Human Resources Description

Aley Moyer

The Californian 2025 Q1 – DON’T BE CAUGHT OFF GUARD: AVOID SURPRISE RESIGNATIONS WITH STAY INTERVIEWS

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DON’T BE CAUGHT OFF GUARD: AVOID SURPRISE RESIGNATIONS WITH STAY INTERVIEWS

Anne Laguzza, The Works Consulting, CALSAGA Network Partner

Picture that one employee who you can always count on. They have a positive attitude and regularly perform at the highest standards. Everyone on the team likes working with them, too.

Now imagine, sitting down at your desk on a seemingly uneventful Tuesday morning only to open your email and find a resignation letter from that employee. You’re immediately confused and feel panicked. All you can think about is how you have to now scramble to keep them. Unfortunately, in my decades of experience in Human Resources, it is too late. It’s unlikely that anything you do at this point will retain that employee.

This situation is very common for leaders, but it is avoidable. The most effective strategy to avoid this shocking moment and increase retention is for leaders to conduct stay interviews.

What is a Stay Interview?

Most commonly, leaders conduct interviews only during the hiring process and when someone leaves the company. Stay interviews are conducted by leaders at scheduled intervals with their direct reports throughout their employment. Stay interviews are proactive, one-on-one conversations between a supervisor and their direct reports where the supervisor essentially checks the temperature of the employee.

The feedback collected during the stay interview provides leaders with the opportunity to know well in advance if there is anything prohibiting that team member from doing their best work and provide solutions before the person considers looking elsewhere for employment (and definitely before they give their notice).

How do leaders conduct Stay Interviews?

Stay interviews are most effective when leaders schedule them at regular intervals throughout the year with their direct reports. Start with scheduling 2 stay interviews a year with your administrative team and supervisory teams individually.

Leaders should also consider scheduling stay interviews during times of internal transitions or changes and when external events may impact employee morale and productivity.

When you sit down one-one-one with your direct report, ask open-ended questions to find out:

  • What aspects of their job do they enjoy the most?
  • What aspects of their job do they enjoy the least?
  • What tools/training do they need/want to perform their job at the highest level?
  • Are there any road-blocks preventing them from meeting your expectations?
  • What do they need from you, as their supervisor, to be successful?

The stay interview is a time to collect feedback and for idea sharing between the leader and their direct report. The overall goal is to provide a space to have an open discussion about ways to keep your direct reports engaged and identify solutions to any problems before they lead to a resignation.

What are the benefits of Stay Interviews?

A stay interview is a leader’s best tool for retention and creating a place where their direct reports want to come to work. Stay interviews provide various benefits to leadership:

  • Build trust and loyalty: According to iHire’s 2024 Talent Retention Report, people who left their jobs voluntarily in 2024 did so named “poor company leadership,” “unhappy with manager/supervisor” and “toxic or negative work environment” as the top 3 reasons for exiting. Leaders can improve their manager-employee relationships through stay interviews as a way to demonstrate that they value their employees’ opinions and are there to help problem-solve, two key factors in building trust and loyalty.
  • Get ahead of challenges: Stay interviews allow leaders to find out how their employees are actually doing. Through open ended questions, leaders can discover problems between processes and/or people, providing an opportunity to be able to help with solutions early on.
  • Retain high performers: Stay interviews provide valuable insight into keeping your high performers engaged. Are they happy with their position? Do they want to be challenged with new opportunities? Checking in with your high performers at scheduled intervals is a simple step that will ensure they feel valued.

Don’t be caught off guard. It is possible for leaders to know truly how each of their employees are doing in the workplace and understand ways to keep them engaged so the entire company performs well. The key is to maintain open communication by regularly conducting stay interviews.

Interested in learning more about how to effectively implement stay interviews? Join us for a free live webinar on Wednesday, Feb. 19 at 10 a.m. PT. Register to attend by clicking here.

Anne Laguzza is the CEO of The Works Consulting, a CALSAGA Network Partner. As a seasoned business executive with human resources management, leadership development, and performance coaching experience, Anne works with clients from a variety of industries to develop better systems, maximize employee productivity, and enable management to focus on business growth. For more information, check out theworksconsulting.com or email anne@theworksconsulting.com. You can also find Anne on Instagram and LinkedIn.

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Aley Moyer

The Californian 2025 Q1 – THE SECURITY INDUSTRY’S NEED FOR EARNED WAGE ACCESS

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THE SECURITY INDUSTRY’S NEED FOR EARNED WAGE ACCESS

Ryan Faith, TEAM Software by WorkWave, CALSAGA Network Partner

Even as the security industry works to improve its hiring rates, the labor market remains challenging for companies with distributed workforces.

A major problem? High employee turnover.

To mitigate this significant staffing issue, security companies must consider the value of strong retention programs and look at options that provide employees with additional benefits – like earned wage access.

What is Earned Wage Access, and why is it helpful?

Earned wage access provides a way for employees to receive pay for hours they have worked, without waiting for the next scheduled payday. This seemingly minor perk has proven to be an impactful benefit, with one security company attributing it to helping them earn a Great Place to Work Certification.

According to Bankrate’s 2024 Annual Emergency Savings Report, a staggering 59% of Americans are uncomfortable with their level of emergency savings. Another 93% of hourly workers find that managing their finances is stressful, with 71% saying that stress has a negative impact on their mental or physical health, according to PwC’s 2024 Employee Financial Wellness Survey. That same report discovered that one in three full-time employees say that money worries have negatively impacted their productivity at work.

As the traditional paycycle can unfortunately leave employees feeling financially vulnerable, this benefit gives your employees control over their finances and a way to easily reduce stress. Ultimately, this can improve their mental and physical health and helps promote improved productivity, which can increase operational efficiency throughout your business.

What are the Immediate and Long-term Benefits?

Employee Benefits

The immediate benefits to implementing earned wage access include instant financial flexibility, reduced financial stress and improved financial wellness of your employees.

It allows employees to access their earned wages immediately, so that they can use it to cover life’s expenses when the unexpected occurs, and it can help them build healthier financial habits to ultimately achieve their financial goals. In fact, 60% of earned wage access users say that they feel less stress about their finances following activation of the service, according to a 2023 user survey from earned wage access provider, DailyPay.

Employer Benefits

Earned wage access brings just as many benefits to you as the employer as there are for your employees.

First, it helps alleviate the ongoing labor issue – on average, companies see an increase of employee retention as high as 36%, according to a survey of internal data between TEAM Software and partner DailyPay.

Second, it helps provide a competitive advantage. On average, the same internal survey showed that 86% of companies with an EWA solution believe it helps uniquely separate them from their top competitors. In an industry that always struggles with retaining top talent, this helps retain more people — resulting in better operational performance overall over other companies.

Lastly, it is simple to activate with no ongoing management of the feature. Your employees will have access to their earned wages before payday without disrupting your payroll cycle or your revenue. It’s a win-win for all parties involved.

Software Integration for Easy Activation

Earned wage access is currently an add-on feature available through TEAM Software’s ERP solution, WinTeam. For more information on the benefits of earned wage access and TEAM Software’s solutions built specifically for security companies, visit us at teamsoftware.com.

Ryan Faith, Account Management Team Lead at TEAM Software by WorkWave

Ryan is a customer advocate who partners with TEAM Software by WorkWave customers to help identify where software can make their businesses more efficient, competitive and profitable. In his six years with TEAM, Ryan has worked alongside many of the world’s leading security firms and has developed a specialized understanding of the unique challenges faced by the industry.

 

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Aley Moyer

The Californian Q4 2023 – Lead Your People Well Everyday: Tips for Effective Leadership

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Lead Your People Well Everyday: Tips for Effective Leadership

Anne Laguzza, CEO – The Works Consulting, Network Partner

Laws change. External factors impact the industry. Clients’ needs shift. There are many outside influences that impact how your operations function and the responsibilities of your team. However, what doesn’t change is the principles of effective leadership.

Follow these three tips to effectively lead your employees everyday – no matter the external factors. 

1. Communicate Daily

Communication is a critical component of actively managing your officers. Regular communication solves issues, often before they arise, and instills confidence in your workforce.

Effective communication is made up of 10% words + 35-45% tone + 45-55% body language. Go beyond text messages, instead have a voice or video conversation. Taking that extra step to make a voice or video call is critical to effectively communicating important assignments and avoiding miscommunications that happen when only using text. This is especially helpful for officers who work solo without seeing anyone in management for weeks or months and can get disconnected quickly.

Regular, effective communication builds trust with your team and boosts employee morale.

2. Convey Appreciation

 Conveying your appreciation for your people is another critical principle of effective leadership. You can do so much to make your officers feel valued and important with very little effort or cost and see an incredible return on your investment.

When I worked internally in the industry, my job was to turn around morale and reduce employee complaints among the 600 employees. I was able to do both, just by recognizing the “human” in these officers and treating them with respect with every interaction. The leadership of our company was very good at getting out in the field and communicating with officers and shaking hands. These interactions made our employees feel valued and important.

A simple phone call or other personalized communication to individual officers from the leader of your company to say thank you will go a long way in ensuring your officers feel valued.

3. Set and Communicate Clear Expectations

When you set expectations and communicate them on a regular basis, you provide your team with a clear path for success.

When your employees face a new or unexpected situation, they – on their own – will be able to reason through the problem and find a solution that aligns with your expectations and represents your company appropriately because you were so clear on communicating those expectations.

Another benefit of regularly communicating expectations regularly is that critical performance conversations will be easier to have with your employees because you have set expectations and can clearly point to where performance has not aligned without any confusion.

As we close out another year and look ahead to changes that every new year can bring, it’s important to  stay focused on what never changes – effective leadership because effective leadership builds high performing teams. 

Anne Laguzza is the CEO of The Works Consulting. As a seasoned business executive with human resources management, leadership development, and performance coaching experience, Anne works with clients from a variety of industries to develop better systems, maximize employee productivity, and enable management to focus on business growth.

Prior to founding The Works Consulting in 2001, Anne served as the Regional Human Resources Director for a Fortune 500 distribution company where she led a merger transition team and was responsible for strategic planning, implementing new policies and procedures, workforce restructuring, compensation structures, and integrating the work cultures for over 600 employees.

In addition, Anne was formerly the Human Resources and Training Director for a start-up entertainment company where she organized and implemented a company-wide change management program that involved new company direction and strategic planning. Prior to her work in the entertainment industry, Anne served as the Regional Training Manager for a nationwide retailer where she developed and launched a multi-state training program for human resources managers as part of a corporate expansion project.

Anne earned her Master of Arts degree in Organizational Management from Antioch University, and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from the University of California, Riverside. She is an active member of the Society of Human Resources Management, and is a board member for Harbor Interfaith Services and an advisory board member for Arthritis National Research Foundation. Anne has taught human resources and management courses at Long Beach City College and California State University, Dominguez Hills, and volunteers at non-profit organizations teaching interviewing skills to adults seeking re-entry into the workforce.

Social Media Links:

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/annelaguzza/

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/TheWorksHR/

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/annelaguzza/

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Aley Moyer

The Californian 2022 Q4 – Connecting Workforce Management in 2023

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Connecting Workforce Management in 2023

Brianne Stephan, Sr. Director of Product, TEAM Software, Network Partner

Optimizing core operational functionalities now can prepare your business for the new year. 

Year-end is a natural opportunity to begin evaluating your current processes to ensure optimization before you launch into next year’s activities. As you evaluate ways to improve processes and gain efficiencies, it’s important to factor workforce management into the equation. 

It’s time for a gap analysis. 

Take a minute. Think about how many software solutions you have running across your business. How are you handling HR and benefits administration, versus time and attendance? How are you proving service delivery to your clients? What areas are still manual, or tackled by pencil and paper? 

Once you conduct this audit, take a hard look at what you’ve got. Then, consider what’s missing. 

It might be a good idea to take an internal tour of your company. Talk to each department, your guards in the field and your stakeholders in the back office. What are the things they’re spending the most time on? Are there roadblocks creating bottlenecks in service delivery?

Once you really grasp an all-encompassing list of wants, needs and already-haves, then you can really start filling the gaps. 

Common gaps.

In our conversations with industry contacts, there are some common gaps that are typically uncovered in this process. 

Time constraints across all departments.

Every part of business operations takes too long. Entire overhead roles are dedicated to manual benefits and time off management. Your managers are chasing down employees for paperwork, scheduling and job assignments. Duplicate data entry and redundant processes are eating into what really matters: your clients and your contracts. 

Lack of visibility into operations and performance.

You’re relying on word of mouth or paper daily activity reports to ensure the work you need done is actually getting done. Your clients are demanding comprehensive reporting before committing to a new contract or added scope of work. You have no data to support proof of quality delivered or to renegotiate contracts when needed.

Field access and employee engagement.

Guards don’t have a way to access their schedules and shift expectations, manage what training they need to stay on top of, or even communicate to managers while out in the field. The tools they have to track their time or review tasks are hard to access or tracked only on paper. And, they send multiple messages to your admin team every time there is a question because they can’t access their own time off balances, insurance or pay stub information. 

Keep these common concerns in mind as you review what’s working, and what isn’t working, for your operations. 

I know what I’m missing. What’s next?  

Of course, we all know having a list of wants and needs doesn’t necessarily mean a point solution is needed for every single person every single time. 

Software is intended to make the work of a business easier. With automation, you can drive efficiency and improve the effectiveness of day-to-day activities – saving time, money and resources along the way. 

Still, piecing software together can often serve the needs of one department, while creating nightmares in another. That’s the problem with siloed data, a hidden challenge many companies in the security industry are dealing with every day. 

Siloed data happens when individual departments or teams use a standalone system to accomplish their work. It can create inconsistencies in reporting, duplicate processes, manual error and incomplete information. On top of that, it increases the amount of support contacts your company has to manage if issues arise, multiple release notes to keep on top of for features and enhancements, and even more billing requirements for your finance team. 

So, the next step in your gap analysis should be to think about what functions make the most sense to come together under a single, integrated software solution. 

Through this approach, you break down those data silos, creating a single source of truth to work through across your departments. 

An all-in-one approach.

We recommend an all-in-one approach to resolve your gap analysis. An integrated workforce management software dives into connecting core areas of your business, from the back office, to operations, to guards in the field. Plus, it reduces cost and risk, improves information accuracy and simplifies processes in the long run. (If you want to go the extra mile, think about integrating your financial and accounting operations, too – an ERP solution can get you there.)

These benefits equate to less time, money and resources spent on manual workforce management, which frees up time to focus on what really matters to your business (like building client relationships).

What Brianne Stephan, Sr. Director of Product, loves most about her role is the collaboration between Users, Business and Technology.  She is passionate about product strategy, design thinking principles and new product development.  Brianne’s focus at WorkWave is on the global product strategy and bringing modern technology and features to the product portfolio.

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Aley Moyer

The Californian 2022 Q3 – Best Practices for Intake and Onboarding

BEST PRACTICES FOR INTAKE AND ONBOARDING

Simplifying paperwork, avoiding liability, and more best practices for today’s hiring climate.

Nina “Nine” De Forge, Agency Relations Manager, TEAM Software by WorkWave

Between employment contracts, payroll and benefits forms, handbooks and standard operating procedure information, and emergency contact forms (to name a few), the onboarding process of a newly hired officer can be time consuming. Add into the mix the ongoing challenges of hidden turnover, where new hires leave during or soon after onboarding (or, never report for their first day of training), and your HR teams are bound to feel like they’re climbing an uphill battle.

The good news is there are some best practices your team can put in place to ease the process.

1. Simplify paperwork. Much like asking too many unnecessary questions during the hiring process can deter job candidates in a tight labor market, the sheer volume of onboarding paperwork can overwhelm your new hires. If you’re still collecting onboarding documentation manually, with managers collecting physical copies of documents in the field or via unsecured email processes, you’re well aware of just how hard it can be to finalize an employee’s paperwork prior to importing into their employee master file.

Automating onboarding processes speeds up the process, and reduces the number of errors that can occur during otherwise manual documentation and processing. (Plus, it gives you the option to securely store documentation digitally, so you don’t have to maintain countless filing cabinets.)

2. Use the most updated, necessary intake forms. Reducing the amount of paperwork your team needs to collect isn’t always an option, as certain documents are required by the government or corporate policies.

For example, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently modified several standard forms to fully implement a nonbinary ‘X’ gender marker in addition to male and female indicators and an ‘Mx’ in the selection of prefixes. This change was made to help support nonbinary employees in the workplace. These forms are typically required of businesses with 100 or more employees (or federal contractors with at least 50 employees). Look for updates in your software solution to help support this change and decrease your company’s risk of liability. (For example, TEAM Software is already working on a user interface that will support the nonbinary gender marker in this format.)

3. Don’t forget about making onboarding easy on both sides. At TEAM’s recent annual client conference, a client said this, and it bears repeating: 

“Onboarding should be quick and easy. It has to be easy for the employee, so you can get them on the job and on the path towards retention, faster. But, it also has to be easy on the company.” 

Onboarding is an inherently complex task, with moving parts that involve not only HR, but finance, IT, operations and more. Add in typical security industry employee turnover percentages and amplified repercussions still being felt by the labor market, and this could very easily be a recipe for burnout. By establishing clear, concise processes, taking advantage of self-service options when you can, and leaning into automation, the administrative side of onboarding will reap the benefits of a streamlined workflow.

Nina De Forge joined the team in 2017 and is the Agency Relations Manager. Nina, also known as “9,” has been working with human resources, payroll and tax compliance since the 1980s and has a broad range of experience across each discipline. She is an active member of many industry organizations, including the IRS Information Reporting Advisory Committee and its Nationwide E-Filer’s National Focus Group, the Canadian Payroll Association, the Society for Human Resource Management and the International Association for Human Resource Information Management. She is a published author in the book American Payroll Association Basic Guide to Payroll. Outside of her career work, Nina is a hobby photographer.

 

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Aley Moyer

The Californian 2022 Q3 – Three Tips to Reduce Overtime, Now.

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THREE TIPS TO REDUCE OVERTIME, NOW. 

Plus: Things to keep in mind when dealing with overtime during a labor shortage.

Gail Tutt, TEAM Software by WorkWave

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: the best way to reduce overtime is to stop it before it starts. It’s a little cliché, especially when overtime (and, unfortunately, non-billable overtime) is an inherent part of the security industry. Still, there are several tactics you can use to get a handle on overtime and manage labor costs. 

1. Know your service-level agreements. This doesn’t just mean at the executive level. Because SLAs dictate the service standards and pricing obligations you’re required to deliver to your customers, it’s imperative that any employee who is involved in managing your company’s scheduling is well versed in bill and pay rates by contract. By ensuring understanding in all scheduling roles, you can prevent costly mistakes (like wage creep, which can occur in a variety of scenarios, but especially when officers are scheduled for overtime shifts outside of the scope of what’s budgeted per job.) 

By knowing your SLAs inside and out, your company is also setting up the foundation for best practices in job costing. With industry-specific software solutions to assist in the heavy lifting of tracking and analyzing job performance, you can see at a glance which jobs are lending themselves to your profit margins, and which are under performing.

2. Don’t forget about compliance. In some cases, there’s no way around scheduling overtime without compromising your compliance with state and federal labor law regulations and overtime rules. In our industry, there are compliance risks posed from misclassification, recordkeeping and other hour and wage-related activities that can turn your timekeeping and overtime tracking into a headache. Earlier this year, even, this entity reported a wage settlement (with waiting time penalties) due to an upheld ruling alleging an employer failed to include meal period premiums on wage statements. A different case in 2021 found the California Supreme Court upholding that employers are required to pay meal and rest break violation premiums at the same rate as when paying overtime. Translation: these costs add up quickly.

While many integrated workforce management solutions don’t track compliance for you, they do provide tools to more easily prove compliance. Look for feature sets which include things like time and attendance (including punch times), scheduling, regulation monitoring and reporting to gain well-rounded visibility into your compliance.  

3. Become friends with your data. This point is straightforward: dig into your data early on in your scheduling process. In available TEAM solutions, we recommend including criteria like parameter searches for available guards that fit within the bill rate specified per job. That way, your schedulers will only be able to assign officers to shifts whose rate fits the given budget (see our first point).

Often, we find companies can implement at least one of these tips to help prevent and improve overtime. But we also recognize that the current labor market throws a new wrench into the mix. When it’s hard to find officers to fill shifts in general, of course it becomes more likely for regular shifts to turn into overtime to stay on top of SLAs. While there’s no easy answer, it’s possible resolving this particular overtime challenge can be addressed by refocusing on retention.

Start by taking a few steps back to analyze what your voluntary separations look like. Are officers leaving for higher hourly rates or benefits? Or are they leaving for more flexibility in their schedules? Maybe they’re pivoting careers into adjacent industries or taking even bigger leaps into entirely new verticals. The common theme of all these scenarios is that it is likely not a separation on bad terms. This could be an opportunity to think outside the box in the form of a self-scheduling program. This way, employees stay in your employee management system (as part-time or ad hoc employees) and can pick up shifts based on when they want to work (even if they are employed elsewhere). While it may not work for everyone, it is an interesting tactic to reduce overtime needs while increasing employee retention.

It’s hard to theorize if there will ever be a world without overtime in some capacity. But, there are steps you can take to improve this metric now. See how at teamsoftware.com. 

Gail has spent over 35 years in the private sector as a senior level finance and operations manager across multiple industry. Most recently CFO of a regional security company in San Jose, CA, Gail now works providing invaluable insight and expertise as a business consultant with TEAM Software.  Her hobbies include breeding and showing standard wirehair dachshunds, hiking and spending time with her family.

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Aley Moyer

The Californian 2022 Q2 – SPRING CLEANING: THERE’S NO BETTER TIME FOR YOUR NEXT HR AUDIT

SPRING CLEANING: THERE’S NO BETTER TIME FOR YOUR NEXT HR AUDIT

Anne Laguzza, The Works Consulting, Network Partner

As a California business owner, you may have jumped for joy at the start of the year when you realized there were significantly fewer changes to employment legislation than in previous years. If you’re with the majority, you probably did a quick update to your policies and procedures, and then filed them away until next year. 

Just as I did with my clients, I’d like to encourage you to use this unusual gift to your advantage. It’s time for a bit of spring cleaning! Remember, legal compliance is only one part of your human resources practice. Fewer new laws means more breathing room for California employers and, therefore, the ability to more clearly look at the other aspects of your business that may need to undergo some optimization. 

That’s where an HR audit comes in to play.

The security industry—like many other industries today—is grappling with maintaining a strong and consistent workforce. As such, there is absolutely no better time to conduct a comprehensive HR audit to bolster your competitive advantage while doing a bit of risk mitigation that will help you down the road. With new jobs popping up regularly, your human resources practices are operating at a rapid pace that may result in errors and, potentially, legal consequences. It’s important to take the opportunity now to make sure that you’re set up to do the right thing, every time.

If you’ve never conducted this kind of audit, or it’s been awhile since you last did, here’s my guide to making sure it helps your business for years to come.

What is an HR Audit?

Let’s start with the basics—an HR audit takes a formal inventory of your company’s practices from hiring to termination of employment. This includes reviewing and optimizing any outdated or ineffective processes, procedures or company policies. The intent of an HR audit is not necessarily to determine what you are doing wrong, but instead, to understand what is going well and could be even better. 

An HR audit is meant to serve as the first step in aligning human resources operations with the strategic goals of your organization.

When was the last time you reviewed your organization’s wage statement? New hire forms? Leave of absence process? Job classifications? Benefits packages?

Everything that governs your employees fits under the umbrella of what can and should be included in an HR audit.

Who should be conducting my HR audit?

If you have an HR department or dedicated HR professional, it’s important that someone outside of your HR team lead and oversee the process. This ensures that organizations maintain checks and balances with an objective, second set of eyes managing the audit process. This can be someone from a different department within your organization who has the knowledge and experience to review the details.

For organizations that don’t have the internal support required to keep the process objective, an external HR consultant can be a great candidate to help facilitate the audit. Most importantly, this person should deeply understand your industry and the unique challenges that you face every day. Furthermore, there’s a lot to know about conducting a well-functioning business in California specifically, so an HR consultant ingrained in the region is going to be your best bet.

What are the main components of an HR audit?

A successful HR audit will take into thoughtful consideration the distinctive aspects of the company and its practices. However, there are some common threads that will benefit any organization. Fundamentally, an HR audit will consider:

  • How are people coming into the company? 
  • How are people operating within the company? 
  • How are people leaving the company?

For the security industry, in particular, I recommend my clients take a close look at the following aspects of their HR practices:

  1. Talent Acquisition and Orientation – This should encompass your recruiting, hiring and new hire training processes, including employment applications as well as interviewing and selection protocols.
  2. Compensation and Benefits Administration – This portion of your audit will review everything from job classifications to rest and meal periods, cell phone allowances and leaves of absence.
  3. Training and Development – For the security industry, this is a significant component of any HR audit, including a review of required training, both for armed and unarmed officers.
  4. Communication and Employee Retention – This will include a review of any employee recognition programs as well as protocols for performance feedback and methods of maintaining company culture.
  5. Document Review – Any HR audit should take into consideration the company’s existing employee paperwork, updating any items that are outdated or inconsistent with the company’s current practices.
  6. Employee Files – As an offshoot of document review, I also recommend that companies review a sampling of their employee files (electronic or paper) to ensure that they are organized, up-to-date and that information is easily accessible.
  7. Termination of Employment – This includes a review of the processes surrounding termination of employment to ensure that the company is in compliance with current final paycheck requirements and protocols for offboarding an employee.

For the majority of employers, I recommend that the HR audit process start with a thorough review of the current version of the company’s Employee Handbook. The Employee Handbook is an important document to keep current and ensure that your practices match your policies. This is always a good baseline to determine if anything is missing, incomplete or in need of improvement.

With all of these tips in mind, you’re ready to go forth and conquer your company’s 2022 HR Audit!

 

Anne Laguzza is the CEO of The Works Consulting, a CALSAGA Network Partner. As a seasoned business executive with human resources management, leadership development, and performance coaching experience, Anne works with clients from a variety of industries to develop better systems, maximize employee productivity, and enable management to focus on business growth. For more information, check out theworksconsulting.com or email anne@theworksconsulting.com. You can also find Anne on Instagram and LinkedIn.

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Aley Moyer

The Californian 2022 Q2 – POSITIONING YOURSELF AS AN EMPLOYER OF CHOICE

POSITIONING YOURSELF AS AN EMPLOYER OF CHOICE

Jeff Davis, Group Vice President, Solution Sales, WorkWave

It comes as no surprise that hiring (and retention) is still a hot topic in the security industry. While there’s no magic answer to overcoming the challenges of today’s competitive market, we know the key to attracting talent is to position yourself as an employer of choice. There are the obvious variables you should consider when making your open positions competitive (like wages and benefits, for example). The other part of that strategy is making sure the right applicants know who you are, or how to find out more about you.

That’s easier said than done. You can post an opening to a job board and post about it on your website or social media, but that’s only the first step in becoming more visible. You need to make sure that job seekers can find you, they can understand your website, and the information you’re presenting is clear. To achieve those things, you need to start thinking like a marketer. 

Start by comparing a traditional recruitment funnel against a traditional marketing funnel. They really aren’t all that different, especially in the beginning stages. Awareness is at the top of each process and where you have the most opportunity to position yourself as an employer of choice. This is your first touch point with potential job candidates and the stage where you can set the framework for the quantity and quality of your candidate leads. To improve awareness, think about: 

  • Improving your SEO. To those outside the marketing field, SEO may sound daunting, but it’s a readily available tool you can draw on to make your company — and website — more “findable” by job seekers. Using what you can find from SEO, you can add keywords to job descriptions, organic and paid ads, blog posts and webpages to help increase visibility where you need it. 
  • Expanding your content. Don’t only think about job postings and descriptions when your goal is hiring (although those are important, too.) Think about your overall brand. Are you demonstrating your company’s values, or highlighting reasons why someone would want to choose you as a place of employment over a competitor? Think about how you’re showing these things. Can you highlight testimonials from current employees? Can you demonstrate a walk-through of a “day in the life” of what the open position would require? Be accurate (while also being conscious of not sharing any information from your clients or contracts) and take what you find to the applicant directly — whether that’s social media, job boards, or traditional in-person recruitment events.

Gain more marketing advice and other best practices based on current industry trends.

After you’ve begun engaging with a pool of potential job applicants, then you can start narrowing your focus on the middle and end stages of the hiring funnel. Plan to dedicate real time to job descriptions and listings. 

Pro tip: Familiarize yourself with the rules of specific job boards. Some will remove your job listings if you ask certain information, like age or background checks. If that criterion is required for your screening process, make sure you’re including the qualifying criteria as required responses in your applicant tracking and hiring system.

In your job listings themselves, don’t be limited by wage and benefit information. Can you offer jobs that are more convenient to an applicant based on proximity to residence? Are you able to offer shift flexibility, a hiring bonus, or a guaranteed bonus after a certain period on the job? Even if it’s seemingly small, any detail can set you apart in the market — especially as job flexibility becomes a bigger consideration for today’s job seekers. Just make sure you’re being accurate. Remember, the goal should be to attract quality applicants, not quantity.

Marketing is a crucial step in staying ahead of the competition in a tight labor market. If you’re looking for help in website design, SEO or other opportunities to improve your recruitment marketing, TEAM Software by WorkWave can help. 

For the last 20 years, Jeff has focused on technology, working in sales and marketing to executive leadership, with five years specializing in human resources technology. Within his leadership role at WorkWave, which acquired TEAM Software in 2021, Jeff serves as a subject matter expert delivering marketing and service solutions to service contractors worldwide.

 

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Kate

The Californian 2022 Q1 – WOMEN, SECURITY AND COVID-19

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WOMEN, SECURITY AND COVID-19

Ashlee Cervantes, Guard Protection Force & CALSAGA Board Member

 

How recently have you reviewed your internal Security Officer statistics? Do you know the percentage of women versus men on your team? Now you may be thinking,

“Why does it matter? I hire the most qualified person for the job.”

I wholeheartedly agree with this perspective, I also know that numbers never lie. There’s an entire story they represent and if we listen there’s much to be learned from the stories these numbers can reveal.

 

As a security professional I am sure you’re already aware of the inherit value women bring to your workforce. Nonetheless, here are just a few of the critical components that highlight the essential need for a multicultural and diverse workforce now more than ever:

  1. According to Security Magazine, security is one of the fastest-growing professional careers worldwide. Not that I need to tell you this – just speak with your sales and recruitment teams. When you strategize to target and retain female talent you open doors to exacerbate talent growth.
  2. The issues our clients are facing have evolved over the past 20 years and now require a collaborative, diverse team to address these (literal) life and death problems. Research continues to indicate the more diverse your team – the better the results. Women strategize and think differently than our male counterparts. We tend to naturally leverage empathy, effective communication and emotional intelligence to problem solve and effectively mitigate difficult situations.
  3. Lastly, when it comes to boots on the ground operations we’ve all heard women are simply better shooters than men. Now, I am using this idea to be facetious but there is a relevant point to deliver here: women have much to bring to the table from an operational perspective as well. One theory explains, “that yes, women are better shooters, and [this] theory is that it’s because women listen to their instructors instead of trying to one-up them” Tactically women have many qualities, especially those highlighted by this point, we are keen listeners and observationists.

 

Now we’ve covered at least a few of the critical components as to why you need women on your security team. So go ahead and review your own internal statistics and let’s talk about what you find …

Scenario I: Perhaps you found that your internal statistics reflect those of the industry nationally: 25% of security officers in the US are women . While this scenario means your company stacks up positively against the national numbers, we’ll still want to revisit how as an industry we can grow those numbers in general.

Scenario II: Let’s explore another possibility. What if you review your employee statistics and find that you are at or even exceed 25% of women in your workforce, but only when you include administrative staff. While this isn’t bad news, I’d caution you against celebrating your diverse workforce just yet.

By design administrative teams are critically different than our security officer roles. And remember, the national statistic indicates that 25% of all security officers are women, so that’s what we want to measure ourselves against.

Scenario III: Let’s explore a final possibility. what if you fall short of the national average? In this scenario you review your internal security officer profiles and come to find that your organization currently employ less than 25% women in the field.

 

First things first; don’t panic.

A great place to start is to reflect on your company history. If 2022 reflects less than 25% of your security officers are women, what did 2021 look like? And 2020? Even more importantly, what about 2018 & 2019? Here is why this is critical information: we know that COVID-19 has critically impacted women in the workplace across industries).

In this scenario the goal will be to understand where those women went across the span of the last three years. Your internal exit interviews are a great place to start. Your exit interviews should give you insight into why former employees have left and where they went. Digging into those details will help you understand how to better accommodate and attract women to your workforce going forward, and particularly in a COVID world.

In closing, we’ve addressed the critical components a diverse workforce bring to your organization, clients and our industry as a whole. Then we analyzed why you need to know your own numbers and understand where you fall. I outlined three scenarios and possibilities to frame those numbers, but know that it is okay if you don’t fit in a particular box.

There is much work to be done, but awareness of the critical value women bring to the security industry is the very first step.

Ashlee Cervantes holds her Masters in Business Administration from University of California, Davis. She is a seasoned security professional, with over a decade of management experience overseeing teams who specialize in Armed Security and Executive Protection. She is based in Northern California where she serves as the Executive Director of Operations with Guardian Protection Force Inc (GPF). Since 2019 she has served as the Northern California Director of CALSAGA. In her time in the industry Ashlee has grown both teams of security professionals, management and revenues four-fold. 

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Aley Moyer

The Californian 2022 Q1 – RETAINING EMPLOYEES IN THE AGE OF EARNED WAGE ACCESS

RETAINING EMPLOYEES IN THE AGE OF EARNED WAGE ACCESS

Jeff Davis,  TEAM Software, Network Partner

Let’s set the stage: it’s 2022. The labor market is still volatile. The number of unemployed persons per job opening is at a record low. We’re hearing leaders in the industry express frustrations about meeting service demands while battling staffing shortages. Retention is (or should be) a key metric in the longevity of your hiring strategies. 

Enter: the age of earned wage access. 

Earned wage access programs are when employers give employees access to their earned wages, even if that request comes before a regular payday. This on-demand pay model is changing the payroll landscape, where alternatives could be pushing your employees to salary lenders (and the accompanying interest) when short-term cash flow needs arise. As an employer, you could be offering a similar source of cash flow and reap the benefit of increased officer retention. 

Before we dive too deeply into the top, let me say this: early wage access programs shouldn’t add processes (or associated costs) to your existing payroll procedures. Most financial wellness programs are built so all the extra work associated with getting your employees’ earned wages to them early happens outside of your current processes. 

How? Typically, an employee pays a small fee to access earned pay on demand. They can do this down to the day, with balances updating after each shift worked. When the program includes a paycheck advance app, employees can gain access to funds even faster, no matter where they are. 

If you’re weighing the pros and cons of implementing an on-demand pay model into your business, consider these study-proven benefits: 

  1. Companies have seen reductions in turnover as high as 90%.
  2. Companies experience decreases in hiring costs related to turnover (a number that has been reported to averaging at least $4,000 per hire). 
  3. Companies have seen increased interest from job applicants. (Plus, consider this: as an early adopter to on-demand pay programs, your job postings have one more way of standing apart from the competition and their benefits packages.)
  4. Employees have reported decreases in finance-related stress (improving employee experience and financial well-being, and productivity on the ops side of your business).

In short, an early paycheck program could be just what you need to strengthen your employee retention strategy and keep your contracts staffed. 

If this is an avenue you’re interested in exploring, start by evaluating the interest of early paycheck access within your workforce. And, know not all programs are created equal. At TEAM, we partner with different providers regionally to make earned wage access even easier, but it’s important to talk to your own legal team to ensure the providers you’re partnering with are adhering to all necessary wage laws and compliance requirements. No financial risk should fall to your company. 

Once you’ve got a system up and rolling, measure metrics like employee satisfaction, retention and turnover. Gauge any new applicant volume and adjust accordingly. As you do, don’t forget about your other hiring and retention strategies to hire (and keep) your staff. 

 

Jeff Davis was president of Kwantek, a recruiting and onboarding software provider acquired by TEAM Software, the leading provider of integrated financial, operations and workforce management software for cleaning and security contractors, in 2020. Since joining TEAM, Jeff is the VP of Strategic Growth North America, acting as a subject matter expert and thought leader for TEAM in the security and cleaning industries and assisting with global sales and marketing initiatives. For the last 20 years, Jeff has focused on technology, working in sales and marketing to executive leadership, with four years specializing in human resources technology. He has an MBA focusing on Information Systems from Tennessee Tech and a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing from the University of Louisville.

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