number of professionals to manage payroll, HR, administration, benefits and more.

If you’re currently indecisive about whether to outsource HR help or recruit an internal team, we encourage you to contact Employer Solutions Plus. Our team is skilled at designing cost-effective packages for accomplishing everything you need surrounding employee management. You don’t necessarily need to choose an internal or external department – you could utilize a little bit of both and only hire vendors within a specific area such as benefits or payroll. Each company’s situation is unique and requires a unique solution.

Click here to contact our team.

 

Background Checks: What an Applicant’s Credit Report Can Tell You

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We’ve talked about background checks before here at Employer Solutions Plus, specifically “The Importance of Background Checks When Hiring at Law Firms” and “The Importance of Background Checks Within the Healthcare Industry.”

A professional background check will uncover a lot about your applicant. There are certain areas that will stick out like sore thumbs: past employers that are disappointed in this applicant, past encounters with the law … but there’s one thing that employers are often unsure of what to do with: the applicant’s credit score.

Here’s what a credit score can tell you:

  • How responsible and organized an applicant is
  • How financially responsible they are
  • High credit utilization or worse, 100% credit utilization, can reveal that this person is in over their head and unable to stick to a budget.
  • Significant card activity or extensive debt can imply that the applicant is seeking a job for a specific reason – do they really wish to work at your company? Or do they simply want to pay off their existing debt and expensive lifestyle?
  • Recent late fees are important to look at when you’re considering an existing employee for a promotion or different position within your company – late fees imply that something in their life has recently changed and this also results in stress inside and outside of work.

As you can see, a credit score can often reflect the type of person you have in front of you or the situation that person is in. However, if you’re going to run credit reports you must follow the federal laws outlined within the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which includes giving the applicant a fair warning of what you intend to look at (along with a copy of the report), and give the applicant an official adverse action notice if you decide not to hire them because of their credit report.

If you work with a PEO, we urge you to utilize their knowledge, tools, and expertise when it comes to background checks, so that your business stays within compliance. If you don’t currently work with a PEO, contact the team at Employer Solutions Plus for a trusted referral.