Temporary Workers vs. Permanent Staff

Is yours one of the many companies that utilizes temporary/contracted employees to fill various roles? If so, how versed are you on the legal obligations and potential ramifications of your contingent workers?

While it may seem as easy as picking up the telephone and dialing your local temp agency, you’d be well advised to do your homework first. Temporary staffing may seem like the route to go, given that you don’t have to worry about benefits or long-term obligations, but there are many legal implications that come into play.

“When an employer uses temporary workers hired by an outside agency, it needs to know whether it is considered to be the actual employer for legal purposes. Otherwise, it may unwittingly violate a variety of laws, including wage and hour laws, workers’ compensation, ERISA, employment discrimination protection, tax rules, and other employment laws.”

Before signing on the dotted line with any employment agency, be sure to thoroughly review their business practices and put everything in writing. Distinguish who will be accountable as the “official” employer or if the responsibility will be shared. And perhaps most important, ensure that the agency performs thorough background checks to guarantee that you are receiving fully qualified candidates.

Read more tips by Sharon P. Morgan for SHRM Atlanta (PDF document page 7-8)

Posted by Shelly Paul, Career Management Coordinator, The H.S. Group

Eight Days a Week

In today’s fast-paced society of e-mails, business lunches and conference calls, how many hours on average do your employees devote to the workday? Recent studies show that some employees have allowed workplace technology to eat away as much as 18 hours of their day.

So whatever happened to the 9 to 5 of yesteryear? Perhaps it has been lost in a more modern corporate world which spans time zones and finds employees absent from the nightly dinner table. “The long hours pose not only the risk of burnout and lost creativity, but ripple out to touch all facets of employees’ lives.”

While some companies are implementing strategies to capture employees’ lost time, it is still a relatively new matter. Dow Corning implemented a “no-meetings week” on a quarterly basis, which frees time typically utilized for internal company meetings, while IBM has put into practice “ThinkFridays,” a block of time void of nonessential interruptions.

Remember that the cell phones and laptops intended to make our lives easier can also offer a converse effect if not used within certain limitations.

Read the full article from The Wall Street Journal Online

Posted by Shelly Paul, Career Management Coordinator, The H.S. Group

U.S. Companies Lacking in Benefits

We often ask ourselves in HR how our company policies and benefits measure up to those of other companies, especially our chief competitors. We have compensation and benefit surveys to provide us with this information. However, how much do you know about benefits provided by companies overseas?

You might be surprised to learn that the United States is still one of only a handful of countries that does not carry mandatory maternity or sick leave regulations within the workplace.

“The study, officially being issued Thursday, says workplace policies for families in the United States are weaker than those of all high-income countries and many middle- and low-income countries. Notably, it says the U.S. is one of only five countries out of 173 in the survey that does not guarantee some form of paid maternity leave.”

And this has recently been brought to the forefront again as politicians introduce new bills to reserve some of these rights within the American workplace.

Of course businesses are always free to implement these benefits to their employees, but there are no government mandates to do so as of yet. So keep these perks in mind as you try to entice the cream of the crop to join your organization.

Survey: U.S. workplace not family-oriented

Posted by Shelly Paul, Career Management Coordinator, The H.S. Group