Surviving an OFCCP Audit
Are you concerned you may be selected for an OFCCP compliance audit? Do you know how to prepare your organization? What will the audit journey look like? What will happen if the OFCCP comes onsite?
If so, you don’t want to miss WTPF’s Program on Surviving an OFCCP Audit! In addition to answering these questions, WTPF’s program will provide an interactive discussion opportunity to speak with both our subject matter expert Bridget Pulivarti, SPHR, Practice Director of Helios HR and Craig Hackett, Chief Human Capital Officer of HeiTech Services someone who recently passed a successful OFCCP audit.
This program will cover:
- Steps to take in response to an audit letter
- Preparation for the audit
- What happens when you submit your materials for the desk audit
- What to expect when the OFCCP comes on site
Bring your questions to our expert, Bridget Pulivarti, SPHR, who has delivered over 175 affirmative action programs and led 20 successful audits. Helios HR provides outsourcing, consulting and recruiting services that optimize your workforce and HR operations.
Register for the event! Next Wednesday, November 2, 2011 from 8:00 am- 10:00 am.
Helios Recruiting Blog
Welcome! This blog will provide you with the best practices and needed advice on resume writing, interviewing, tips for researching potential employers, techniques on finding the right people and finding the right opportunity for your growth. Our mission is to share best practices with those involved in talent management and provide current tips and trends to our readers.
In the coming days and weeks, we will cover many topics, but I wanted to start with trends that will shape tomorrow’s talent searches for firms. The same practices can be used by job seekers to see where they should be posting resumes and the best places to connect and network with Talent Managers. The first action that any recruiting team needs to tackle is to create a competitive advantage in their space.
How can this be done? Our recruitment practice subscribes to the philosophy that the quality of an organization’s talent will have a direct correlation to its success. We will share some of the ways we have become the “go-to team” for our clients. Having a team of consultants, each with their own niche or specialty, is an added resource to your internal HR team, and will help you build and establish a workforce environment that creates a competitive advantage.
Use your resources wisely
Using Social Networks is new, needed, and effective. However, when used incorrectly it is a tricky policy. In order to be effective, firms not only need to have a presence, but a policy that is well suited to their needs and that works for them. If you encourage employees as individuals to connect with others and share their own information, they will expand their following, but not drive people to your firm.
It is important when using social media to make sure the branding of your firm is consistent and that you do not have multiple employees using the same media, in the firm’s name. An effective way to transform or shape this is to encourage senior management and recruiting staff to have a work account. Using a professional account on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and The Ladders allows your team to have their own following. Candidates of various job skills and locations can follow your firm or your firm’s representative. You also encourage better communication between your own internal recruiting team and senior management.
At Helios, we typically incorporate social media in our searches and particularly LinkedIn. Job boards may have revolutionized recruiting, but many of the larger services, although useful, have become weighted down with resumes of unqualified candidates. Sometimes it is more time consuming to run a complex search on a larger board or really find candidates in the top talent pool our clients are interested in. While job boards are still an avenue of candidate sourcing, they now take a back seat to more strategic and innovative ways to build a superior candidate pipeline.
Generate buzz!
It is important to create targeted social and traditional media buzz designed to attract top talent. We no longer rely on just being known or doing only traditional passive/active recruiting strategies. To be successful requires the ability to use several strategies and build a consistent presence. By using the tools in social media, like event notification and scheduling, immediate updates, and location check-ins, you not only invite but include your followers in your company’s news, events, and successes, and really form an identity that people will relate to.
As we still rely on the old faithful niche websites, industry associations and event networking, we also look to search “aggregators” {which are search engines} such as Indeed, Simply Hired and JobSniper.
Other sites that can offer recruiters, firms, and prospective employees potential employment profiles are jobfox, Itzbig and My Perfect Gig, which are popular because candidates and employers remain anonymous until there is a firm, mutual interest between the two parties. This creates a venue for the passive candidate to entertain opportunities without having to commit or risk being identified by their current employer as a candidate. For firms, it gives you the means to interact without having to know a specific opening. You can locate and interact with people with specific skill sets, locations, levels of experience, and really see what they are looking for and how it is a match to your firm.
A Look Ahead
At Helios, we are expanding our Candidate stream to LinkedIn, our recruiting team, corporate blog and Twitter. The ability to connect and network through these avenues seems endless. This is the main factor to LinkedIn’s job listing service having tripled in revenue in one year. With industry blogging, we are now able to set up email alerts through RSS feeds which can lead to new and more defined qualified candidate pools.
Social media is ever-changing and it is critical to understand leading trends to stay ahead of the curve. We are hoping that each member of our team could add “Social Media Development Manager” to their title very soon! We will continue to use these methods and others (hence the consultant rears their head for the fee 
to create a searchable and customized database of qualified candidates for our clients. The bottom line is each team knows their industry and corporate needs. Marrying this information to the tools in social media and fostering a team whose main goal is to improve will allow you to form best practices. Being committed to the highest quality in human capital will allow you to unleash the potential of your workforce and gain that competitive edge.
Welcome to the new era of candidate sourcing!
So, what is it that you would like to know? Please let me know what questions you have (general or specific is fine) with regards to getting hired in today’s economy…. and stay tuned for regular updates!
Top Reasons for Small and Medium Businesses to Consider HRIS
Is your business growing or expecting growth? Are more and more of your employees working remotely and across the country? How can a small or medium sized organization manage these challenges along with new compliance obligations that accompany these changes without adding HR staff? With the right technology, your remote employees can stay connected with easy access to their data, and your current HR staff can effectively manage the organization’s personnel data and maintain compliance with federal and state employement regulations. Here are some top things you should consider in leveraging a Human Resource Information System (HRIS):
1. Enhanced Efficiencies/Improved Recordkeeping: Many organizations’ Human Resource departments are overburdened with the administrative task of recordkeeping. Benefits eligibility, EEO information, I-9s and Family and Medical Leave are often tracked using a burdensome manual spreadsheet or database that is difficult and time consuming to maintain. However, an HRIS will provide a single, secure repository for confidential HR information that is available 24 hours a day 7 days a week from any location with access to the internet.
By using an HRIS an organization can reduce time spent by HR on remedial tasks while ensuring accuracy of their records. An organization required to maintain security clearances or certifications can track this data in their HRIS and ensure notification when clearances and certifications are pending expiration.
2. Improved Productivity via Employee Self Service: Employee Self Service (ESS) quickly reduces HR data entry tasks, allowing staff to focus on strategic HR initiatives. With an HRIS employees are able to log in and manage their own data, with the ultimate approval continuing to be granted by Human Resources. An employee can log in and change an address, update W-4 data, emergency contact information, dependents, beneficiaries and direct deposit information. According to the 2010-2011 CedarCrestone HR Systems Survey results, 60% of respondents reported utilizing employee self-service and manager self-service modules in their HRIS.
In that same survey 60% of organizations reported facing pressure to increase productivity, reduce labor costs, and still provide superior service levels. When employees can enter and find information online it translates into fewer calls to the HR and payroll departments. In addition to reducing or eliminating the use of paper forms, many organizations can maintain a lower HR to employee ratio.
3. Automated Benefits Management: Annual open enrollment processes can go from a time consuming task requiring HR to spend time educating and following up with employees, to completion with the click of a mouse. HR staff can click a button that initiates an automated open enrollment process.
Employees receive a notification that explains any changes and walks them through the updated plan options. After an employee makes a selection, the information is sent directly to the benefit carriers and their new elections take effect.
4. Single Point of Entry for Data: A fully integrated HRIS system eliminates theneed to enter an employee’s information in multiple systems. Once the employee’s record is created that information will immediately populate all other applications. The information will be available to Payroll, IT or Security with the click of a mouse. With this single point of entry, information is far more likely to be accurate as the likelihood of data entry errors is reduced.
This single data entry method allows maintenance of an efficient HR staff-to-employee ratio as your organization grows. According to the Institute for Corporate Productivity’s 2010 Future of HR Survey, the ratio of HR staff to employees for high performing companies with fewer than 100 employees is 1:57. For larger organizations, this ratio grows to 1:124 for high performing organizations. With the help of a fully integrated HRIS system, an organization can expect to optimize the ratio of HR staff to employees throughout a growth phase.
If your compliance is still tracked manually it’s time to consider a cost efficient technology upgrade that will ensure compliance and prepare your organization for growth. Prepare now with an HRIS system that will cost far less than you may think and will demonstrate its value in increased efficiencies and opportunity to scale.
Worker Misclassification: Risky Busines
Christine Poulias, Helios HR
Under the Obama Administration the Department of Labor is teaming up with the Department of the Treasury to crack down on employers who misclassify their workforce. In addition, the Internal Revenue Service has launched a program that will randomly examine 6,000 companies over the next three years for employee misclassifications. The federal government estimates it will raise $7 billion over the next ten years through tighter enforcement.
As an employer, you are at risk for misclassification if your independent contractors have job duties similar to those of your employees. Misclassifying a worker as a contractor costs the government substantial tax revenue, while the worker misses out on benefits afforded to actual employees. For employers that properly classify workers, the improper classification by other employers means higher unemployment taxes and increased workers’ compensation premiums.
Whether a misclassification is intentional or a matter of misinterpretation of legal guidelines, the repercussions are firm and no industry is exempt. Major corporations, including prominent shipping, beverage, cable/broadband and software development companies have all fallen under scrutiny and paid the price…to the tune of millions of dollars. And it’s not just the big fish being challenged. Smaller businesses have not only paid fines, but have been banned from the public procurement process as well.
So what’s an employer to do? If you are concerned that you may be at risk, consider the following*:
- Does the company control or have the right to control what the worker does and how the worker does his or her job?
- Are the business aspects of the worker’s job controlled by the payer? (How worker is paid, whether expenses are reimbursed, who provides tools/supplies, etc.)
- Are benefits (i.e. pension plan, insurance, vacation pay, etc.) offered? Will the relationship continue? Is the person performing work that is considered a key aspect of the business?
If it is still unclear if the worker is a contractor or an employee, visit www.IRS.gov to file a form SS-8 so the IRS can make an official determination on the worker’s status.
* Source: http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=99921,00.html
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