HR Business Tips: EEO-1 reports are due October 30, are you ready?

Each year businesses miss the EEO-1 deadline and face potential penalties. 

Confirm your report has been filed

Who must file?

1. All employers with 100 or more employees, excluding state and local governments, school systems, institutions of higher education, Indian tribes and tax-exempt private membership clubs other than labor organizations.
2. Employers with fewer than 100 employees if the company is owned or affiliated with another company and the entire enterprise employees a total of 100 or more employees.
3. All federal contractors who have 50 or more employees and have a contract, subcontract or purchase order amounting to $50,000 or more

How do I file?

Single establishment employers (i.e., employers with only one physical location) can file either a paper form or can submit their report online.

Multi-establishment employers (i.e., employer doing business at more than one location) must complete online:

A report covering the headquarters office

A separate report for each location with 50 or more employees

A separate report for each location with fewer than 50 employees, or a location list that consolidates the data

To file or get more information about filing, go here: http://www.eeoc.gov/employers/eeo1survey/

What information do I need to provide?

The number of employees by race, sex and job category. Remember to provide an opportunity for your employees to self-identify their race and ethnic information. You are required to attempt to allow employees to self-identify. This information should be kept confidential and separate from the employee file. If an employee declines to self-identify, employment records or observer identification may be used.

Make sure your forms and data collection is updated with the most current race and job categories.

Current Race/Ethnic categories:

• Hispanic or Latino
• White (Not Hispanic or Latino)
• Black or African American (Not Hispanic or Latino)
• Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (Not Hispanic or Latino)
• Asian (Not Hispanic or Latino)
• American Indian or Alaska Native (Not Hispanic or Latino)
• Two or More Races (Not Hispanic or Latino

Current Job Categories:

• Executive/Senior Level Officials and Managers
• First/Mid-Level Officials and Managers
• Professionals
• Technicians
• Sales Workers
• Administrative Support Workers
• Craft Workers
• Operatives
• Laborers and Helpers
• Service Workers

For more detailed information about the categories, see: http://www.eeoc.gov/employers/eeo1survey/2007instructions.cfm

A job classification guide can be found here: http://www.eeoc.gov/employers/eeo1survey/jobclassguide.cfm

his article was written by Lauren Sims, an eqHR Solutions Principal Consultant. 

HR Business Tips: Choosing a Performance Driven & Cost Effective Job Board

Are you a business owner that is planning to hire an entry to mid-level position soon?  I suggest you read my article to save you time and money.

Our HR consulting firm was recently hired on an hourly basis to recruit for a newly created entry-level position. The job posting was for an entry level, management trainee for customer services for a well know Tech Company in Orange County, CA.

Because it has been over a year since I had last posted a position to a job board, I elected to test some of the top job boards. First I reviewe several job board articles that I found on Google.

Monster and CareerBuilder have their own platforms and it was routinely suggested to use one or the other.  I chose CareerBuilder, SimplyHired and indeed.com for my evaluation.

In the past, I have used Monster and ZipRecruiter.  Monster’s results were adequate and many articles suggested using either CareerBuilder or Monster, but not both.

When I last used ZipRecruiter, they had just lost their major job board partnerships and thereafter their results were almost non-existent.

The pricing models for CareerBuilder and SimplyHired are similar, a flat rate for each job post for a certain length of time. While CareerBuilder cost is in the $400.00 range, Simply Hired is half the amount. 

Indeed.com is different and what really intrigued me was their new pay per click model.  Perhaps, because I have done considerable Google pay per click, their methodology made sense.

What were the results?  CareerBuilder produced three (3) candidates during the 30 days and none of those applicants met my criteria.  After one week, I called my sales rep and he referred me to his manager in NY. The manager called me and said that CareerBuilder is “not really for entry level positions” and had I called my sales representative, he may have suggested that I not use CareerBuilder for my position!  The manager did not offer a credit, just his advice.

With SimplyHired, I experience website logging difficulty and was required to reset my password each time.  Although they are the cheaper alternative, the $149.00 was also a waste my time and my clients’ money. Two candidates applied during the 45-day period, but one was qualified.  The client needed five candidates and based on SimplyHired performance, it could take another four months to locate qualified candidates!

The “Job Board Champion” was indeed.com. Almost immediately, five to six candidates applied daily and approximately 30% of the applicants met my initial qualifications.  In addition, unlike CareerBuilder, indeed.com provides access to their resume data base and only charges a nominal amount if you do reach out to a potential candidate.  CareerBuilder charges $400.00 just to look!

Recruiters charge commissions of 30%, so they can afford to post to every job board. But, as a business owner, your time and money is valuable. If you do recruit and hire your own employees, I recommend you first look into using indeed.com for your recruiting needs.

 Robert Reifeiss, Consultant

When your business requires professional HR assistance, please consider eqHR. Call 855-461-8808 for a no cost consultation.

Giving Birth at Yahoo - Good / Bad Polices?

If you are the business leader of a small to medium size business, you may care less what the fortune 100 tech companies offer their employees, but you should....

Tech companies, famously on the forefront of creative and generous benefits and perks, have recently been pushing the envelope in the area of new parent benefits.

Netflix announced in early August their new maternity and paternity leave policy, allowing new parents to take unlimited paid parental leave during the year following the birth or adoption of a child.

Microsoft increased their paid maternity leave allotment from 12 weeks to 20 weeks. Yahoo increase their paid maternity leave to 16 weeks and paid paternity leave to 8 weeks. IBM instituted a plan to help breast-feeding mothers who are on business trips ship their breast milk home for free. Facebook and Apple announced new benefits allowing their female employees to harvest and freeze their eggs, deferring child-rearing.

It’s interesting, especially in light of the fact that woman are underrepresented in the tech industry, with only about 25% of tech employees being female. Yet, this recent surge in maternity benefits could be interpreted as an effort to attract more female employees to the industry.

All these new perks sound exciting, but how many employees will actually take advantage of them? Companies create these policies but then send out mixed signals, and employees who take advantage of them find themselves victims of peer pressure.

Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, recently announced she was pregnant was twins and announced she would only be taking as little as 2 weeks of maternity leave, and working throughout. It’s not a big surprise, this is the same woman who only took 2 weeks of maternity leave for the birth of her first child, and also famously eliminated Yahoo’s flexible work from home policies not long after taking the helm at Yahoo.

What is the message they are sending? IBM will ship home breast milk but they are still sending that new mother on a business trip. Yahoo will give a new mother a paid 16 week leave, but clearly the culture at the organization is not to take the full allotment of leave.

It will be interesting to see over time if employees are taking advantage of these new policies, and if they will spread to other industries, or even to the nation as a whole, as the United States remains the only developed country in the world that does not require paid leave for new mothers.

This article was written by Lauren Sims, an eqHR Solutions Principal Consultant. 

For further information regarding this topic, visit:

http://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2015/aug/09/netflix-parental-leave-policy

http://www.wired.com/2015/08/techs-selfish-reasons-offering-parental-leave/

http://fortune.com/2015/08/10/adobe-parental-leave/

http://time.com/4033935/parental-leave-technology-companies/

Whenever your business requires professional HR assistance, from employment policies, employment investigations, employee handbooks, live sexual harassment prevention training (AB1825 and AB5053), management development, HR outsourcing or ADP payroll training / processing, please call 855-461-8808 for a no cost consultation.

eqHR Business Tips: Fragrance Sensitivity- Do You Have to Accommodate?

As as business owner, did you ever imagine being involved with an employee's complaint about their sensitivity to another employee's fragrance? 

Today, you must be prepared. This article was written to offer business leaders guidance to deal with employment issues.

For employees with certain medical conditions, such as asthma or allergies, the workplace can be a daunting miasma of irritating scents and fragrances. Especially in modern workplaces that favor more open space, if someone is wearing perfume or strong cologne, it can be almost impossible to escape the cloud of scents.

It can be intimidating for employers to navigate this issue. In fact, according to a recent NPR story, SHRM reports that fragrance policies are among the top five requests it receives from its members. 

Employers should understand that individuals with medical conditions that make them fragrance- or irritant-sensitive might be covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and entitled to reasonable accommodation.

Many employers are adopting light-fragrance policies instead of imposing fragrance free mandates. Light-fragrance policies can be beneficial to all employees, not just those with sensitivities, as heavy perfumes and colognes can be irritating and distracting to everyone.

Fortunately, fragrance free environments and policies have so far been viewed in the courts as unreasonable accommodations. However, as with any request for accommodation, the employer should engage in an interactive process with the employee to achieve a mutually satisfying solution.

When an employer receives a request for scent- or irritant-free environments, the employer should treat the request like any ADA accommodation request.

First, determine they have sufficient information from the employee’s medical provider to ensure the employee comes within the ADA disability definition. Next, the employer should consider the request and evaluate the challenges of implementing their request or if there are other solutions to satisfy the employee’s concerns.

Possible solutions include: asking a particular employee to refrain from wearing an irritating scent; allowing the affected employee to telecommute; moving the employee’s workstation; allowing the affected employee to call-in to meetings; if the irritating scent is from a cleaning product used by the cleaning crew, investigating using other products.

It’s important for employers to understand they have options when dealing with this issue and may sometimes have to be creative in finding solutions that are satisfying to all involved.

If you business needs help with your employment policies, employee handbook or any human resources assistance, please call 855-461-8808 or email info@eqhrsolutions.com .

This article was written by an eqHR Principal Consultant, Lauren Sims. 

Further resources on this topic can be found at www.shrm.com and http://www.npr.org/2015/09/22/442189543/what-s-that-smell-when-workplaces-try-fragrance-bans