HR Morning News, Page 5 Category

Handling ADA accommodation requests is tricky, as you know. But the better prepared you are before you receive a request, the better your chances for staying on the right side of the law. 

To that end, employment law attorney Patti C. Perez of Ogletree Deakins suggests employers use this seven-point checklist to make sure they’re ready to engage in the ADA’s interactive process:

Define the process. Does your company have an easy-to-follow process for making accommodation requests? Tip: Have one person handle all requests.

Communicate. Begin a conversation with the employee as soon as he or she requests an accommodation, and document all interactions with him or her.

Gather employer documents. Compile relevant documents, like the employee’s job description, department expectations and performance evaluations. The more information you have, the easier it’ll be to create an accommodation plan.

Gather employee documents. Ask the employee for a detailed description of his or her restrictions. Keep the conversation on the restrictions – not on the medical condition itself.

Perform “match analysis.” Based on the employee’s restrictions, does a reasonable accommodation exist that would allow the person to continue to perform his or her job?

Explain your decision. Discuss the finer points of your final decision with the employee.

Follow up. Check in with the employee and managers after the accommodation is in place to make sure everything’s working.

By 2020, half of the professional workforce will be of the millennial generation. Fluent in the language of social media and computer processes, we’ll find plenty of Generation Y on both sides of the interview table. This survey asked individuals to assess the skillset, vision and culture of Gen Y HR pros as they break out onto the office floor.

Click here to learn more!  

It’s difficult to tell what kind of person someone is just by their resume. Heck, it can even be difficult to tell when face to face with the person. But there are some approaches that will do the trick. 

Chances are you want a hire who’s self-motivated, honest and trustworthy — in addition to having the background you’re looking for, of course.

While candidates will likely tell you they’re all those things if asked, it’s also likely they’re doing so because they know that’s what you want to hear (whether it’s true or not).

As a result, Dave Porter, managing partner at Baystate Financial in Boston, a company that holds its recruiters and managers accountable for the results of those they bring on board, says companies should ask candidates to describe their character.

Five words Porter says you want to hear candidates say that indicate they’re made of the right stuff:

1. Honest
2. Respectful
3. Punctual
4. Curious, and
5. Accountable.

Whether or not you hear adjectives like these will tell you “how much the candidate cares about others and about doing the right thing,” Porter says in his book Where Winners Live: Sell More, Earn More, Achieve More Through Personal Accountability.

‘When nobody was looking’

Porter has another suggestion as well. Ask candidates this question: When in your life have you made a decision that you’re proud of — when nobody was looking?

If candidates take a while to answer, they’re likely not good fits for Baystate Financial. Porter says, candidates with integrity should have little trouble recalling situations — and the decisions they made in them — that reveal their true character.

In his book, Porter said one candidate, Leonard, told a story about finding a camera in the back seat of a Boston taxi. When the driver told Leonard he was going to keep the camera, Leonard refused to give it to the driver and instead took it to the taxi company’s lost and found. Leonard got the job.

Those are the kinds of stories you want to hear — along with adjectives like those described above.

Bad indicators

What you don’t want to hear, Porter says, are indicators the candidate has what he describes as an “all-about-me” attitude.

Some of those indicators could be dropping adjectives like:

• Carefree
• Fun
• Laid back.

However, describing themselves in those ways aren’t necessarily deal breakers. Those qualities can actually be good things, Porter says, when balanced out by professional attributes. But finding out whether that’s the case requires deeper probing.

With the amount of time HR pros put into open enrollment season, you’d think the process would result in satisfied employees who have a solid understanding of their benefits, right? Not even close.  

VSP Vision just released a report on how employees view open enrollment, and HR pros aren’t going to like what the rank-and-file had to say.

When asked to describe how they felt about open enrollment, 33% of employees cited “annoyance” or “dread” as their primary emotions. Even worse, just 10% of workers said they were “confident” in the benefits choices they made when the enrollment process was over.

Better than allergy season but …

The VSP report also gave respondents the choice of seven seasons — holiday, bathing-suit, back-to-school, tax, open enrollment, allergy, and cold and flu — and asked them to pick which one they disliked the least.

Just 15% of employees selected open-enrollment season. To put that in perspective, 20% chose tax season, with allergy, and cold and flu season garnering 9% and 8% of the votes, respectively. That means open enrollment only narrowly edged out seasons centered around human illness.

A changing benefits landscape

The good news is that fewer and fewer employers are looking at open enrollment as an isolated event. In fact, employers that don’t focus on year-round benefits communications are becoming the minority. That means there’s less pressure on HR pros to cram everything in at open enrollment.

Of course, that’s because there’s more to do than ever before.

As Sozon Vatikiotis, the CEO of Alltrust Insurance explains:

“What is ‘open enrollment season’? It doesn’t exist for us anymore. Every season is open enrollment season now. Each day seems to be increasingly difficult with many more complexities to manage.”

If you’re looking for additional help as you prepare for this year’s open enrollment season, our affiliated website, HR Benefits Alert, has a number of resources available.

With all of the news coverage of terrible violence in public places, it’s no wonder some businesses are asking: “Could we be vulnerable?”  

Not all businesses and types of facilities face the same level of risk, of course.

But practically every business should take a look at their security measures and address vulnerabilities if necessary.

Here’s proof that investing in security can boost employee satisfaction: A?recent survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that nearly half (48%) of employees say that “feeling safe” affects their job satisfaction.

Female employees ranked security higher than males. And workers with only high school degrees who work with the public or in traditional blue-collar jobs ranked security and safety higher than those with post-graduate college degrees.

Most firms hit the mark

The good news? Seventy-eight percent of workers say they’re “generally satisfied” with their level of personal safety in their current workplace.

Would you bet that your employees are among that 78% majority?

You may want to find out for sure. Consider surveying people about your facility’s security measures and what kinds of improvements they might want.

Is your business suffering from “Invisible Employee Syndrome”? Download this report to learn about Invisible Employee Syndrome including the symptoms, causes and effects that it could be having on your business. Also discover how modern HR systems, in combination with senior leadership commitment, workforce insights and process integration, can help to stem the rising tide of this modern workforce ailment.

Click here to learn more!  

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit just issued a stern warning to employers. 

It was this: Using a government website, like the DOL’s elaws Advisors site, is no substitute for consulting with an attorney or a government official.

As a result, saying you relied on the such a website to guide your employment decisions won’t shield you from damages.

The court recently ruled that using the DOL’s elaws site wasn’t enough to reduce the “willful” penalties a jury levied upon Dallas-based plumber HSC-Hopson Services Co. for failing to pay one of its employees for all of the time he spent at work.

Owner: I acted in good faith

Plumber Donald Miles sued his employer, HSC-Hopson, claiming the company illegally failed to pay him for time he spent at work before and after scheduled appointments with customers.

Specifically, Miles’ wage-and-hour lawsuit said he was forced to arrive 30 minutes before his shifts and wasn’t paid for that time. It also said he wasn’t paid for the time spent driving his truck back to the shop and locking up following his last appointment every workday.

In court, company owner Dannis Hopson admitted to those pay practices, but he testified went to the DOL’s elaws Advisors website and determined on his own that his conduct complied with the FLSA.

As you could probably guess, he was wrong. A jury ruled in favor of Miles and awarded him $16,132.50 in lost wages.

But that wasn’t all. It also said HSC-Hopson must pay Miles and equal amount in damages for its “willful” violation of the FLSA.

An FLSA violation is deemed to be willful “if the employer either knew or showed reckless disregard for … whether its conduct was prohibited by the statue,” said the Fifth Circuit court.

Hopson filed an appeal trying to get the willful damages removed. He claimed they weren’t warranted because “he acted in good faith” by consulting the DOL’s website to determine if his pay practices were legal.

But the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit refused to reduce the damages.

Here’s what it had to say about the matter:

“Hopson testified that he did not consult an attorney or the Department of Labor. Instead, he went to an ‘E-law’ website. There was also testimony that Hopson arbitrarily reduced work time and did not pay for certain time worked. This evidence supports the jury’s verdict that Hopson’s conduct was willful for purposes of an FLSA violation.

“AFFIRMED.”

End result: Hopson was ordered to pay Miles a total of $32,265 (or $16,132.5 x 2).

Cite: Miles v. HSC-Hopson Services Co. Inc.

While some major corporations are offering unlimited vacation policies to show their commitment to employees’ work/life balance, one fundraising giant has done an about-face — and not for the reasons you’d think.  

Kickstarter, the largest fundraising platform for creative projects, just announced that it has dropped the most flexible benefit of all: Its unlimited vacation policy. Kickstarter has decided to cap vacation time and, moving forward, it will offer employees a maximum of 25 day of vacation time per year.

No specific parameters

So was workers’ excessive vacation negatively impacting Kickstarter’s bottom-line and ultimately to blame for the death of the stand-out perk? Actually it was quite the opposite.

Giving workers the complete freedom to take as much time off (as long as their work is done) actually caused them to take less time off. Reason: Without clear parameters, employees were unsure just how much time they were supposed to be taking off.

Kickstarter’s spokesperson explained the policy change to BuzzFeed by stating:

“It’s always been important to us to ensure that our team is able to enjoy a quality work/life balance. What we found was that by setting specific parameters around the number of days, there was no question about how much time was appropriate to take from work to engage in personal, creative, and family activities.”

40% fail to take advantage

It makes sense that an unlimited vacation policy would fall flat in today’s work environment. After all, many employees fail to take full advantage of the standard two week’s vacation they’re allotted. In fact, nearly half (40%) of U.S. workers don’t use all of their paid vacation days, according to 2014 Project: Time Off study by GfK Public Affairs and Corporate Communications in conjunction with Oxford Economics.

The study also found there’s been a gradual decrease over the last two decades in the amount of vacation time employees actually used.

If you notice certain workers aren’t using any of their vacation, it may be a good idea to pull that person aside and stress how the company encourages vacations to improve health and job performance.