Recruiting That Works Requires a Recipe for Success

Anne Laguzza, CEO – The Works Consulting, Network Partner

Do you have a recruiting plan? I am not talking about a haphazard list of open positions. I am talking about a detailed recruiting plan. In our current talent shortage, having an actual detailed plan is now more important than ever.

Many leaders feel pressure to hire immediately, and while rushing to do so, don’t take the time to develop a plan. Even experienced leaders need a plan to ensure that the best person is hired for the position that they have. 

Why have a recruiting plan? 

In hiring, you want consistency. Consistency leads to high performing teams that match your values and generate the best results for your business. You want to follow the same recipe every single time. 

Consider a recipe for muffins. In order to produce the same delicious, light and fluffy muffins every single time, you must follow the recipe exactly as listed. Any deviation from the list of ingredients and instructions will result in a completely different muffin. They could taste great or need to be tossed out.

THIS is why you need a recruiting plan. It is your “recipe” if you will, of how you will select new team members. You will follow the recruiting plan over and over again to ensure that you hire the best people for your position. You want to consistently hire the people that you need for your team to grow – not a “let’s see what happens” approach.

The benefits of a well thought out recruiting plan are:

• It saves time.
• It keeps you and others focused.
• It maintains organization and consistency.

Some components of a good recruiting plan:

• A job description or understanding of responsibilities.
• Identification of the non-negotiables for a position.
• Detailed behavioral characteristics and skills that are required for this position.
• An engaging job posting.
• Development of a job posting strategy – sources, timing, etc. 
• Established interview questions.
• A defined process of who will be involved in interviews and when.
• A recruiting timeline with an estimated start date. 

Developing an effective recruiting plan takes time up front to plan. The time invested up front will save you time later on in performance management and having to refill the position if the person selected doesn’t work out. Not to mention the cost your bad hiring decisions have on team morale.

Hiring is likely THE most important thing you’ll do as a leader. Every time you have an opening on your team, you have an opportunity to evaluate the current strengths and identify what skills and qualities you need to help your team grow.

Don’t throw this opportunity away. You have a very important job as a leader and your current people are counting on you to carry out that responsibility by finding and hiring only the best people. Every single time.

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.

CALIFORNIA TIPS THE SCALES: EMPLOYERS’ NEW OBLIGATIONS TO COMPLY WITH PAY TRANSPARENCY AND PAY DATA REPORTING REQUIREMENTS

Saba Zafar, Esq. and Jaimee K. Wellerstein, Esq., Bradley, Gmelich + Wellerstein, CALSAGA Legal Advisor

On September 27, 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 1162 (“SB 1162”), an expansive pay transparency and pay data reporting bill requiring employers to include pay ranges in all job advertisements effective January 1, 2023.  SB 1162 also makes significant changes to California’s existing pay data reporting requirements. 

What Do California Employers Need To Know About SB 1162?

SB 1162 has two components that will be codified under Labor Code section 432.3 and Government Code section 12999. The first relates to pay transparency and the second to the pay data report that is submitted to the Civil Rights Department (“CRD” – formerly the Department of Fair Employment and Housing).

1. Pay Transparency (Labor Code section 432.3) – Employers must comply with certain pay scale transparency requirements:

a. Employers with 15 or more employees must include the pay scale for a position in any job posting. This applies even if the employer engages the services of a third party to announce, post, publish or otherwise make a job posting known.

b. All employers must, upon reasonable request, provide the pay scale for a position to an applicant applying for a job (this was already a law but is a good reminder).

c. All employers must, upon request, provide an employee with the pay scale for the current job for which they are employed. 

d. Employers must also maintain records of a job title and the wage rate history for that job for the each employee for the length of the employee’s employment and then for three years after the employee’s separation of employment. The Labor Commissioner can audit these records. 

As to what constitutes a pay scale, it simply means “the salary or hourly wage range that the employer reasonably expects to pay for the position.” If the employer pays a set salary or hourly wage, then the employer should include that amount in the job posting. 

As a reminder, employers may not inquire about an applicant’s salary history. What can employers still do? Employers can still inquire about an applicant’s salary expectations.

2. Pay Data Reporting (Government Code section 129999) – Employers with 100 or more employees (“Covered Employers”) were already required to report pay data to the CRD and could previously have submitted the same EE0-1 report that they submitted to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”). Under amended Government Code section 12999, Covered Employers will have to meet some additional requirements. Below are some of the pertinent (but not all) changes:

a. Covered Employers must submit the pay data report by the second Wednesday of May of each year, rather than in March as previously required;

b. The report must include the number of employees by race, ethnicity, and sex for 10 job categories listed in the Code.

c. The report must also include the mean and median hourly rate for each job category for each combination of race, ethnicity, and sex. 

d. Covered Employers who contract with labor contractors must provide a separate report to the CRD. 

e. Employers can pick any pay period between October 1 and December 31 of the reporting year. 

What’s The Penalty for Non-Compliance?

It is incredibly important for employers to comply with these requirements, not just because it is the law, but also because non-compliance comes with penalties. 

For violations of Labor Code section 432.3, an aggrieved person may file a written complaint with the Labor Commissioner within one year after the person learns of the violation. Upon finding of a violation, the Labor Commissioner may assess penalties between $100 and $10,000 per violation!

For violations of Government Code section 12999, the CRD may assess penalties for a failure to file a report up to $100 per employee for the first violation and up to $200 per employee for each subsequent violation (for an employer with 100 employees, that is $10,000 for the first violation and $20,000 for each subsequent violation).

Employer Takeaway: Comply! Comply! Comply! If you do not already have data regarding pay scale for various positions, you should start compiling it now so that you are ready when an employee or applicant inquires about the pay scale for a position or when you need to include the pay scale on a job posting. For the pay data report to the CRD, since the data need only be for one pay period, employers should start compiling this information now so you are prepared to report it in May. As always, the attorneys at Bradley, Gmelich & Wellerstein, LLP are here to answer any questions you may have about this new law or its impact on your business. 

 Saba Zafar is Special Counsel in Bradley, Gmelich & Wellerstein LLP’s Employment Law Department. Ms. Zafar has over a decade of experience as an attorney, primarily in employment law. Ms. Zafar focuses her practice of providing strategic advice and counsel in all aspects of employment law and workplace matters, including drafting and implementation of HR policies and procedures, Employment Handbooks, providing advice to clients on personnel issues as well as general business matters.

 

 

Jaimee K. Wellerstein, Esq. is a Partner at Bradley, Gmelich & Wellerstein LLP, and the Head of the firm’s Employment Department. Jaimee concentrates her practice in representing employers in all aspects of employment law, including defense of wage and hour class actions, PAGA claims, discrimination, retaliation, harassment, wrongful discharge, misclassification, and other employment related lawsuits. She also provides employment counseling and training in all of these areas.

Jaimee routinely represents employers in federal and state courts and in arbitration proceedings throughout the state, as well as at administrative proceedings before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the California Department of Labor Standards Enforcement, the United States Department of Labor, and other federal and state agencies.

Jaimee assists as a Legal Advisor to CALSAGA, and is a member of ASIS International. She is rated AV-Preeminent by Martindale-Hubbell, the highest peer rating available. jwellerstein@bgwlawyers.com

About Bradley, Gmelich & Wellerstein LLP

Founded in 2000, Bradley, Gmelich & Wellerstein, LLP is dedicated to providing sound advice and exceptional results for our clients. Our twenty-five plus skilled, dedicated and diverse attorneys represent individuals and businesses of all sizes in a wide variety of business, employment law and litigation matters.  www.bgwlawyers.com.

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.