Employee health insurance coverage is in the news these days, so the Global Human Resources Outsourcing (GHRO) team thought we’d take a look the situation regarding coverage for an increasingly important part of the U.S. workforce – contingent workers.

Contingent workers – such as temporary employees, project consultants, contractors, seasonal workers, freelancers, and other non-core employees – now represent 30 percent of the entire U.S. labor force, according to the Advisory Council of the U.S. Department of Labor. The number of contingent workers employed in the U.S. is predicted to quadruple over the next 10 years.
Hiring employees on a contingent basis is emerging as an increasingly commonplace practice for today’s cost-conscious companies striving to improve workplace productivity and profitability, while minimizing costs and overhead. Particularly in light of the significant budget cuts and layoffs that have taken place over the past few years, contingent employment has become an integral part of the overall business strategy of many companies..

Unfortunately, the majority of companies today don’t provide competitive benefits programs to their contingent employees. The Department of Labor Advisory Council reports that less than 18 percent of part-time workers have employer-provided health or retirement benefits, fewer than eight percent of temporary workers have such benefits, and no independent contractors receive these benefits.

This is largely due to the rising costs of medical and other insurances, coupled with the high costs, overhead, and risks of administering benefits for non-core employees. The time, costs and risks involved with managing benefits for non-core workers is much greater than for permanent employees because of the temporary nature of these types of employment arrangements.

Benefits Outsourcing

One solution to the dilemma is benefits outsourcing.

Outsourcing the HR and benefits administrative processes to a specialist is enabling more companies today to offer a competitive benefits package to their contingent staff and, as a result, better capitalize on their contingent staff resources.

A payroll and HR administrative service provider acts as the client company’s employer of record for their contingent workforce.

Among all the services that a payroll, benefits and HR administrative specialist should offer, benefits administration can be critically important.  It involves management of medical, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance, COBRA, 401K, and other employee benefits plans.

Look for a specialist that:

1. Has a solid industry track record.
2. Offers a comprehensive, diverse level of HR and benefits administrative services.
3. Provides tailored HR and benefits administrative service packages, so that the company pays only for the services needed.

This type of service provider will be much more likely to accommodate your company’s specific HR and benefits administrative needs.

You need it, but so do your contingent workers – an increasingly important part of your staff.

STATISTIC: 4,547 workers died on the job in 2010 (Latest BLS Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries)

“With every one of these fatalities, the lives of a worker’s family members were shattered and forever changed. We can’t forget that fact.”  – Hilda Solis, Secretary of Labor

Safety in the small business workplace is the focus of increasing attention from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), so the Global Human Resources Outsourcing (GHRO) team thought we’d review some of the key issues.

In the Department of Labor (DOL) 2012 regulatory agenda released in January 2012, OSHA listed action items on Injury and Illness Prevention Programs (I2P2), confined spaces in construction, crystalline silica exposure limits, and walking work surfaces, among other issues.

According to its agenda, OSHA is planning to move forward with its proposed rule on I2P2 by conducting a Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act Small Business Advocacy Review Panel.

The process was initiated on Jan. 6, 2012, when OSHA notified the Small Business Administration (SBA) of its intention to convene a panel in order to gather more information from small businesses on the impact of the proposed rule.

Although no proposal has been made available to stakeholders, it is believed that under the I2P2 rule, employers will be required to implement internal safety programs that “find and fix” workplace hazards on a rolling basis.

The focus will be on small businesses, including businesses with as few as 20 people. Inspector visits will deal not only with workplace safety matters, but also labor laws and reviewing whether the workers are contractors or employees.

What types of companies fall under OSHA and Department of Labor (DOL) regulations?

All companies with even one employee must conform to certain OSHA and DOL regulations. Once you have five or more employees, you must set up committees mandated by the law.

How can I tell which state and federal regulations apply to my company? And what happens if I’m out of compliance with some obscure regulation?

A professional organization like GHRO can conduct a compliance audit of your business to make sure you are meeting state and federal regulations. If you aren’t, we’ll help you comply. For example, we have procedures, forms and reports you can begin using immediately.

I have a troublesome employee. Under what circumstances can I dock his pay?

You can never dock an employee’s pay.  There are fair, legal and successful alternatives to end the trouble.

A recently hired employee hurt herself at work and right now she can’t do the job she was hired for.  Do I have to take her back?

Under most circumstances, you’re responsible for finding some tasks that can be accomplished by an injured employee during the recuperation period. You need to identify appropriate tasks.  And you need to set up appropriate procedures before the next injury occurs.

What are the chances that the Department of Labor or OSHA will ever visit my company?

There are millions of small businesses in the U.S., but you can face fines even without a DOL or OSHA visit. For example, a common citation issued by the DOL is failure to file a Safety Summary Form. (If you haven’t filed yet, you should file immediately to show good faith.) Similarly, any claim by a disgruntled employee may involve OSHA and the DOL.

The rise of the free-agent labor force includes at-home offsite workforces, so the Global Human Resources Outsourcing (GHRO) team thought we’d revisit this article from HRO Today on the subject.

An at-home workforce is much more than a shift in location. It’s a customer interaction strategy that requires a new paradigm in the way companies recruit, hire, train, and manage customer-facing employees.

Companies with offsite workforces have reported:

• 10 percent higher customer satisfaction.
• 30 percent more (or even greater) flexibility.
• 20 percent lower cost to serve customers.
• Highly educated employees with significant work experience.
• Geographic distribution of workforce with minimal disruption.
• Greater business continuity.

There are seven key practices that, when executed properly, create an at-home workforce that generates excellent results in an affordable, sustainable model:

1. Best-in-class security with high-speed connectivity and protocols. A computer can be locked down so the employee is not able to print, copy or paste except within his or her work application.
2. Flexible staffing with quick ramp-up or ramp-down time to meet fluctuating volumes. A targeted at-home workforce can be ready as needed, for far shorter shifts than traditional office-based staff.
3. Scalability and fluency in languages, skill sets, flexibility, and cultural settings. With recruiting boundaries largely eliminated, companies can handpick the best talent with fluency in whatever the languages and cultural settings that are needed, no matter where they live.
4. Seamless integration with virtual management tools.  Because they’re equally secure and productive, virtual workplaces blend easily with existing brick-and-mortar centers.
5. Expanded labor pool anytime, anywhere. Traditional contact centers and corporate offices are often limited by their geography when recruiting and selecting staff.
6. Higher quality of service.  At-home employees tend to be self-motivated, highly educated team members, with many years of work experience.
7. Return on investment (ROI) via the elimination of facilities’ costs and higher employee utilization. Through the elimination or reduction in of facilities costs, lower employee turnover, demand-based staffing models, and higher employee utilization rates, companies can save money.

Author P.J. Weyforth is senior vice president of operations at TeleTech@Home, a dispersed workforce composed of associates working from their homes in select locations worldwide.  Using TeleTech’s proprietary technology, these associates are able to securely access applications that are hosted at a remote location in order to support and assist customers with a variety of needs, as well as address various back-office functions.

The Global Human Resources Outsourcing (GHRO) team likes to share good news:

There is a growing number of jobs available in the manufacturing and healthcare industries and even the hard hit construction sector, according to a recent CNNMoney article.

And the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reports that finding workers to fill many highly-skilled jobs remains difficult.

But there ‘s also a downside.

Good old fashioned well-paying employment remains hard to come by for many workers in the U.S., according to a CNNMoney survey of economists, who say that just 135,000 jobs were added in December and that the unemployment rate likely rose to 8.6 percent.

At the core of the problem: sluggish consumer spending and a housing market in a quagmire.  Declining home prices make it harder for people who might want to move to a state with better job prospects. People are trapped where they are.

“The real estate market will continue to inhibit job growth,” said Ray Stone, an economist with Stone & McCarthy Research in Princeton, N.J. “When you are underwater on your mortgage, you can’t move from New Jersey to take a job in Chicago.”

SHRM LINE® Report

Though far more companies are expected to hire than lay off in February 2012, the numbers will lag compared to one year ago according to an SHRM report on a survey of 500 service-sector companies and 500 manufacturing companies.

The report shows that on an annual basis – comparing February 2012 to February 2011 – service sector hiring will drop by a net of 12.3 points and manufacturing sector hiring will fall by a net of 2.5 points.

The findings are detailed in the SHRM “Leading Indicators of National Employment® (LINE®) Report.” LINE is the only national employment index capturing HR professionals’ month-ahead hiring expectations, and past-month recruiting difficulty. The report also includes a new-hire compensation index and an index of exempt and non-exempt job vacancies.

A close look at the SHRM LINE service-sector hiring index shows that a net of 20.9 percent of employers plan to add jobs in February 2012 compared with a net of 33.2 percent that did so one year ago—a 12.3 point drop.

The month alone, however, shows a more positive outlook with more service-sector companies planning to hire (26.3 percent) than layoff (5.4 percent).

The U.S. business services sector consists of about 340,000 companies with combined annual sales of about $580 billion, according to a Research and Markets: 2012 Report.

The manufacturing-sector hiring index also shows that February 2012 – when examined on its own – will have significantly more companies hiring (49.1 percent) workers than cutting (8.9 percent) jobs.

“The economy is showing gains in job growth but not at the pace needed to significantly bring down the unemployment rate,” said Jennifer Schramm, GPHR and manager of workplace trends and forecasting at SHRM.

Regarding past-month trends, the SHRM LINE Report shows the recruiting-difficulty index and new-hire compensation for January 2012 rose slightly in both the manufacturing and service sectors.

“Despite the high number of people seeking employment, finding workers to fill highly-skilled jobs remains difficult,” said Schramm. “Those job seekers able to land such job offers are likely the ones seeing the small gains in new-hire compensation tracked in the SHRM LINE report.”

Most everyone enjoys a pretty picture, and the Global Human Resources Outsourcing (GHRO) team is no exception.  We like this Infographic from HireRabbit (click link), a maker of social recruiting software.  The graphic visual is filled with interesting details about the role Facebook is currently playing in helping employers and employees find one another online.

For example, 48 percent of all job seekers (and 63 percent of those with a profile) did social media job hunting on Facebook in the past year. That’s a lot of eyes searching for opportunities, and if your brand is already active on the network, it could be worth engaging power users to recommend applicable candidates.

In December 2011, Nielsen Company, which tracks usage on the Internet, counted 153 million unique U.S. users on the Facebook website for the month.  Here are further interesting stats from the graph:

What are Job Hunters doing on Facebook?

• 84% of Job Seekers have a Facebook profile
• 48% of all Job Seekers (63% of those with a profile) have done at least one social job hunting activity on Facebook in the last year.
• 1 in 5 Job Seekers added professional information to their Facebook profile in the past year.
• 16% of all Job Seekers received a job referral from a Facebook friend.
• 56% of all Job Seekers are male
• 64% are under the age of 40
• 36% earn more than $75,000
• 42% are college graduates

Recruiters—How to Be Awesome on Facebook

• Design beautiful career pages, avoid clutter
• Share fresh and interesting content to tickle your audience
• Listen to candidates and be responsive
• Engage your prospective hires through quizzes and contests
• Give industry insights, post employee experiences
• Schedule updates and monitor results
• No “Silver Bullets” — it’s a long-term investment

Comments on the LinkedIn page that reviewed the story included these two cautions:

Ryan Johnson

I hope businesses and companies pick up on this who hire directly, on the other hand I pray “professional” 3rd party recruiters leave Facebook alone. There’s enough spam on Facebook as it is.

Herve Peitrequin

Social media users spend around 30% of their webtime social networking, mainly on Facebook. But still, most Facebook users in Europe don’t feel like being engaged by companies on the network itself. Employer branding, viral job ad spreading, yes.  Direct people sourcing, less easy.

Clean, gray blocks of letters on the pages of conventional resumes can only do so much in helping a job applicant stand out to a prospective employer.

In today’s tough job market, grabbing an employer’s attention requires applicants to be creative in every respect.  One segment of the talent pool that does an exceptional “job-seeking job” with its resumes is designers.  These artists have to be creative because design agencies are usually bombarded with hundreds of applications.

Last week, the Global Human Resources Outsourcing (GHRO) team blogged about “Resume Writing 101.”  This week, the team thought that taking a look at some unusual but effective resumes might help inspire some applicants as they put together their own.  The resumes we’re going to take a look at might not be appropriate when seeking more buttoned-down jobs, but they do hint at possibilities for thinking beyond the ordinary.

For great resumes from people working in various creative fields, here’s a look at some of the best – “100 Most Creative Example Resumes of All Time” posted by Megha on Savedelete.com.

• Temitope Shoda is a London-based designer and aspiring architect.  The concept of his Pocket CV (curriculum vitae) was to create a portable mini portfolio that clearly illustrated his work but was light and easy to carry about.  His aim was to create a resume that expressed the idea of construction and art. He did this by using a “bolt and wash” fixing to hold the CV together. The fixing expresses the idea of construction while the pages express the idea of art.
• Michael Anderson, based in Romney, W. Va., is a designer, photographer and illustrator whose resume is an Infographic—a graphic visual representation of the information, data and knowledge underlying his career.  Anderson’s “resume-as-Infographic” presents complex information quickly and clearly.  In his visually compelling self-presentation, Anderson doesn’t show any of his actual work yet he still succeeds in showing off his talent. Not only can he create great graphics, he also proves he can turn “boring” facts and figures into something exciting.
• Ariane Denise Lunod earned a bachelor’s degree in advertising and PR from Polytechnic University of the Philippines in May 2009. She currently works as a home-based copywriter for an international brand of lingerie.  Fashion is her passion and she’s interested in becoming an account executive for a multinational advertising agency or landing a job at a fashion magazine.  Her highly creative, visually graphic resume presents her awards and achievements using arresting images placed on a busy desktop background covered with manual typewriter, paper clips and notes, but with an iPhone thrown in to keep things current.
• Twenty-three-year-old Hong Kong designer Chester, LAU Cheuk Hang created a resume with white text on black background supporting his focus on information design, typography, illustration and branding.
• Sabrina Saccocio is a TV, radio, print and Web producer who created a new kind of CV — resume as Facebook page.  “How brilliant is this?” blogged Steve Pratt, the Director of CBC Radio 3 who received this resume.  “She’s taken a format everyone is familiar with – the Facebook profile page – and totally subverted it into a resume.”
• In his “Curriculum Vitae,” Chicago-based graphic designer Greg Dizzia used colorful graphics to list his history in the design world (some lesser clients have been left out). It took him approximately 15 hours to design and build the resume.  He used Univers, a realist sans-serif typeface, exclusively.  “This is an appendage to a traditional resume, to be included as a forward page in my portfolio.  During an interview … my resume itself was becoming a pivoting point in the negotiation of my position.”  Dizzia says he gets much better reactions from people in creative positions than from people in HR.
• Krista Gregg is a Chicago-based graphics designer and 2005 Westwood College (Chicago) graduate with a b.a. in applied science visual communications.  Krista went noticeably retro with a designed based on letter-sized lined notebook paper universally familiar to students.
• Francis Homo, like Ariane Denise Lunod, earned a bachelor’s degree in advertising and PR from Polytechnic University of the Philippines.  In his highly visual resume, Francis creatively split his career experiences along a right-brain / left brain motif.
• Texas-based Kristian Leigh Walsh was inspired by a childhood game in creating this resume.  The Game of Life, also known simply as LIFE, is a board game originally created in 1860 by Milton Bradley, as The Checkered Game of Life (and later produced by the Milton Bradley Company of Springfield, Mass.). The Game of Life, America’s first popular parlor game, simulates a person’s travels through his or her life, from college to retirement, with jobs, marriage and possible children along the way.  Kristian simply followed the game outline as a resume career track.

First impressions are lasting, and in the case of a job application, critical.  The resume is usually one of the first items, along with a cover letter and sometimes job application packet, which a potential employer encounters regarding a job seeker and is typically used to screen applicants.  If the resume is satisfactory, only then will an interview follow.

The Global Human Resources Outsourcing (GHRO) team has seen many a good resume, and rejected many a poor one.

Having a solid and effective resume can increase your chances of getting a call from a recruiter. Applicants need to be aware that recruiters spend, on average, about 10 seconds reviewing a resume, so having a top-notch resume is critical to land the interview.

A good resume will:

1. Have the basic information listed: At the top of the page, all relevant contact information should be listed which includes your name in larger font as well as phone and email information.  Also, check that your voice mail message is appropriate. If a recruiter calls and hears an inappropriate voicemail message, they may just hang up.
2. Be current:  a recruiter is not in favor of finding out during the pre-screen that the resume they have is not current and is missing relevant information.  So keep your resume current! A current resume demonstrates you are serious about finding a job and is detail oriented.
3. Have a career objective: what is the objective of the applicant’s career path.  Be realistic.  Writing you want to be President of the company but yet have not made it to management is probably not realistic.
4. Use the right key words: Recruiters are now using electronic databases to mine for applicants, which mean they put in key words into a ATS (Applicant Tracking System) and if your resume doesn’t have the key words they are searching for, chances are you are already out of the running.  One way to understand what an employer is looking for is to review the job posting and job description. Identify what the employer is looking for and add those key words into your resume.
5. Include professional accomplishments vs. responsibilities:  What are some significant professional accomplishments that could possibly get the recruiters attention?  Use action verbs and statistics here.  For example, “Project managed a team of board operators to design and implement a new manufacturing process which increased production by 30% resulting in $300k in revenue per quarter.”
6. Include a descriptive past professional experience:  Applicants should list, most recent job title, company name and brief description of the company, City, State and dates of employment.  For example,

Director of Manufacturing

“XYZ Company, a semi-conductor manufacturer “ Ontario, CA

Jan 2009-present

If you have been at one employer for several years, you may want to note all positions you have held there and include the skill sets you developed.  It can also show you are promotable.

1. Demonstrate Continual Education, Professional Development & Professional Memberships:  In this area, the recruiter is looking for educational credentials and looking to see how the applicant is staying current in their profession.
2. Be straightforward and to the point: Save some stuff for the interview, please.  One of the oldest rules of resume writing is “Limit it to one page.”  Also, use bullets; a recruiter does not have time to read a full page of text so keep your thoughts straightforward and to the point.
3. Keep work experience relevant to the job you are applying: Recruiters are looking for applicants that have a solid experience in their profession.  It could create an unfavorable image if you mentioned you were studying culinary but are looking for an accounting job.
4. Proof read your resume:  Recruiters frown upon resumes with typos, and one small typo can decrease your chances of landing that interview.  So proof it a couple times and have someone else proof for you.

The Global Human Resources Outsourcing (GHRO) team provides HR consulting services in the areas of employee/labor relations, so we thought we’d share some valuable information on the subject.

Recent headline stories:

• The EEOC has filed suit against the Texas Roadhouse national restaurant chain, claiming the company discriminates against older workers by denying them “front of the house” hourly positions, steering them instead into kitchen jobs or refusing to hire them.  The EEOC has documented cases in which hiring managers are alleged to have said to older applicants:
  • “You seem older to be applying for this job.”
  • “Do you think you would fit in?”
  • “There are younger people here who can grow with the company.”

• The former director of community relations for the NBA franchise Golden State Warriors is claiming in a lawsuit that star guard Monta Ellis engaged in a months-long sexual harassment campaign, sending her numerous sexually suggestive texts including a picture of his genitalia.  Erika Smith, a four-year employee, also claims the team’s owners and general manager purposely attempted to protect their “franchise” player by “sweeping (the allegations) under the rug,” a claim she said was revealed to her by Ellis when he allegedly said G.M. Larry Riley promised to “cover up” the allegations.

Age discrimination, sexual harassment…these are all-too common headline-making employee lawsuits that can generally be avoided if the proper policies and procedures are in place and in force.  If you’ve ever been through an employee lawsuit, you know just how expensive, difficult and often unpredictable they can be.  But there are far more time and cost-effective solutions available. Isn’t it better to prevent the lawsuit than manage it?

Here are seven things that may help you avoid employee lawsuits:

1.  Treat Employees with Respect.

2.  Communicate with Your Employees: Do not let complaints fester.  Deal with them right away.

3.  Implement an Effective Unlawful Discrimination and Harassment Policy.

4.  Document, Document, Document:  The importance of good record keeping cannot be overstated.

5.  Conduct Honest Employee Evaluations on a Regular Basis.

6.  Do Not Retaliate:  Recent cases have lowered the burden for plaintiffs to prove their retaliation claims.

7.  Take Action and Investigate Complaints Promptly.

Employee Relations can be a tricky business, particularly in California. GHRO Group has more than 50 years of experience dealing with “difficult” cases, and we can handle even the most sensitive challenges, including responding to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and Department of Fair Employment Housing (DFEH) claims.

Don’t wait until it’s too late.

The Global Human Resources Outsourcing (GHRO) team is often asked about the subject of Employee Leasing.  Here’s some insight.

As a leading Professional Employer Organization (PEO), GHRO Total Solutions provides integrated services designed to streamline the cost and complexities of HR management, employee benefits, payroll, Workers’ Compensation and more. We offer this through a seamless co-employment model that provides the benefits of a highly-staffed HR team, without the overhead costs.

Employee Leasing

Smaller companies looking to expand their workforce may be comfortable with the technical side of the hiring process, but not the human resource side. Business owners often find themselves overwhelmed by all the payroll accounting, record keeping and benefits which accompany newly hired employees. One popular solution to this problem is the practice of employee leasing.

Employee leasing is similar to the process of hiring temporary workers, but the key difference is permanency.

A company wishing to pursue employee leasing will first contact a PEO like GHRO to discuss its particular employment needs. The PEO might set up an interview process for recruiting new staff, or might take responsibility for existing workers. The company can still participate in the hiring process, but any hired personnel will officially work for the PEO.

Contrary to what you might read or hear elsewhere, a PEO is not the same thing as an employee leasing company. The PEO’s basic function is to achieve economies of scale through volume purchasing of employee health benefits and other “big-ticket” items. What employee leasing companies don’t generally deliver are the value-added services that a PEO provides:

• Professional development and training
• HR compliance guidance
• Risk management
• Employee relations expertise
• Integrated HR management applications via HRMS
• Comprehensive recruiting and selection services

Most of these services that are available from a PEO are minimal or often absent from an employee leasing company’s offerings.

The Global Human Resources Outsourcing (GHRO) team is looking forward to a great 2012.  We’ve put on the future goggles and found some insights into possible HRO industry developments this year.

“In many ways, this is the golden era of HRO,” says Josh Bersin, CEO and president of research and advisory services firm Bersin & Associates.

Bersin is quoted in an article titled “Artful Predictions–HR Thought Leaders Forecast 2012,” which appeared in HRO Today’s December 2011 edition.

According to the article, HRO trends that are currently underway and that auger more of the same in 2012 include:

• The increasing use of predictive and descriptive analytics to glean business insights driving improved performance.
• Higher adoption rates by clients leveraging providers’ cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.
• Greater use of balanced shoring options — combining off-shoring, on-shoring and near-shoring models.

In talent management, expect growing sophistication in services offered by HRO providers, as opposed to just software packages. And chances are the industry will continue to see greater acceptance of a la carte HRO services, rather than binges on entire “soup to nuts” menus from single providers.

Rajesh Ranjan, research director of RPO provider Everest Group in New Delhi, India, has expectations for 2012 in two areas — multi-process HRO and single-process HRO.

“There are some common themes playing out in both areas,” he says. “Buyers, for instance, are approaching HRO with a balanced set of outcomes in mind, as opposed to immed iately alleviating cost pressures. Yes, they’re interested in models that address their short-term needs, but more are looking to create a foundation to realize long-term objectives.”

Shakeups in 2011 likely portend similar actions in 2012:

• Mercer acquired Censeo Corporation to enhance its talent management consulting capabilities and online platform of assessment services.
• Kenexa and NGA partnered with SkillSoft for learning content.
• Talent2 added advisory services and rebranded to simplify its talent management focus; in addition the company become a reseller of Cornerstone OnDemand, widely used for its performance management, succession planning and learning modules.

Several interviewees in the article touted the likelihood of talent management playing a greater role in HR BPO.  Says Linda Merritt, research analyst at London-based BPO analyst firm NelsonHall: “It could be a disruptive force, shaking up the HRO field.”

Merritt predicts that vendors will continue to build talent management capabilities, internally as well as through strategic partnerships and acquisitions. A look back at the recent past confirms this trend. Take, for instance, the breakneck speed of Kenexa’s deals. Although the global HRO provider had developed talent management expertise internally, it enhanced it over the past few years via the acquisitions of Salary.com, which strengthened its compensation management capability, and Gantz Wiley research, which beefed up its employee survey research capabilities.