Indianapolis Staffing with Integrity

First of all I want to apologize if you haven’t heard from me during these last few months.  The reason?  The market is changing and we have been extremely busy.  I know this may come as a shock to you if you have seen the recent unemployment rates but it is true!  We noticed the market changing at the beginning of the summer when the candidates who registered were getting positions quickly after registering and our contract workers started turning in their notice because they found permanent employment. 

The industry information that we receive on a monthly basis shows that in April 2011, it became more difficult to find the candidate than the job.  What that means is that it could be returning to a “candidate’s market.”   There is no question from our perspective that hiring managers cannot continue to do the things they have been doing the past few years.  As a hiring manager, you need to move quickly on candidates that you are interested in.  You cannot wait as long as you have in the past to make hiring decisions.  Also, now that you are up against competition, you will have to pay more competitive salaries because the candidates have more opportunities to choose from and often the highest bidder wins. 

Let’s add some fuel to the fire.  If you are targeting candidates that have a college degree, the unemployment rate is below 4.5% (see this illustration from the Bureau of Labor Statistics).  There is a good article addressing this topic that states:

"To put it another way, more than 95 percent of college graduates in the United States are working – in the aftermath of one of the worst recessions in living memory." ibtimes.com

So even though you have probably heard that unemployment rates are close to 9%, that isn’t an accurate number when you are targeting a degreed Accountant.  Inside Indiana Business reported last week that only 33 out of every 100 Indiana public college students graduate with a four year degree within eight years.  This helps create the shortage of candidates in Indiana that have a college degree. 

I have spoken to several of my HR hiring managers and they have communicated that they are seeing the things mentioned above.  I would love to hear your thoughts, please sound in by posting a comment on my blog and let me know your thoughts!

If you currently staff any part of your organization with temporary employees, your staffing partner should be looking out for your best interests and providing guidance on how to properly manage that relationship.  I consider my Indianapolis staffing relationships with my clients as a trusted partnership and therefore it is my responsibility to consistently communicate with you to reduce any risk for your organization.  Here are some important tips to keep top of mind:

Let's begin with the candidate selection process. 

• That's Good HR reduces your risk by sending you candidates that closely match the compensation expectations for the position. For example, we would not present a candidate that has been making 40k previously to a position that is paying 20k.  All compensation negotiations and discussions go through us so there is no confusion around who their employer is (co-employment risks)
  
• We complete a criminal background check on every candidate that we place even if it is not required by your company. Again, this is our responsibility as the employer to ensure you are protected.
• We make sure that our candidate is interested in the opportunity by giving them the client’s name before presenting their resume to the hiring manager (this may sound obvious,  but the truth is, not all agencies tell the candidate the name of the company before they send their resume)

Next - the most important area of concern, once you have a contractor working for you. 

The lines can get crossed once a temporary employee is on site and working for you. Here are some ways you can protect your organization from any confusion around this relationship: 

• My most important reminder:  The contract employee is an employee of our company, not yours.  This is important due to all of the legal responsibilities around the employee/employer relationship which reside with us. Our employee should have no reason to misunderstand that relationship. We are the experts in our field and we are here to help you.
• All hiring and firing conversations must be handled by a That's Good HR professional, not someone on your staff.
• If our temporary employee is not meeting your productivity standards, all performance concerns should come through us and discussions with the employee about these concerns are conducted by us.
• All attendance concerns should be communicated to us immediately.  If we failed to inform you that our employee is going to be absent or tardy, that likely means we did know about it.  While we make it very clear in our process, at times a temporary employee may forget and bypass communications with us (their employer) and only inform you (the customer) about time off. When this happens, please redirect them to us.
• Ultimately all employment related issues should come through us including harassment, injury, pay, benefits etc.  This is why we are cautious even about discussing an employee’s pay with you as the customer. The less involved you are in employment related decisions and information, the clearer the lines are in the employment relationship.

My pledge to you, my customer is this: I will do anything possible to reduce your co-employment risks.  This list is just a summary of what we do behind the scenes to look out for you and as it is with any vendor relationship, your understanding is critical.

Co-employment is the term often used to refer to the relationship between staffing firms and their clients and to the legal issues that arise from that relationship.  Click here for more information on co-employment. Questions about this post? Drop me a line or give me a call! 

I know….I said that I was only going to do one blog post because I am not a writer.  However, a couple of things have happened at the office recently that have made me wonder how sometimes it just feels like the “Good Guys” finish last.    Growing up, my parents instilled a high value on telling the truth and always doing what’s right.  As a matter of fact, I never got into trouble because my parents taught me that there are always consequences.  This is why I always follow the rules and respect boundaries. 

You may remember from my previous blog, integrity is very important to me and therefore it is important for me to work with hiring managers that share this same value.  That said, it has been a frustrating month for our That’s Good HR temporary staffing group for a couple of reasons.  We have had a couple examples of situations where we handled our accounting, administrative or HR search with honesty and integrity but have lost the business to a competitor that doesn’t have those same values.  Short cutting the process of quality service delivery just to give the appearance of efficiency works for some, but I have a hard time stomaching it. It seems to have become increasingly prevalent as 2011 progresses, almost as if there is a sense of desperation to hit sales quotas at any cost. This has me wondering...are we part of a very small minority of staffing companies who will sacrifice being “cheap and fast” in order to do things “right” and act with integrity.  I mean, I thought that Good Guys always finish first.  Am I just naïve?

Then, just as I was sitting here lamenting the injustice of it all for our business, I heard the news about Officer David Moore.  As many of you have heard by now, Officer Moore passed away as a result of his injuries incurred during a “routine” traffic stop in Indianapolis.  From everything I have heard and read about Officer Moore, he seemed like the quintessential “good guy”.  Overall, Police Officers are the good guys and this officer had to pay the ultimate price for being a good guy.  For those that know me well, you know that I have several very special people close to me that are Police Officers in this city.  Just as I was feeling down about losing out as the good guy, Officer Moore’s story puts it all into perspective. 

I did do some research on this topic to see if I was alone in my quandary over this question and I did find some believers out there that Good Guys don’t finish last. My favorite quote came from a post by  AndrewJDumont.com and here is what he had to say on the topic.

"Call me old fashioned, but I believe in the business of doing good. I believe that those who finish first are the ones who place integrity at the base of everything they do. Look at the way you conduct business or simply live your life, for that matter – are you positioning yourself to finish first in the long-run?”

So, while it hurts that not all staffing  agencies  follow all of the rules of integrity and ethical business practices, it’s the reality of the world we live in.  However, that isn’t going to change my passion for this business or my passion to handle each situation as my parents have instilled in me, with honesty and integrity.  The fear of the “Bad Guys” didn’t change how Officer Moore lived his life and it isn’t going to change how I live mine.