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Every business, sooner or later, runs into the complex issue that is compliance. Whether it’s OSHA workplace safety regulations, HIPAA privacy regulations, legal confidentiality regulations, or something else, compliance is always there. It’s also not something a business can ignore. Violations of compliance regulations can lead to anything from fines to a government entity shutting your business down until changes are made, or worse. In the world of recruitment, businesses must follow specific regulations to stay in compliance with federal employment rules. Violation of these regulations is not ignored. Via the EEOC: “The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) today released detailed breakdowns for the 67,448 charges of workplace discrimination the agency received in Fiscal Year (FY) 2020. The agency secured $439.2 million for victims of discrimination in the private sector and state and local government workplaces through voluntary resolutions and litigation.” Unless you want your business to add to these statistics, you need to be aware of compliance regulations and follow them. Understanding compliance means being aware of the push and pull of two different forces. On the one hand, you want to recruit the best possible employees for your business in any open role. On the other hand, you need to make sure that you’re not searching for those employees, filtering them, or removing them from consideration based on protected information. Compliance is about more than just avoiding federal penalties and lawsuits. It’s about creating a diverse, compelling roster of employees. Whether it’s  attracting more female candidates  and making them feel safe in the workplace, bringing in international experiences and perspectives, or simply broadening the diversity of ideas, compliance is of enormous importance for a successful modern company. What sort of compliance regulations should you keep in mind? There are a handful, all of equal importance. Protected Category Compliance Perhaps the single most prominent form of compliance is protection for various forms of information about a candidate. Your business may not make hiring or employment decisions, salary decisions, or other policy decisions based on protected categories. Protected categories include race, color, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, pregnancy, and more. It’s critically important to understand that discrimination does not necessarily mean overt bigotry. There are many actions and lack thereof that can constitute adverse action, bias, or implicit discrimination, even if there’s no willful intent behind it. One typical example is the inclusion of “Must be able to lift and carry at least 50 lbs.” in a job listing for a role that does not require physical activity, such as an office job. While you might justify it by talking about moving printers or reams of paper, physical capacity is not necessary to perform the job, and demanding it can be discriminatory against people with physical disabilities, motor control issues, or other protected attributes. Compliance here begins as early as the composition of the advertisements and job postings used to promote an open role, the interview questions (more on that in a moment), and enforcement of policies within an organization. Interview Topic Compliance The interview is one of the most critical parts of the hiring and recruitment process, and it is also the most fraught with issues concerning compliance. When conducting an interview, skills assessment, or other pre-employment screening, you must take care to avoid asking for or even considering protecting information. Per  HRMSWorld : “Interview questions must focus on the applicant’s ability to do the job and must not stray into topics such as disability, race, color, gender, religion, etc. Any tests that are part of the hiring process must be wholly relevant to the position you are seeking to fill and should not exclude on any of the abovementioned grounds – nor should a test exclude applicants aged 40 or older.” One common way to help avoid bias and discrimination in the interview process is using an interview scorecard. An interview scorecard serves as a template for each candidate’s asked, with pre-formulated questions and a rubric with which to judge the answers from an unbiased perspective.  You can learn more about scorecards, as well as how to create them, here . Background Check Compliance Background checks are an essential way to verify information about an applicant and protect your business from candidates with a history of behavior unsuitable for employment. They are, primarily, a way to verify that a candidate is who they claim to be and verify records such as academic history, employment history, and other information such as driving history, drug test history, and convictions. The primary regulation driving compliance in background checks is the Fair Credit Reporting Act. This act requires explicit written consent to a background check before you can initiate such a check and specific procedures for handling and using the information found in a background check. Some information in a background check may also be protected, depending on your state jurisdiction. For example, using certain drugs, credit records, and records  older than a certain number of years  can all be protected. Using information that is protected as part of a decision is a violation of compliance. Additionally, background checks must be equally distributed; a company that requires a background check on certain kinds of applicants but not for others is discriminating by default. Consent Form Compliance As part of compliance with background checks, a company must obtain a signed consent form before initiating a background screening of any sort. Many companies don’t know that this consent form itself is a carefully regulated document with federal laws governing what it can and cannot contain. A consent form may only include two sections: authorization and disclosure. Authorization is the request for a signature from the candidate who will be screened. Disclosure is the statement that says you plan to run a background check. Common issues with these forms include: You are embedding the consent in another document. Your screening consent form must be a stand-alone document, explicit in its purpose, and cannot be lumped together with other documents or authorizations. You are including other statements or information. A frequent example is a release of liability; by including such a release, your consent form becomes invalid and non-compliant. You are ignoring state regulations. Federal regulations guide consent forms, but  specific states  may have stricter rules on what can and cannot be included in a background check and the related documents. Non-compliant consent forms are among the most common violations of compliance in the country and thus are worth review for any business. Adverse Action Compliance Adverse Action comes in two forms. One is general, which we discuss in greater detail  in this article . The other is related explicitly to background checks. When you run a background check and discover information about a candidate that was not otherwise disclosed and is not protected, which alters your decision to hire the candidate, you must follow a specific protocol. This protocol is a three-step process. You must send notice to the candidate when information is discovered that may result in adverse action (typically the withdrawal of an offer of employment). You must wait five business days. You must send a final, formal notice of the decision to withdraw an offer or hire the candidate due to the information in their background check. This process aims to give the candidate the opportunity to  refute the validity  of the background check and the information therein. Background checks are not infallible! Every year, there are cases where individuals are misidentified, and incorrect data relating to another individual is used against them. Drug Screening Compliance Screening for drug use may or may not be allowed depending on your state jurisdiction. While many controlled substances remain illegal, one of particular concern is marijuana. Until recently, it was common to see zero-tolerance policies in place as a contingency for hiring and continued employment, with sporadic drug screens used to verify compliance from employees. With the proliferation of medical marijuana usage, and the ongoing push to legalize marijuana at the state level in numerous states, drug screenings become riskier. Medical use, in particular, is protected. In states where recreational usage is legal, making a hiring decision or taking adverse action based on the results of a drug screen (or even requiring a drug screen in the first place) may violate compliance. One potential exception to this is government jobs. Notably, federal government jobs have a whole suite of additional compliance regulations that you must follow. Regardless, it has become dangerous for companies to screen based on marijuana usage in many states, and knowing state regulations is critical. Credit History Compliance Another common element of a background check that may influence a hiring decision is credit history. While the use of credit reports and credit history is not illegal at a federal level, many states and even some cities have specific prohibitions and regulations on credit history in making an employment decision. The rationalization is simple: credit histories are often discriminatory themselves, and the information they contain is rarely relevant to the performance of the duties required in a job. What relevance does an individual’s debt, credit balance, or several credit accounts have on the ability to function as a cashier, an office worker, or a manager? None. Additionally, credit history is biased by specific factors that tie directly to protected classes. Recent immigrants often have little or no credit history. Minorities are often victims of discrimination in housing, banking, and other industries, which leads to suppressed credit scores. Younger people generally have lower credit scores, meaning credit can be age discrimination as well. Credit scores can reflect a wide array of biases and discriminatory practices, and using them can also be considered discrimination. Salary History Compliance In a similar vein, asking for past salaries at previous workplaces is typically both irrelevant and discriminatory. A majority of the time, past salary history is only used to justify paying a candidate a lower salary than they would otherwise deserve for the role they are accepting. As we have written in  our discussion on the subject : “Unfortunately, salary history has been used to justify many bad practices throughout the employment industry. For example: People have used salary history to eliminate candidates with low salaries, assuming that if they were genuinely skilled, they would have been earning more. People have used salary history to eliminate candidates with high salaries because they’re “too expensive,” even if that candidate might be willing to take the pay cut. People use salary histories to exacerbate ongoing gender pay discrimination. It’s illegal to pay people differently based on their gender, but if they have been paid differently in the past and you use salary history to justify it, it becomes legal.” Many states and cities have prohibited asking for salary history or even using salary information volunteered by the candidate. Additionally, it is often better to offer a salary range in public job listings to avoid salary-related issues in hiring. And, of course, ensuring that employees in comparable roles are paid similar amounts is critical. Ban-The-Box Compliance Another modern push to remove discrimination from hiring is the “Ban-The-Box” campaign. The “box” in question is the checkbox on employment screenings stating that the candidate has not been convicted of a felony. The rationale is that felony convictions are rarely relevant to employment and that those convicted of crimes are no less able to work a job than those who have not been convicted. Convictions can also be biased against other protected classes due to inequality in the country’s justice system and police forces. Thirty-six states and 150+ cities have created ban-the-box regulations and regulations at the federal level for government jobs. It’s well worth removing the box even if you don’t operate in those states to stay ahead of the curve. Maintaining Compliance Compliance in recruiting is complex, but it’s the law, and it’s highly worthwhile. Maintaining compliance isn’t just a matter of avoiding fines and liability as a company if a candidate or employee chooses to pursue legal action. It also helps your business build a more robust and diverse workforce,  which is universally more effective  for the company. Take steps to review your policies, practices, and local regulations to ensure compliance sooner rather than later.

Every company has its superstar employees. Maybe it’s your sales team manager who has enabled growing sales year after year, or perhaps it’s an executive who has been responsible for growth in several companies. Maybe it’s a star developer who streamlines your entire workflow. Whoever it is, you want to keep them around. At the same time, your competitors want rockstar employees on their team as well. You want to build up your team too, and maybe you’re eyeing the most outstanding employees your competitors have on staff. Do you make a move? Do they? What is Employee Poaching? What we’re talking about here is poaching employees. When you scout a high-skill, high-value employee on a competitor’s staff, you might be tempted to reach out to them. Maybe you call them, perhaps you hire a recruiter to get in touch with them, or maybe you reach out to them on LinkedIn. You get a feel for how attached they are to their current job and consider giving them an offer – usually a better offer – than what they’re currently doing. If they bite, they jump ship, and you’ve successfully poached an employee from your competition. Of course, if your pay and benefits package isn’t sufficient, your competitors may be able to poach all of your best employees right back. Employee poaching can be individuals, or it can be entire teams. It’s not uncommon for a team leader to want to bring the team they’ve worked with and grown rapport with along for the ride. The company hiring them gains a considerable asset, but the company losing them suffers a significant loss. Poaching can happen at all levels of a business, but it tends to happen most often and most visibly at the managerial or executive levels. The higher the skill and knowledge level necessary to perform a role, the more likely poaching is to be effective since the potential pool of candidates is much smaller. This phenomenon is also why you see the same names crop up in the news related to major corporations, which seem to swap C-levels and executives all the time, but rarely bring in new people. Is Poaching Employees Illegal? Let’s consider a situation. You’re looking for an upper-level HR manager. You’ve posted your job on your organization’s careers page, and you have a team of experienced recruiters looking for the best candidate. You get a bite; a talented and experienced HR manager interested in your company and your benefits package. That HR manager applies for an interview, and you soon discover that your biggest competitor currently employs them. Is it poaching if you hire them? Does it matter if they came to you or you came to them? Did the recruiter cold-call them based on their LinkedIn profile, or were they already seeking a new job and happened to find your opening? Should you hire them? Technically, yes, this is poaching. However, it’s also the natural way of things for some roles. People who work a particular role in a company will build up skills and experience related to that role, and when they want to move on, they will look for similar positions in other companies. If “poaching” were illegal, it would be impossible for anyone to move from one company to another while still working in the same field. After all, there would be little way to determine whether the employee left of their own volition or if they were poached, and a sufficiently litigious company could try to punish any employee who leaves. Here’s another thing to consider. In 2010, there was an investigation in Silicon Valley. Six major tech companies – Apple, Google, Pixar, Intuit, Adobe, and Intel – had an agreement between them. That agreement was that they would not poach each others’ employees. They would, at least, refrain from contacting one another to poach employees. If an employee wanted to leave Google and work for Pixar, could they? Well, Pixar could have refused to hire them based on this agreement. This situation led to a Department of Justice investigation, which ordered these companies to cease this agreement. Poaching is not only not illegal, but it’s also encouraged: the anti-poaching agreement, the DoJ decided, constituted an anti-trust and anti-competitive agreement. You can find the complete statement  here . “The department said that the agreements eliminated a significant form of competition to attract highly skilled employees, and overall diminished competition to the detriment of affected employees who were likely deprived of competitively important information and access to better job opportunities.” The fact is, at least on a federal level, poaching employees is not illegal. Are There State-Level Regulations on Poaching? There’s another level to consider, and that’s the state level. Specifically, you may encounter  Tortious Interference with a Business Relationship or Contract. What does that mean? Any time you form an agreement with another party – whether it’s a distributor, a wholesaler, or an employee – you do not expect a third party to try to interfere with that relationship. If outside interference  removes that contract  and does financial damage, you may be able to pursue a tort claim for that interference. In some interpretations, this can include the employee contract and hiring decision. If you’re hiring an employee, but a competitor interferes and engages them instead, do you have significant enough damages to take the competitor to court? The truth is, while you may be able to pursue damages in court for a single employee, it’s generally not significant enough to be worthwhile. Tortious interference most often applies to substantial contracts with retailers, distributors, and other businesses, not individual employees. That said, these regulations vary from state to state, and it may be worthwhile talking to a lawyer if your employees are consistently poached from you by a specific competitor. “State law varies, but you may be on the hook for tortious interference if your employee poaching tactics include wrongful allegations, a blatant disregard for non-compete agreements, or acting illegally.” –  Reuters . Bear in mind that “the competitor has a better offer for an employee” is not a good reason to consider legal action; you can always increase your offer to compete. More often, you need to look for evidence of wrongdoing. What About Non-Compete Clauses? Another wall you might encounter with employee poaching is the non-compete clause. A non-compete clause is a clause in an employment contract that says, in essence, “you will not go to work for a direct competitor of our company for at least one year after leaving our roster.” Or, to quote  Workable : “Non-compete clauses are designed to stop free labor markets from becoming free-for-alls. They encourage transparency within companies and can boost retention rates. But they may stifle wages and impact labor mobility. Regardless of their broader effects on the economy, non-compete agreements are a reality for many employees companies want to hire.” So, with non-compete clauses in play, where do you stand with poaching employees? The truth is, many non-compete clauses are not legally enforceable.  From Jamal Jackson on LinkedIn : “States usually look at four different factors to determine if your non-compete agreement is valid. They ask: 1) Is it limited in time?; 2) Is it limited in geographic scope?; 3) Is it limited to a particular industry or activity?; and 4) Does it protect a legitimate business interest?” In many cases, the non-compete clauses in play do not meet these requirements and are thus considered overly restrictive. If they’re highly restrictive, the companies can’t enforce them. If you choose to poach an employee in violation of a non-compete clause, their former company would need to challenge you in court, where a judge could then strike down their non-compete clause entirely. You may or may not decide this is worth the risk. Sometimes, a non-compete clause is well-formed and will pass legal scrutiny, in which case you (or your new employee) can be liable for the violation of that contract. Often, companies will avoid looking at direct competitors for  passive candidates  specifically to prevent running into non-compete clauses. Recruiting for a given role outside of your immediate surroundings tends to work better. What Are The Ethics of Poaching Employees? Now, what about the ethical concerns of poaching employees? Is it unethical, or is it impolite? The truth is, it’s all relative. There’s no single cut-and-dry answer to this question. If your company works closely with other companies in the same general niche, you might not want to poach employees to avoid straining business relationships. On the other hand, if you work closely with competitors, you may find that trading employees can benefit both sides. Then again, working too closely with competitors might bring up anti-trust laws violations, which isn’t in anybody’s best interest. Poaching tends to be unethical at its worst, specifically when you’re poaching with malicious intent. Say, for example, you have a competitor growing a solid market share in your niche. You’re finding it difficult to compete with them for consumer preference, marketing budget, or product quality. So, instead, you hit them where it hurts. You identify and strive to poach all of their best employees. They are left with a hampered team and will be much less able to compete at the same scale. This strategy can devastate a company and is also quite unethical. Are There Issues With Trade Secrets? Another issue that might come up, particularly for innovative, cutting-edge companies, startups, and tech companies, is trade secrets. Companies like Apple and Google might want to run non-compete clauses precisely so that their competitors don’t hire their employees and get those employees to spill the beans on internal processes, new technologies, or other trade secrets. Pepsi wouldn’t be able to hire former employees of Coca-Cola to learn the recipe for their cola, after all. The truth is, while companies often use non-compete clauses to try to combat this, they tend to be difficult or impossible to enforce. Instead, a company should include a non-disclosure agreement to protect the intellectual property of the company. Of course, sufficiently large companies often get around this by buying the whole company outright. Google is known in the tech industry for buying up tech companies with innovative apps and rolling those apps into Google services (see  this entire list  for an example). Is this practice more or less ethical? Who can say? Should You Poach Employees from Your Competitors? All of this leaves you asking one key question: should you poach employees? The answer varies. You can often poach employees with no risk to yourself or your business, so long as there are no valid non-compete agreements in place. Whether passive candidates or active job seekers, employees will look for new roles with companies they recognize. Often, it’s challenging to get far enough outside of your sphere of influence for some hiring practices not to be considered poaching. While some state laws and regulations might put a damper on poaching, the vast majority of the time, they will take no legal action. Neither company is likely to pursue legal action over a single employee. Poaching typically only becomes a problem when one company embarks on a dedicated campaign to destroy a competitor by poaching all of its top talents. At the root of it all is the employee. The employee wants what is best for themselves and their family, which means working for the company with the best pay, the best benefits, the best work/life balance, the best culture, the best commute, and so forth. Thus, if a competitor wants to retain their best employees, they need to offer the best and most competitive pay and benefits. If you’re going to poach them, you need to beat their current situation, and that might not always be possible. So, to wrap up. Is employee poaching illegal? No, though it can run afoul of some state-level contract laws. Is it unethical? Generally no, outside of specific situations or when done with malicious intent. Should you do it? That depends entirely on how well you can fill your staff with talented employees without resorting to poaching in the first place.

Companies are constantly in a state of flux. Many will grow, and others will stay level but experience turnover as employees leave for personal reasons, greener pastures, or better roles elsewhere. There are several reasons why your HR department might have an opening. You have an open role to fill, but the hiring process takes time. You need to develop a job posting, put out job listings, analyze your candidate pool, schedule and conduct interviews, and all the rest. This process can take weeks or months, or potentially even longer if you have a high-level position that needs to be filled with only the most skilled candidate. What do you do in the meantime? You can leave the role unfilled. Depending on the position, this might mean your other HR team members have a lot of extra work to do, or it might mean your overall HR strategy enters a holding pattern with no one to guide it. You can rush to hire someone. This process still takes time and can leave you with a sub-par person in the role. You keep them on to do the work until you get a better candidate on deck, then fire them and replace them. This strategy is often expensive and inconvenient. You hire an interim HR consultant until you can recruit a more permanent candidate. One of these options is better than the others. Hint: it’s the one we didn’t expound upon because we’re spending the rest of this article discussing it.  What is an Interim HR Consultant? Before we get into the specifics of interim HR consultants, let’s dissect and define them: Your consultant is an HR specialist who knows their way around the industry, has years of experience working with companies in HR roles, and can achieve any HR task from the lowest filing to the highest levels of strategy. The dictionary defines Interim as “provisional or temporary.” Interim HR consultants work with your company as long as you need them, which might be days, weeks, months, or even years in some cases, but they are still on a temporary contract. They are not employees, and they are not permanent. They work for a consulting company that you contract to fill your interim role. They are skilled and experienced, and they sell those skills and experiences to companies that need them. To quote  Smart HR : “Interim HR professionals have years of HR training and experience. No HR project is too large or complicated for these talented specialists. An example of the kind of projects they can handle for your business is stepping into any senior HR management position after the absence or departure of the company’s manager or director. The interim HR executive will serve with the same commitment to the company as a full-time executive.” Most of the time, an interim HR consultant will be a high-level manager, executive, or C-level equivalent. After all, it’s not usually worth the money to hire someone as an HR consultant when all they’re doing is filing papers, handling data entry, or managing HR admin work. What is it that an interim HR consultant can do for your company? What Are The Duties of an Interim HR Consultant? The specific duties of an interim HR consultant depend on the level of the role you’re hiring them to perform and the size of your company. A small business might hire an interim HR consultant to analyze their business and devise an overall HR strategy that they can implement for the coming years. Essentially, the interim HR consultant steps in to be a temporary C-level or Director of Human Resources, creating an overall strategy in conjunction with the CEO and any other executives the company has. The company then releases the contract and follows the usual process until the business grows enough to end up out of alignment. At this point, they may either hire a staff HR director or hire a new interim HR consultant to repeat the process. A larger business might hire an interim HR consultant to fill the shoes of a manager, director, or executive who left the company for some reason. The interim HR consultant can step in and fill the role for however long it takes to find an acceptable replacement through traditional hiring processes. As skilled, experienced HR professionals, interim HR consultants can generally do anything required of them at varying levels of role within a company. They rarely sign on as basic HR staff; instead, they perform mid-level and high-level duties. Duties might include:  Executive Search . Interim HR consultants can step in to a business and analyze it from outside and inside perspectives. They can then determine the scope, scale, and needs of the role. These consultants often have large networks of connections throughout the industry and can find an appropriate replacement to fill the position permanently.  Restructuring and Transitioning. Companies grow, companies shrink, companies merge and are acquired. Any time there’s a significant shift in the company in a short amount of time, the company may require restructuring. On-staff HR management might not be objective enough (or may leave the company if they don’t like where it’s headed), so an interim HR consultant can step in and help guide the restructuring. They don’t have personal ties or an agenda skewing their recommendations. They can help with downsizing, hiring, and overall restructuring during a change in company outline.  Training and Development. Interim HR consultants can also take on an advisory or training role. They can step in and offer guidance and training to existing managers and directors, informing them on both HR best practices and applicable laws. “Use interim HR support professionals to help your business create and implement employee leadership and management development programs for the organization. These programs are designed to teach your managers and rising managers the HR laws and good HR skills. The courses will ensure that every company manager knows the current HR laws governing performance management, employee disciplinary matters, performance problems, managing through organizational change, family-friendly policies, and similar HR laws.” – SmartHR.  Audits and Improvements.  Over time, a company can become ossified, stuck in its ways. It can be challenging to get buy-in for changes, whether they are policy changes or changes in infrastructure or software. An interim HR manager can step in from outside and demonstrate the benefits of a change in policy or software, increasing buy-in from management and teams affected by the change.  Supplemental Coverage. Sometimes, the reason an HR manager leaves is temporary. Medical leave, maternity leave, or other temporary leaves of absence don’t warrant a complete replacement but require someone to keep the department running while they’re gone. An interim HR consultant can step in and carry the torch until the original employee returns. What are the Benefits of Hiring an Interim HR Consultant? There are many benefits to hiring an interim HR consultant to handle your HR work. They bring talent and experience to the table. Often, an interim HR consultant will have more skill and expertise than a company can usually afford. By hiring them on a temporary consultant basis, a company can gain access to that experience without paying the total costs of a salary and benefits package. This strategy allows smaller companies to compete with larger companies by accessing a higher degree of skill than they usually could. This method does require intelligent use of the limited time a consultant will work with the company, but it can be extremely valuable.  Smaller companies can pay for only what they need.  To quote  InterimHR : “Through consultation partnerships, a small company can pay only for the services they need, rather than making a costly long-term investment with a full-time hire. Additionally, by hiring interim consultants, companies can also avoid the unfortunate cost of hiring lackluster employees. Essentially, a bad hire costs at least 30% of that employee’s first-year salary, but you can avoid this cost with the flexibility of consultation roles.” This strategy allows you to hire a consultant on as flexible a basis as you need. Do you want them around for a part-time position? Do you need them for specific tasks and a little more? Do you want them to perform an audit and give advice? They can do all of this, as much or as little as necessary. Interim HR consultants can also be specialists in certain areas, like benefits or legal issues. An interim HR consultant can act as a legal advisor if your company has a lawsuit or an audit regarding labor policies and can help clean up after an audit as well.  They can recommend upgrades and changes your employees and directors might not have considered. Interim HR consultants tend to have a broad experience base with large and small companies across many industries. They can look at problems from angles you might not have thought of and can offer solutions that you would never have considered. They can also provide evidence to back up suggestions you may be skeptical about. For example, an interim HR consultant might be able to recommend a particular form of a benefits package that makes your business competitive without breaking the bank. They may be able to recommend a specific HR platform with its pros and cons versus what you’re already using and convince you to upgrade for the company’s benefit.  Interim consulting support can scale. If your company needs more than what you have, you can hire more consultants. If a larger team is inefficient, too expensive, or doesn’t justify the costs, you can reduce it. Consultant contracts are highly adjustable, and working with a consulting company gives you plenty of options. Are There Good Alternatives to Interim HR Consultants? Hiring an interim HR consultant can be a great idea. Still, it can also be expensive and occasionally even overkill for some situations, such as a short leave of absence or a small business. Are there alternatives that are worth pursuing? There are several options. Traditional Hiring. Hiring a new HR employee to take on the duties required can be the best option in many situations. However, it’s slow, often expensive, and can leave you with sub-par results if there’s an issue with your hiring or interview process. Hire a Freelance Consultant. Freelance consultants can be just as good or better than consultants working through agencies. However, since no overhead company directs them, you have less recourse if they don’t work out. They have a high risk and a high reward, but many companies prefer to work with an agency that provides guarantees or insurance against poor consultants or a poor relationship. Work with a Temp Agency. Temp agencies can help fill staffing needs in HR and other departments, but they tend to work with lower-level employees. In contrast, interim HR consulting firms usually specialize in higher-level roles. Each of these options has pros and cons. Picking the one that works best for your situation is key to the best business outcomes. To ensure you’re getting the best interim HR consultants for your business, it pays to examine what you truly need. Do you need a director to guide your strategy? Do you need someone to audit your processes and find areas to improve? Do you need an examination of your current systems and infrastructure, with recommendations for upgrades? Do you need someone to fill the shoes of an existing employee on leave or fill a role while you find a replacement to hire? These are valid options that you can fill with an interim consultant from an HR consulting firm. Finding the right consulting firm to work with your business can be a daunting task. There are hundreds of agencies providing these services, with specialties in various industries or scales of operation. Thankfully, due to the nature of these companies and the relationships they have with businesses, the process is more straightforward than it seems. If you have HR needs a consultant can fill, there’s no better time to do it than now. Do you have any questions for me on interim HR consultants? Please drop me a message in the comments section! I’d love to hear from you and get a conversation started.

Suppose you have been building up a candidate pool searching for the perfect person to fill an open role in your organization. You’ve spent several weeks at it so far, pulling in resumes and applications from a variety of different platforms. The people in your pool are actively looking for work, and you can filter them down into the most valuable, best matched, highest-skilled candidates for your shortlist. You pick one, and you hire them. What do you do with the rest of the people on the list? A good applicant tracking system will keep those candidate profiles on file in case you want to refer to them later. Maybe your chosen candidate rejects your job offer. Perhaps they accept your offer, work for a few months, and decide to leave. Perhaps they will get a better offer in six months. Regardless of why, suddenly, you’re left looking to fill the same position once again. If you’ve kept your old candidate pool information around, you should be able to reach out and hire your next-best candidate, right? After all, those people were interested at one point; they should still be interested. The Trouble of Data Degradation Perhaps you reach out to the second-in-line candidate. They say no; they’ve already found a job at a different company and they aren’t interested in leaving so soon. You reach out to the next in line. They say no; they’ve moved out of state and aren’t interested in coming back. You reach out to the next, and they refuse as well. How far do you have to dig to find a candidate still willing to work for you? Of course, the answer varies, but it can be very time-consuming to filter through your candidate list again. Situations change. Everyone in your candidate pool is active, building their skills, seeking other employment, earning certificates, and more. Some leave the job market, and others leave the industry completely. The longer you go in between building a candidate pool and actively using it, the less valuable that pool will be. It’s just like marketing lists, email newsletter lists, and any other list of data that changes over time. New people are interested, old candidates drop out, and the people still on the list have changing interests and situations. “The hiring process doesn’t start when there is a vacancy in the organization—it starts long before the vacancy opens. It is the mark of an able HR professional to arrange the structure of a human resources department so that there is ongoing talent acquisition—and for this, keeping a candidate database is crucial.” –  Association for Talent Development . Your job as an HR manager or hiring director is to implement practices to keep this candidate pool warm so that when you need to fill an open role, you have the data ready to go. There are many ways to do this, so we’ve developed five primary methods you can use. 1: Monitor LinkedIn Data In many industries, the best platform to use for keeping on top of candidate data is LinkedIn. Billed as the professional network for businesses, brands, and job-seekers, LinkedIn is a vast resource, even if you don’t actively use it for recruiting. LinkedIn data can be harvested by a modern ATS with integration ability, or you can choose specific pieces of data you want to watch, take notes, and check for changes when you need to refresh your information. The former is better, of course; automatically doing it saves work hours and money. How can you use LinkedIn data to your advantage? Watch for changes in skills that might make a middling candidate into a more attractive proposition . Candidates who develop their skills actively are already a better choice, and those who pursue certifications or training in their careers are more attractive still. Look for employment changes . A great passive candidate might not be available for hire, but they may seek new opportunities if their employment status changes. This is a great time to approach them with a new offer. Watch for candidates who have viewed your business profile . LinkedIn offers business tools to companies willing to pay for them, and one of those tools allows you to see candidates who are viewing your profile. It can indicate that they’ll be more receptive to your outreach. LinkedIn alone won’t keep your candidate pool warm or prevent data degradation. It will, however, provide you with convenient access to information as it changes and can give you indications of when outreach can be most effective. 2: Don’t Write Off Hired Candidates Just because a candidate has changed their status from “seeking a job” to “employed” doesn’t mean they’re out of reach. Passive candidates can be some of the best people to recruit if you can reach out to them in the right way and give them the right offer. “Keep in mind that passive job seekers are generally happy with their current job and will not be willing to leap into another job without serious consideration. This makes relationship-building a must when trying to engage passive job seekers.” –  SHRM . When you’re harvesting information to keep your candidate pool up to date, you might encounter top candidates who are no longer actively seeking work. Some of them may have decided to leave the job market and subsist on unemployment or a spouse’s income, but most have likely obtained employment in another way and are simply no longer looking. These candidates may still be receptive to the right offer. You just need to determine how to reach them and what to offer them that their current position doesn’t. Some ideas include: A higher salary . Many candidates have money on the mind and will be willing to make significant changes to their careers to have a larger paycheck. If you can offer more than whoever they’re currently working for, you’ll do well to hook them. Better benefits . Whether you’re offering flexible hours, more time off, work from home or remote work benefits, better insurance coverage, or something else, benefits can make or break an offer and convince a passive candidate to jump ship. Better internal upwards mobility . An unfortunate fact is that modern businesses are limited in their mobility, which means candidates often need to change companies if they want to progress their careers. Candidates don’t like doing this – there’s a lot of uncertainty and change involved – so offering upward mobility can help foster loyalty and be a more attractive career option. No one likes working in a dead-end job. A closer fit to the candidate’s skills . Sometimes, desperation drives a candidate to accept a sub-par opportunity just to put food on the table. Even if they’re no longer actively seeking work, they may be more than happy to leave their current position in favor of one that better suits their skills and experience. A more challenging role . Some individuals like a challenge. They tend to work in a given role long enough to “solve” it, such that the unique challenges they encounter are no longer challenging. If you can present more unique and interesting work for these people, it can be very attractive for them. A company with a better reputation . Some candidates are concerned not just with the tangible benefits of a job; but with the company as a whole. They might not want to work with companies that have had poor reputations, and they may have discovered something about their current company they don’t like but don’t have the luxury of leaving without something else lined up. If you’re dedicated to the idea of convincing a candidate to jump ship on their current employer and come to you, you also need to be aware of the loyalty challenge. These candidates are already demonstrating that they’re willing to leave their current role for a better offer. How can you keep them around? In simple terms, you need to continue to be the best offer available. This may or may not be possible for your company, particularly above a certain point, where pay, benefits, and mobility are capped by the nature of your business. 3: Develop an Outreach Strategy Reconnecting with stale referrals or a cold candidate pool is extremely important, so you need to do it the right way. Developing an outreach strategy is critical. Remember to introduce yourself . Candidates might not remember who you are or what your company does, especially if they’ve been applying to dozens or hundreds of opportunities. Have a prospective offer in hand . You don’t need to be ready to hire on the spot, but at least have an idea of what open role you might be recruiting them for and why you think they’ll be a good fit. Provide a clear call to action . If this candidate is interested, what should they do? An obvious link and directive to click and apply is the standard. Double-check information before reaching out . A candidate might not be as perfect a fit as you think, especially if they haven’t kept their information up-to-date. Do a double-check before reaching out to verify what you can first. Provide an opt-out . While it’s important to keep old candidates warm as prospects, you should ensure you’re not wasting your time. If an individual knows they’re no longer interested in what you have to offer, letting them remove themselves from your list saves you the time you would otherwise waste on targeting them. Learning how to reach out to candidates properly is a crucial aspect of recruiting them. You can’t rely on form letters and general attempts at refreshing their interest; you need to be personalized. Let them know you’re reaching out to them, not just anyone with the right keyword in their social profile. 4: Stay in Active Communication It always helps if you can stay in active communication with your best leads. Building an email list that keeps candidates appraised of open roles is usually a great idea. This list should be distinct from other mailing lists you may have (for marketing, for example) and should be actively culled to keep it as on-target as possible. Bear in mind that the best candidates may only be on the market for a short time. “The most qualified candidates are usually off the market in 10 days. An executive candidate, who’s more likely to be sourced or receive multiple offers, may be on the market for even fewer than 10 days.” –  Workable . An active candidate pool can turn into a pool of passive and disinterested candidates in less than two weeks. Often, your only way to reach these candidates is through regular communications, keeping the idea of your business warm for them. 5: Take Extensive Notes in Your ATS How do you keep track of everything we’ve listed above? Notes. A modern applicant tracking system will have features to help keep data up to date, but there’s only so much that these systems can track on their own. They can monitor data feeds like LinkedIn, and they can respond to requests to remove a user from a list, but there will always be a need for the human element to keep some data up to date. Taking notes is generally the best way to keep information refined and updated. These notes can include anything from general information your hiring manager deems worth noting down to specific notes and comments from an interview. The key is to keep the notes on hand and keep them as updated as possible. Make no mistake; keeping your candidate pools alive for more than a few months can be a significant challenge, and keeping them alive for a year or more is extremely difficult. It requires a lot of active data refining, list culling, and communications. When done properly, you can significantly reduce the time to hire a new individual to fill a role, so it’s well worth the time and effort. Have any questions regarding reconnecting with candidates, managing stale data, or anything similar? Feel free to reach out at any time, and we’ll be glad to get a conversation going!

Very rarely do employees work on their own, in isolation. Instead, they work as part of an overall team. In a small business, that team might be the entire roster of employees, and for a larger company, the team may be their department or even a specific group within that department. Regardless of the size or scale of the team, for the team to be effective, as a whole, it needs to have specific characteristics. These are the characteristics you need to look for when hiring to round out an existing team or build a new one. There’s just one question: what are they? The Team Has Clear, Defined, SMART Goals For a team to be productive, it has to have goals. Those goals may begin with something nebulous like “grow the business” but must eventually be pared down into SMART goals. A SMART goal is: S – Specific – The goal needs to be a narrow, tangible, definable thing. “Grow the business” is not a specific goal. “Increase revenue by 10%” is. M – Measurable – The goal needs to be measured and monitored. Without measurement, your team can’t know how much progress they’ve made or if they’re spinning their wheels. Metrics also fuel data that can be used to make adjustments. A – Achievable – The goals need to be realistic. Most companies, for example, cannot set “double our customer base” as an achievable goal. R – Relevant – A goal needs to be meaningful to the company. Increasing revenue is relevant, decreasing ad spend is relevant. Increasing the number of customers might not be appropriate if the business is already struggling to fulfill existing orders. T – Timely – Goals should have times and deadlines attached. “Grow revenue by 10%” isn’t timely; “Grow revenue by 10% by the end of the year” is. Taken together as a framework, this allows the team to codify goals and attach metrics to them to be measured and tracked. Otherwise, the team cannot know how far they have progressed; or how close they are to their goal. Open-ended goals reduce motivation and morale since the feeling of accomplishment disappears. Goals can come from above or within. A team with guidance from above may be directed to solve specific problems or achieve specific goals, as defined by C-levels or other executives. Often, a high-performing team may be assigned a particular task to complete as an agile and effective problem-solving group. Other times, teams are given broad, overarching motivation and asked to develop specific goals to attain that motivation. The Team Can Build a Plan to Achieve Those Goals Goals are just the first step in any process. Once a team has a goal, the next thing they need to do is plan out tangible steps, in a process, to achieve those goals. That means that the team needs to have robust planning abilities. Some team members may think through the overarching problem and come up with key milestones to reach to achieve it. Others may approach it from the ground level to discuss the specific steps they will need to take to reach those milestones. Still, others may dedicate their time to identifying potential problems in the process and helping to navigate those problems. While problem-solving is a core capability for most employees, it needs to be heavily employed within high-performance teams and groups within a company. It’s not a luxury; these employees must be capable of planning the solution to a problem with minimum friction. Plans themselves must be just as tangible and SMART as the goals. The Team Has Strong, Clear Leadership Leadership is critical for a team. There are, however, two kinds of leadership that matter: internal and external. Internal leadership is the leadership of the team itself. How does the team organize, delegate, assign work, solve problems, or report data? Teams can have a single leader, or they can operate by committee or consensus. Both options have pros and cons, and neither is objectively “correct”; it generally depends on the team’s personalities and preferences. External leadership is leadership from outside of the team, typically above it in the company hierarchy. For example, a customer service team might answer to a general CS lead, or a development team might have an executive development strategist above them. External leadership typically assigns broad goals and asks for reports but does not participate in the team itself. Proper leadership is a critical part of maintaining an effective business. The external leader must be able to assign a goal and trust the team to see it through or to report to them if there are significant roadblocks that prevent achieving that goal. The team must trust their leadership not to assign unrealistic goals. The Team Maintains Open and Clear Communication Communication is essential for any team, whether for three people or thirty, entry-level or executive, or anywhere in between. Communication allows for problem-solving, data sharing, collaboration, and more. Without effective communication, you don’t have a team; you have individuals working on the same tasks. Communication is about more than just opening channels; it’s about active listening, response, and discussion. If a team member speaks up with an idea, and is shot down without nuance or consideration, that’s not communication. “In a successful team, members feel that their ideas and input matter, so they are not afraid to express their own thoughts and opinions, even if these conflict with what has been presented. In fact, diverse opinions are welcomed and seen as opportunities to stir creativity and generate fresh ideas. At the same time, members listen to what others have to say because they believe in the ability, character, and integrity of their teammates. This culture of trust allows members to share their knowledge, build on each other’s ideas, collaborate, and experiment.” –  Athens Micro . Communication is how teams function. Establishing lines of communication – whether it’s a discussion board, a Slack channel, in-person meetings, e-mail, or some combination of the above – is part of building a team. Ensure that everyone in the team equally uses the venues chosen for communication. The Team Resolves Conflicts Quickly Conflict is inevitable in any good team; because a good team includes a diversity of thoughts, views, opinions, and ideas. More on that momentarily. Conflict can arise for any number of reasons. Team members may feel like they are not being listened to, or their contributions are minimized or misattributed. A team member may struggle with their workload or think they’ve been assigned more than the rest of the team. Many issues are an issue of perception, but some may be due to inequitable divisions of labor or attention. An effective team works to resolve issues through a calm and practical discussion. Each team member must converse with respect and a calm attitude. They must listen and not interrupt, particularly if interruptions are part of the core complaint. They must focus on facts rather than opinions or perceptions. Mutual respect is critical. Remember, disagreement is ok and fosters more ideas. Conflict is destructive and suppresses potential ideas. The Team Has a Diverse Background and Composition Diversity is critical for a high-performance team. An effective team should consist of people from different backgrounds, demographics, skill sets, and knowledge bases. Drawing from a diverse teams’ thoughts, experiences, and histories leads to more varied discussion, more diversity of ideas, and better end results. That isn’t theory, either; diversity benefitting teams is a proven fact. “A 2015 McKinsey report on 366 public companies found that those in the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity in management were 35% more likely to have financial returns above their industry mean, and those in the top quartile for gender diversity were 15% more likely to have returns above the industry mean.” – HBR . This is where good conflict resolution comes into play. Diversity makes teams less comfortable , which fosters creativity but can make some members feel out of place. A good, inclusive team helps resolve these problems to the benefit of the whole team. That said, sometimes a conflict is unresolvable. A diverse team cannot function with active bigotry in its makeup, for example. In these cases, a restructuring of the team may be necessary. The Team Avoids Blame and Emphasizes Solutions Every team will eventually encounter a roadblock, problem, or failure. How the team reacts to this failure is a critical sign of whether or not the team is functioning as one. Poor teams blame one another, try to find a scapegoat, and believe their process was perfect while their implementation was flawed. While this can make most of the team feel better about themselves, it does nothing to resolve the problem, hurts the team’s morale, and costs the team a valuable asset. Good teams take responsibility, whether as individuals or as a team, as a whole, and move on to solutions. The fact that they failed, is not important; how they mean to adjust and fix it is critical. “Teams accept responsibility as individuals and as a team. They don’t blame one another for team mistakes and failures. No one should spend any time, useless time, in personal justifications. They should celebrate their successes together and recognize special performances and contributions that each team member makes to the total work of the team.” – Mike Schoultz . It can be difficult for many people to learn to accept responsibility without blame. Finding candidates who can do so is a crucial aspect of building a team. Each Team Member Has a Defined Role When a team is being built, it must be built around the assignment of roles and the cohesiveness of skill sets. Overlapping skills can leave one team member feeling like they have nothing to do, particularly if there’s not enough work to justify two members doing it. Skill gaps, conversely, can leave a team struggling to achieve its goals. For example, a team dedicated to paid marketing might have one member who handles overall strategy, one who reads and analyzes metrics, one who is an expert in audience targeting, and one who creates ad copy and imagery. Together, they cover all of the bases and can implement a plan to achieve specific goals. If the team lacks someone who reads metrics and has two people who create copy, they become inefficient. Over the course of operation, the team may find that the skills they initially joined to contribute are not where their true skills lie, and their role may shift. That is fine, so long as the team can adjust to cover the bases appropriately. Each Team Member Contributes Their Share Everyone in a high-performing team pulls their weight because everyone is fulfilling a distinct role. “Each member of the team contributes their fair share of the workload and fully understands what their responsibilities are and where they fit in with the running of the business. They feel a sense of belonging to the team, are committed to their work, and really care about the success of the company.” –  Undercover Recruiter . Putting together a team that covers all bases while avoiding undue overlap or detrimental conflicts can be difficult. Often, teams need to go through several iterations before settling on an effective group, both in team size and skill sets. Additionally, when built by those in authority above the team, they might not see all of the conflicts or overlaps that occur. It’s up to the team leadership to approach external leadership about adjustments as necessary. Teams are the building blocks of effective companies, and as a whole, the company itself is a team of teams. Building and refining that team is crucial to business success. After reading today’s post, if you have any comments, questions, or concerns, please feel free to leave a comment down below or reach out and contact us! We would be more than happy to get a conversation started and assist with whatever team-building or recruiting needs you or your business may need. We’re standing by and ready to help at a moment’s notice. All it will take is a single message, so please reach out at any time.

Turnover is a fact of life for a business. Few employees will hold the same position forever; indeed, the idea of a life-long career has been somewhat of a rarity for decades. Even if you have particularly loyal employees, outside factors can lead to a resignation. It’s often outside of your control. However, there’s a world of difference between natural turnover and a mass exodus of employees. Sometimes, an entire team, department, or group of employees quits all at the same time. What causes this issue? Can you do anything about it? Let’s dig in. Understanding Why Employees Leave In Groups The first step to solving the problem of a mass exodus is understanding why your employees are leaving. Often, the writing is on the wall; you may not want to hear it, or you may have been insulated by a manager hiding the problem, but the signs are generally there. What common causes lead to a mass resignation? Contagious Dissatisfaction Humans are social creatures. We build social circles, make friends, and gather in groups. Unfortunately, this can backfire on a company. When an employee decides to leave, it can make others in their social circle – often people they interact with daily, such as their team – consider the same option. They might talk to their friends about why they’re leaving, and recognize “hey, I have those same issues. Why am I staying when they’re leaving?” Sometimes, this is the simple recognition of ongoing problems in the workplace. Employees simply see their peer leaving as a wake-up call, open their eyes to the toxic situation they’ve been toiling in, and decide that enough is enough. Other times, employees leaving convince others to come with them. They may get a better offer elsewhere and encourage their new employer to bring their team with them. The reasons and rationales vary, but the effect is the same. Often, all it takes is a single employee leaving to pull out a pillar of support and send the whole house of cards crumbling. Key Employees Leave Similar to contagious dissatisfaction is that there will always be “key” employees. Everyone has a story of a place they worked where the only thing making it tolerable was one good manager or one good team member. When these key “leaders” in the social circle leave, the anchor that kept an entire group around disappears. This holds true whether the key employee is leaving of their own volition, leaving because of other pressures, or being terminated. Sometimes that key employee is perfectly satisfied with working for you, but other pressures (like a family crisis, a spouse getting a job elsewhere and needing to move, a medical problem, or the like) force them to leave. When that happens, the employees anchored by that one key individual will reexamine whether or not they want to keep working for you. Lack of Respect Employees want to feel respected in their role. They want to be respected, thanked, and encouraged by their peers and bosses. They want to make use of their skills and talents. They want to face challenges suitable to their skill level. A lack of respect in the workplace, as often as not, leads to turnover. It can be anything from a toxic workplace culture to a single manager who treats their reports as expendable. For example, in this Reddit thread on the subject : “The boss went off on a tirade on me for something that wasn’t my fault, and I got him to scream, ‘people like you are expendable pieces in this company, and I can replace you tomorrow if I wanted to.’ 80% of the engineers quit the next day. Simply didn’t show up. Including me. From what I know, the entire project folded because my now ex-boss couldn’t find people to replace us because no one wanted to do the kind of work he was looking for at the salary he was paying.” One individual sent an entire team packing through their behavior and proved why a lack of respect is incredibly damaging. Problematic Managers, Policies, or Behaviors Employment is a balance. Very few people are employed in a position they genuinely enjoy or want to work. Most do what they can to make a living and live their lives to their best ability outside of work. When the pressures of work grow too toxic, it becomes better for the mental and physical health of the employee to leave. Toxic behaviors can stem from an employee’s peers, managers, or the company itself. A toxic workplace with constant petty sniping, bickering, and backstabbing works against the company as a whole. A bad manager or a toxic set of behaviors from a group of managers is hugely detrimental to everyone beneath them. Toxic and restrictive company policies make growth impossible, so employees have no choice but to leave to see themselves flourish. Low Pay and Benefits Sometimes it’s not about culture or respect. Sometimes it’s as simple as money. Everyone needs to make enough money to survive. Inflation goes up, the cost of living rises, yet pay rates are notoriously stagnant across the country in virtually every industry. Remember: every year that an employee doesn’t receive a raise that, at least, equals the increase in the local cost of living and inflation, is a year that employee is effectively making less than they were before. Sometimes this is a prolonged, low-level pressure that eventually drives employees to leave, so they can earn what they’re worth. Other times, immediate pressures (such as medical bills, property taxes, or other changes) force employees to seek better opportunities. The fact is, you need to compensate your employees adequately to keep them around. Remember, as well, that “benefits” include more than just salary and health insurance. It can also include things like flexible hours and work/life balance. Competitor Poaching While all these pressures can lead one or two employees to leave, many don’t feel comfortable making the jump. This is especially true if they don’t have a polished resume, a connection, or confidence in their skills. Sometimes, though, employees you thought were “safe” have joined others in leaving. In these cases, a competitor may be poaching your employees. They recognize a flaw in your business – like low pay and benefits, lack of respect, or lack of opportunity – and they promise precisely those things to get your employees to jump ship. It’s not illegal and is a common business practice , and the only thing you can do about it is make your company a better place to work. External Pressures Occasionally, other pressures drive employees to leave. They may see the writing on the wall and want to get out of the way of a crisis that would otherwise be devastating to the company. Such pressures might include: Pending legislation that can damage or destroy the industry with new regulations or laws. A new competitor poised to take over and drive the business to the ground. Talk of a merger or acquisition that is likely to result in mass layoffs. These and similar reasons are often responsible for a mass resignation event that leaves your company in an even worse position to weather the crisis they predicted. Unfortunately, it’s challenging to handle this kind of situation without aggressive change, which many companies aren’t prepared to do. Identifying the Cause of Mass Resignations Before you can fight back against a mass exodus, you first need to identify why it’s happening in the first place. Sometimes, it may be apparent. If many employees are jumping ship when you announce an acquisition, well, you know why they did it. On the other hand, if it’s relatively unexpected, you need to gather information. One of the best tools in your arsenal for this is the exit interview. Exit interviews can give you a great deal of insight into why employees are choosing to leave, assuming you ask the right questions . That, and your ex-employees need to answer the interview honestly, which isn’t always going to happen, depending on how much perceived power you have over them after they leave. Talking with your ex-employees can give you some ideas of why they’ve left in a less formal setting as well. Maybe in a casual setting, they’ll be more likely to discuss issues they have with a particular manager, policy, or direction the overall leadership is taking. Again, this can give you a hint at why they’re leaving but might not be as direct as a stated reason. Unfortunately, the reality is that you will rarely be able to stop a mass resignation. More often, you can attempt to make systemic changes and, occasionally, win back some of those employees. However, most of the time, you need to let those employees go, make your changes, and treat both your remaining employees and your new hires better. Combatting Mass Resignations Often, the most challenging part of combating a wave of resignations is admitting that something is wrong. All too often, leadership fails to recognize that there’s a problem until that problem is undeniable and hurting the bottom line. Admitting there’s a problem is the first step to solving that problem. Once you have some idea of why your employees are leaving, you have an opportunity to change and fix the problem. Solutions can be broad or narrow. For example, they may include: Firing a problematic manager or executive responsible for toxic behavior. Changing company policies that suppressed employee engagement and satisfaction. Offering bonuses, raises, more benefits, or a changed pay and benefit structure. Reversing course on specific choices or actions that led to a resignation event. Sometimes, you don’t have the option to change the cause of a mass exodus. For example, if your company is being acquired and employees are leaving (either due to the acquisition itself or due to which company is acquiring yours), you are very unlikely to be able to pull out of the deal. On the other hand, sometimes it’s an easy change to make. If firing one manager saves ten employees from leaving, that’s a mathematically simple choice to make. Likewise, when you consider the cost of replacing an employee , increasing pay and benefits can still be cheaper in the long run. Likewise, changing an oppressive company policy is trivially easy to do. One thing you don’t want to do is start up “retention efforts” with meetings, bonuses, and other temporary measures. Why? It tells employees that they’re more valuable than they think, further encouraging them to push for more and/or leave if they don’t get it. It tells employees that your efforts are not a genuine attempt to change and are, instead, a bare minimum effort to save the cost of hiring replacements. It tells employees that your efforts are temporary, and once the urge to leave has passed, things will go back to the way they were. Your goal should be to implement broad, overarching changes that have a lasting impact on the problems driving employees to leave. Additionally, avoid targeting your benefits and changes. If the only people who receive a retention or “loyalty” bonus are the ones thinking of leaving, suddenly everyone will be thinking of leaving; moreover, even if they aren’t really putting out serious applications, they could get a serious offer. Your reaction to an exodus can actually exacerbate the problem. Operate on the assumption that everyone is planning to leave, and you need to take action to keep them around. It’s generally difficult or impossible to truly stop a mass exodus. The best thing you can do is focus on changing the reasons why your employees are leaving. Then, when you hire their replacements, those replacements won’t face the same problems and pressures that lead to a revolving door of a position. If you have any questions or concerns regarding mass resignation or how to combat it, please feel free to drop a comment below, and we’ll get a conversation started! We would be more than happy to answer your or your company’s questions on the topic.

It’s one thing for us to tell you that diversity (in people and thought) in the workplace is essential to a modern business. No matter how much you trust us, though, it’s necessary to back up claims with facts. Here are 25 statistics worth knowing about diversity and inclusion in the workplace with that in mind. If you have any statistics to add to this list, or you’ve found new reports that add context or can add more information to an existing point, feel free to leave them in the comments, with an authoritative source attached. 1: Millennials are a diverse group of people in the workplace. According to CNN Money , 72% of the Baby Boomer workforce is white, while only 56% of the Millennial workforce is white. The growing awareness and push for diversity from minority groups have led to greater levels of representation in the workforce, and this push will only increase as more and more older white workers retire. Preliminary data indicates that Gen Z workers will continue this trend as well. 2: Job seekers are looking for diversity in their workplaces. Studies and surveys by Glassdoor show that a majority (67%) of job seekers today feel that workplace diversity is one of the most important factors to consider when deciding whether or not to apply to or work with a given company. As many as half of all workers believe their workplaces should be increasing their focus on diversity, as well. 3: Just under half of all workers have experienced some form of workplace harassment. Gallup polls show that, despite diversity and inclusion policies, harassment happens anyway. This systemic problem affects businesses from the smallest local shop to the largest megacorporation. As recent scandals with companies like Riot, Activision, and Amazon indicate, this problem digs deep and will take sustained effort to solve. However, companies that actively promote and enforce D&I policies have an advantage in hiring forward-thinking employees. 4: Diversity in thought (cognitive diversity) leads to innovation. Diversity is about more than race and nationality; it’s about genders, abilities, orientations, and more. Diversity in all aspects, and inclusion in the workplace, breeds innovation. As measured by Quantum Workplace , companies that promote broad thought diversity see as much as a 20% increase in innovation. 5: Diverse teams out-perform their less diverse competitors. Racial diversity, specifically, is an apparent and critical indicator of diversity in the workplace. Studies performed by Sage found that companies with racially diverse staff, including employees at managerial and executive levels, performed better and grew faster than their less diverse competitors. 6: The benefit of diversity is growing. “Our 2019 analysis finds that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 25 percent more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile—up from 21 percent in 2017 and 15 percent in 2014” – McKinsey , in their 2020 report on diversity. The benefit of diversity is not just visible; it’s growing. Each year, the benefits of a diverse team become more pronounced, and the companies that resist diversity further stagnate. 7: Every kind of diversity matters. Again from the McKinsey study , every form of diversity they looked at – including racial and ethnic, gender, and others – proved beneficial when considered in isolation and in context. Companies can promote one kind of diversity, such as gender diversity, and see a benefit, but a company that capitalizes on gender, ethnic, and racial diversity will further out-perform them, on average. 8: Diversity isn’t enough without inclusive policies. Per McKinsey , again: “While overall sentiment on diversity was 52 percent positive and 31 percent negative, sentiment on inclusion was markedly worse, at only 29 percent positive and 61 percent negative. This encapsulates the challenge that even the more diverse companies still face in tackling inclusion. Hiring diverse talent isn’t enough—it’s the workplace experience that shapes whether people remain and thrive.” In other words, having diverse employees doesn’t do much for you if you aren’t including them in your operations, preventing casual discrimination, and creating a safe workplace. 9: Diversity is lagging behind in the USA. “In the US, companies that increase racial and ethnic diversity on senior boards enjoy a 0.8% increase in earnings before interest and tax (EBIT), while their counterparts in the UK see a 3.5% increase.” – BuiltIn . The benefits of increasing diversity in the USA are substantial, but they are more robust in the UK and other areas abroad. A more significant cultural shift is coming but lagging behind in America. The influence of diversity is growing with each year, however. 10: Customers are also concerned about diversity. There’s a growing awareness of the source of products we consume. Consumers are increasingly concerned about the ethics of the companies producing the items they buy. If a company is less diverse or notorious for discrimination, it will struggle to obtain an audience. Conversely, per HBR , diverse companies are 70% more likely to capture a new audience or market. 11: Diversity in executive leadership is lagging. Diversity at the ground level is critical for performance throughout an organization. However, diversity needs to be reflected in leadership as well. Among the Fortune 500, according to Pew , a meager 25/500 companies have female CEOs. The lack of diversity at the top levels is holding back many companies. To put this into context, there are more CEOs named John in the fortune 500 than female CEOs. 12: Discrimination has a cost. Diversity has benefits, and a lack of diversity means your company doesn’t get those benefits. Moreover, though, discrimination and a lack of inclusion lead to turnover. Turnover includes not just the employees targeted by discrimination, but by others who quit out of solidarity or protest. Costs to a company include those from turnover, as well as discrimination lawsuits, and total to $16 billion each year, according to TechRepublic . 13: Wage equality is lagging. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics , wages for women lag behind wages for men, at around 82%. Similar gaps can be observed between white and non-white employees in similar roles. The continued culture of suppressing discussions about pay has facilitated this wage gap to continue, despite strides made in the last decades to rectify the situation. 14: The more diversity characteristics, the worse the pay. In general, statistics indicate that diversity indicators also reflect worse pay in many cases. Women make less than their male counterparts; black and Hispanic women earn less than white women. Oddly, Asian women made more than white women on average, though still less than white men in their positions. – Per BLS . Often, individuals with more than one ethnicity or race (or who are both a minority race and a minority religion, orientation, or another characteristic) also have lower pay than those with just one of their characteristics. 15: Diversity requires visibility. Many potential employees are evaluating the stances companies take on diversity and inclusion throughout their organizations. Moreover, both actions and words are essential. Companies that are quietly diverse may suffer from not advertising that fact. According to LinkedIn , companies that post on social media about the importance of diversity and their efforts towards inclusiveness tended to receive 26% more applications. 16: Top-level indifference and lack of commitment are huge roadblocks. A survey of global companies conducted by SHRM indicated that the two biggest reasons why diversity initiatives are not effective in some companies are a lack of commitment and indifference. A lack of commitment means top-level executives pay lip service to the idea but fail to commit. Indifference tends to indicate that leadership expresses attitudes like “not seeing color.” 17: Discrimination starts early in the hiring process. Decisions for filtering resumes are often riddled with bias. In particular, whether a human or a machine-learning algorithm filters resumes rarely matters; both will discriminate based solely on whether or not an applicant’s name is “white-sounding” or not. Thus, one of the best strategies for hiring diverse candidates is to strip identifying information and judge candidates solely on their skills and experience. This idea is backed up by data from the National Bureau of Economic Research . 18: Blind hiring works. The above act, stripping personal information from resumes, is called blind hiring. Blind hiring, blind interviews, and blind auditions have been studied and found to result in more women, and minority hires. The NY Times reports that blind hiring boosted female hires from 25% to 46%. Many modern ATS platforms now offer the ability to strip identifying information from resumes and applications, to make blind hiring easier. However, it’s crucial to ensure that there is no algorithmic judgment applied to resumes before removing that information due to how algorithms can have just as much bias trained into them. 19: The number of federal discrimination lawsuits filed is decreasing. Data from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is compiled every year, breaking down the number of discrimination suits each year, by category. Overall, the number of lawsuits filed at a federal level has decreased year over year since roughly 2011. In 2011 the peak was around 99,000 lawsuits that year, while 2018 had 76,000, 2019 had 72,000, and 2020 had 67,000. However, this data does not include state-level lawsuits or the reason behind the decrease. 20: Disability is a less visible but equally important form of diversity. Disabled individuals have many challenges to contend with. Among them is benefits; many disabled individuals do not seek work because their benefits are all-or-nothing, and if they make too much, they lose and have to repay their benefits, which can be more than they’re making. However, McKinsey estimates that an increase of just 1% in hiring disabled individuals could result in an increase of $25 billion in GDP. 21: Lack of diverse leadership suppresses ideas from diverse employees. As mentioned above, diverse leadership is the most significant factor holding back many companies. HBR reports that the endorsement of ideas from diverse sources is reduced without diverse leadership. Women see 20% lower acceptance, people of color see 24% less, and LGBT individuals see 21% lower acceptance of their ideas. Again, these problems need to get addressed from the bottom of a company to the very top. 22: Gender diversity is extremely important for performance. A report from Fast Company found data showing that companies with above-average gender diversity in their staff and leadership had much higher employee engagement. In fact, they tended to out-perform other companies by 46-58% in terms of engagement. This primarily returns to inclusivity and how a diverse workforce helps encourage those with differences to feel welcome and included. Hence, they contribute more to the overall direction of the company. 23: Two-dimensional diversity is better than diversity on a single dimension. Two-dimensional diversity considers diversity across two axes; inherent diversity, composed of inborn identity markers like race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation; and acquired diversity, composed of learned and lived experiences, such as poverty, discrimination, and other past experiences. HBR found that organizations using two-dimensional diversity had a 45% wider market capture and a 70% chance to enter a new market. 24: Excuses are thin. Among managers who do not capitalize on diversity or encourage inclusion in the workplace, 41% claimed they were “too busy” to do so, according to BuiltIn . When considering all of the benefits to a company left on the table, it’s hard to imagine what these managers are doing to be so busy while achieving less for the company than they could be by focusing on diversity and inclusion initiatives. 25: The greater the diversity, the greater the returns. Amongst businesses reporting higher levels of diversity, the most diverse workforces reported the highest degree of benefits. Science Daily reported that businesses with the highest level of racial diversity saw 15x – that’s 1,500% — higher revenue than non-diverse companies. If you’ve ever needed proof that diversity is essential to the growth and success of a modern business, now you have it. Will your business join these successful metrics? As mentioned previously, if you have additional statistics to add to this list, please leave those in the comments section below, along with an authoritative source. If you have any questions regarding any of these statistics or additional questions regarding what diversity can do for your company, please feel free to ask away at any time, and we’ll get a conversation started. We’d be more than happy to assist in answering any potential questions that you or your company may have.

The United States form I-9 is an essential document for anyone seeking employment. It’s the “Employment Eligibility Verification” form, and it verifies that the individual being hired is who they claim to be and is eligible to work in the United States. It’s required for both citizens and non-citizens of the United States and needs to be filled out by both employers and employees. In most cases, this is fine. You meet with the new hire as part of the hiring process. You ask them to bring their documentation with them to the meeting – things like government ID, passport card, or green card, items from the acceptable documents list – and examine them while they’re present. They sign the paperwork, you sign the paperwork, and they’re good to go. Things get a little more complicated for remote employees. What happens if the employee you’re hiring is hundreds or thousands of miles away? The Problem with Remote Hires The biggest problem with hiring someone remotely is properly filling out the I-9 form. Two restrictions get in the way. The employee must have a signed and verified I-9 before they can begin work. This restriction requires that the employee have their paperwork processed and verified by the government of the United States before they can begin working for your company. This requirement doesn’t sound like a tall order, but what happens if you need to rush to hire new people for your company, but they live remotely? They can’t start working legally until the paperwork is processed, and that takes time when you factor in mailing forms and documentation back and forth. Though, with enough preparation, this shouldn’t be a problem. The problem comes when you combine it with the second restriction. The documentation provided by the employee must be originals, examined in person. The key sticking point here is that the documents must be examined in person and be the originals. That means that you cannot have the prospective employee show you their documents via a Zoom call or webcam chat because it’s not an in-person examination. It also means that they cannot photocopy and send you the copies in the mail to examine because they aren’t originals. Any way you can think of to get around this is likely something the government explicitly forbids. This restriction means you have a few limited options. The prospective employee can mail you their documentation to examine . This option is terrible; mail can get lost, and sensitive documents are extremely important. Plus, the time delay of the mail still adds at minimum several days before the employee can get processed. The prospective employee can make a trip to your office with their documentation to be processed . This option is costly, time-consuming, and may be impossible if the employee would need to enter the country when they don’t have the authorization to do so. Luckily, the government offers one way around this: authorized representatives. Using an Authorized Agent to Verify Documentation According to the USCIS, an authorized agent can complete I-9 paperwork for a remote hire. Specifically : “Employers may designate an authorized representative to fill out Forms I-9 on behalf of their company, including personnel officers, foremen, agents, or notary public. The Department of Homeland Security does not require the authorized representative to have specific agreements or other documentation for Form I-9 purposes. If an authorized representative fills out Form I-9 on behalf on the employer, the employer is still liable for any violations in connection with the form or the verification process. When completing Form I-9, the employer or authorized representative must physically examine, with the employee being physically present, each document presented to determine if it reasonably appears to be genuine and relates to the employee presenting it. Reviewing or examining documents via webcam is not permissible. If the authorized representative refuses to complete Form I-9 (including a signature), another authorized representative may get selected. If the employer hires a notary public, the notary public is acting as an authorized representative of the employer, not as a notary. The notary public must perform the same required actions as an authorized representative. When acting as an authorized representative, the notary public should not provide a notary seal on Form I-9.” Thus, the primary solution to the remote work problem is to contact a representative in the same location as the prospective employee, most typically a notary public. This authorized agent is responsible for the employment verification and signing of the I-9 form, and, as such, is in a trusted position. Should the designated agent verify fraudulent documents, the employer is still liable, but there may also be repercussions for the agent. However, there are occasional troubles with using a notary public; many notaries don’t know what to do when presented with an I-9 and may refuse service. John Fay, via SHRM , recommends building a list of potential agents a prospective employee can contact for the service. “‘The employer can list the best possible choices based on prior experience and include any additional instructions or guidance which might be helpful,’ Fay said. He recommends clients consider HR professionals at nearby organizations, local librarians, attorneys or accountants, state workforce agency staff, or notaries. A nationwide listing of notaries can be found here. ‘It’s best to choose an individual who is already familiar with the Form I-9 process to ensure a smooth and quick verification process,’ Fay said. It’s also important to know which states may prohibit notaries from completing the Form I-9 or have different requirements. ‘California, for example, has indicated that the completion of an I-9 form requires you to be bonded as an immigration consultant.'” As the employer, it is not necessarily your responsibility to pick a specific agent in the location of the prospective employee. If you do the legwork to identify and contact such an agent ahead of time, and recommend that particular agent to your employee, it can streamline the process. However, they are also free to find anyone willing that meets the requirements of being an authorized agent. As Fay says, some states like California may have specific, additional requirements for verification of the form I-9. Luckily, the actual requirements for an authorized agent are generally minimal. The agent needs to inspect the documentation and certify that, to the best of their knowledge, the documents are legitimate and in order. They do not need to notarize the form, nor do they need to go to exceptional lengths to verify the documentation. The Impact of COVID-19 on Form I-9 Completion The global Coronavirus pandemic has, for a good reason, put a damper on a lot of different governmental and social processes. In particular, the requirement that documents get inspected in person has become dangerous, both to the authorized agent and the prospective employee. Many sources of authorized agents, such as libraries, also may not be open or available during quarantines or lockdowns. This problem throws an additional wrench into the plan to verify remote employees. This is made even worse because many businesses are transitioning to either temporary or permanent remote work for some or all of their employees, and many more are starting to hire remote employees when they never had to do so before. How do you navigate the Form I-9 problem if you’re in this situation? The answer is temporary waiving of requirements from the government. Agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security have implemented temporary policies to waive the physical inspection of documentation. Here’s what they now require: You are not required to inspect the documentation in person. You are still required to inspect the documentation but can do so over a digital means such as email, video call, or fax. You have to acquire copies of the relevant documentation within three days for the purposes of section 2 of the I-9. Additionally, this is a deferment, not a waiver. When these restrictions are lifted and normal operations resume, you will be required to submit an amended form with an appropriate physical examination of the documents and “Covid-19” listed as the reason for the delay. It’s worth mentioning that there’s some uncertainty and flexibility in these rules. Though the rules were initially meant for companies offering temporary remote work for employees who will eventually work in person, it seems to be commonly used for fully remote employees and companies that have no intent to return to an office, with no repercussions as of yet. This provision has already nearly run out several times; ICE and DHS decided to extend it when it became clear that the pandemic is not yet over (indeed, it is worse than ever) and is, as of this writing currently, extended through April 30, 2022. Check this page , or this page for the most up-to-date information on the new policies and deadlines. Your company is not required to complete remote, deferred verification of documentation. If you and your prospective employee are willing to do so and can find an authorized agent willing to do so, verification can be performed as normal. This can be taken on a case-by-case basis for each remote employee. It’s also possible that the remote verification rules may be made permanent. As of the end of 2021, DHS was seeking comments on whether or not the new rules should be made permanent to ease the burden on hiring remote workers. After all, global, modern communications methods have made it easier than ever to hire fully remote workers from around the globe. Requiring steep barriers to verification of documentation puts an unnecessary damper on that ability. Comments were accepted until December 27, 2021. Currently, the agencies are reviewing the comments and will be making their decision at some future point. You can read more about it here . Is it likely to succeed? That remains to be seen. This experiment may have shown DHS and ICE that there is very little to be gained through in-person verification and that the inspection does little to combat fraud while placing an undue burden on businesses to arrange it. On the other hand, we all know that government agencies are slow to change, so it’s possible that reverting to the old rules is in the cards. “Leading technology companies have made recent advancements in document capture that paves the way for an automated review of an I-9 document with a higher level of confidence relating to its authenticity and validity.” –  John Fay . Perhaps the most likely result will be the establishment of specific rules and technologies, as well as a dedicated system for verifying documentation remotely. What form this will take, however, remains to be seen. What Should Your Company Do? If your company is looking to hire a remote employee, the first thing to do is check the links to DHS and ICE to see if the current rules have changed since the time of this writing. If remote validation is still allowed, do that. You should make sure that you have notes taken and are prepared if such a time comes that you will be required to submit manual verification of the documents and an amended I-9. That may or may not be necessary, depending on the decisions made by the government in the coming months and years. Should you consider not hiring remote employees? No. The benefits of hiring remote employees far outweigh the drawbacks of navigating a tricky situation for their employment documentation. The broader talent pool, the flexibility of a remote team, and the quality of work done while keeping employees safe during a pandemic are all too important to lose simply to avoid working with a complicated form process. Have you had issues filing or verifying the form I-9 in the past, or since the pandemic started and the rules were relaxed? If so, please discuss them in the comments below. Additionally, if you have any further questions regarding filling out the Form I-9 properly or require any assistance, please feel free to leave a comment down below, and we’ll get a conversation started! Streamline Onboarding with Emerge Talent Cloud Emerge Talent Cloud can help streamline your entire recruitment and onboarding process, including I-9s. Our expert team takes the burden off your shoulders, ensuring a seamless and efficient recruitment process from start to finish. Get in touch with us today! Fast Track Your Hiring Process with Emerge Talent Cloud Services

One of the most frequently asked questions involved in the job hunt is whether or not a verbal offer – and acceptance of that offer – forms a legally binding contract. Imagine, if you will, this situation. You’re a hiring manager, and you’ve gone through the filtering and interview process to fill a role. You’ve identified a promising candidate. At the end of their final interview, you say that you would like to offer them the job and that you’ll send them the paperwork later. They agree, you shake hands, and the candidate leaves happy. At this point, the candidate has not signed any paperwork. All they’ve done is acknowledged and accepted that you’ve extended the offer. Are they now officially employed? Are they obligated to sign the paperwork when it arrives? This comes up a lot when candidates are applying to multiple jobs. They may be interviewing with several companies simultaneously, and they may even have more than one offer on the table to compare before deciding which one to accept. Are they required to work for you now that you’ve extended this verbal offer and they’ve accepted it? Let’s examine the situation. Learn About On Demand Recruiting Services Did the Candidate Accept? The first question you have to ask is whether or not the candidate accepted the offer. Common advice from career and job-hunting sites regarding verbal offers is to “Show your appreciation, think it over, negotiate pay, request a written offer, and continue the job search.” You’ll note that “accept the offer” is not one of the steps. Just because you extended the offer does not mean you are in a contract with the candidate. If the candidate did not verbally accept the offer – and it has to be an explicit acceptance, not an implicit one – you have no contract. The candidate is free to do whatever they want with the offer, including ghosting you completely . On the other hand, you have a verbal contract if the candidate explicitly accepts the offer (pending paperwork). Are Verbal Contracts Binding? The second question to ask is whether or not a verbal contract means anything. In this case, the answer is relatively simple, but the devil is in the details. Short version: yes, a verbal contract is legally binding. You must extend the written offer and the job when you make a verbal offer. When the candidate accepts that verbal offer, they must accept the job. There are, however, a lot of little details that can change this equation. Was the job offer conditional? This question is a big one that many employers might overlook. If you offer the candidate the job, but the offer is conditional based upon the results of some other verification, such as a drug test, a medical examination, a reference check, a credit check, or another set of conditions, then it’s not an actual job offer. “The job offer must be unconditional. If the offer is made subject to certain conditions, like medical checkups or references, a final agreement is not formed until the set conditions are fulfilled. Mere acceptance of a conditional offer does not constitute a valid contract.” – UpCounsel . In these cases, even if you offer a contract and the candidate accepts, there’s no actual contract in place because of the conditions. You will need to produce and provide a real contract once those conditions are fulfilled. Was the verbal contract witnessed or recorded? A verbal contract may be considered legally binding, but what happens if you have to take it to court? It becomes a matter of your word versus the word of the candidate. Maybe you claim they accepted, but they claim they never did, and they just thanked you for offering it. Without a record, neither side can be proven. That can make it very difficult to prove one way or the other, and in these cases, the chances are pretty good that you won’t get anything out of the court proceedings. That’s why more complex deals are usually offered in writing, including employment agreements. There are too many factors to keep track of with a verbal contract, and it’s too easy for some of them to slip through the cracks. Does either party live in an at-will employment jurisdiction? The biggest wrench in a verbal employment offer is that most people live and work in at-will employment jurisdictions. “At will” means that either party, the employer or the employee, can sever the contract at any time. You can fire an employee for any reason, and the employee can also quit for any reason. There are exceptions, of course. Public sector workers are generally not at-will. Unions can negotiate contracts that void at-will clauses. Employees are protected from being fired for particular actions, like refusing to violate the law in the course of their duties. Montana. Montana hasn’t passed at-will laws like virtually every other state. Additionally, the employer cannot rescind the job offer if their reason for doing so ties into a protected class or protected information, such as learning at the last minute that the candidate belongs to a particular nationality or religion. Why does this matter? Well, in an at-will jurisdiction, even if the candidate accepts your verbal offer, they are free at any time to then sever the contract. That includes before a written offer is even signed. At-will employment was broadly considered favorable to the employer when it was passed across the country, but that only held true while the employers held the power and employees were struggling to compete for jobs that often weren’t widely available. However, the labor market has shifted, and the pandemic has pushed the balance of power in favor of the employees, and now the leverage of at-will contracts swings in favor of the candidate. Many companies are discovering this first-hand, much to their chagrin. “Employees are considered at-will unless the employer issues a contract of employment. An employment contract is a legally binding document that defines how long the employee is contracted at the business, and the employee’s compensation, responsibilities, and other job-related information. Employment contracts typically also include specific actions that would dissolve the contract.” – Top Echelon. You can circumvent at-will employment by offering a solid, unconditional contract with stipulated terms, but that typically should be done in writing. While a verbal contract and a written contract ostensibly carry the same weight, a verbal contract is much harder to enforce without evidence. In some states, it can’t be enforced, no matter how much the law is on your side, due to the lack of records or evidence. Did the offer change between the verbal offer and the written offer? Let’s say that you present the candidate with a verbal offer, with attached compensation of $70k per year and a standard benefits package. They accept. Later, you realize that you can’t pay them that much. You send them the formal offer letter, and the compensation lists $60k per year instead. Where does the verbal contract come into play? Often, an employer may think that the candidate is obligated to work for the newly given offer because they already agreed to work for the company. However, this isn’t true; the candidate agreed to the offer presented, including the offered compensation, so changing the terms of the agreement is a breach of contract. The candidate is free to accept the new offer, walk away, or even take you to court over the difference. What If the Candidate Ghosts? What happens if you extend a verbal offer, the candidate accepts, and then ghosts you? You send the paperwork, but it’s never returned. You call them, and they don’t pick up. Can you take them to court over the verbal agreement? The answer is a tentative yes. The question is, do you want to? Yes, you’ve invested significant resources in the hiring process. You’ve spent time, and possibly money, on the specific candidate. That can include travel compensation, the salaries paid to hiring managers during the interviews, and even registration for training courses and other fees contingent on the candidate becoming an employee. This is all financial investment that you would then lose if the candidate ghosts you. At the same time, none of this is the candidate’s responsibility. Your HR managers earn their salary regardless of whether or not they’re conducting that specific interview. You’d be paying for the training regardless of who signs the employment contract. Travel compensation and other specific-to-the-candidate expenses are just about the only unique costs that can be assigned to that individual and lost in the breach of a verbal contract. You have the candidate’s information. You can, if you wish, take them to court over the breach of a verbal contract. If you do, though, what do you want to get out of it? If you’re seeking reimbursement for the expenses invested in the candidate, you will need to have records of those expenses. A low bar, but not every company keeps those records. You’re likely out of luck if you’re seeking the individual’s employment. At best, if they end up working for you, they will be resentful and unproductive. At worst, they’ll quit within days, leveraging the at-will nature of employment in the U.S. to their advantage. While a court might be able to order a mandatory duration for employment, you can bet that they’ll do the bare minimum and quit the moment they’re able to. Moreover, all of this positions you as a company that is very dangerous to apply to, and that reputation won’t disappear. Why would others want to apply to you if they risk legal action? It’s a minefield they won’t want to walk through. On top of all of this, you have to win in court, which means you have to convince the court that the candidate accepted the verbal contract. As mentioned above, without proof via a recording, there’s no way to do that. Chances are pretty good that you’ll spend more on the legal proceedings than you would recoup from the breach of contract resolution anyway. Sure, it sucks for a promising candidate to change their mind that late in the process. But, employees have suffered under this situation for decades, getting to the final interview stages and never getting offered a job. Moreover, they have fewer resources, in general, to spend to insulate themselves from the consequences. You can’t blame an individual for wanting the best outcome of their job search, whether or not that outcome is with you. Putting It Simply To sum up everything above in a simple answer: Yes, a verbal offer is legally binding, but only if the candidate expressly accepts it. However, due to at-will employment legislation, the employee can terminate the contract at any time, for any reason. Thus, barring a specific employment contract that is typically written rather than verbal, the candidate can still decline employment and seek work elsewhere. If a candidate accepts a verbal offer and later breaches that contract (such as in the period between accepting the offer and starting work), you are within your rights to pursue damages. However, verbal contracts typically have no records associated with them, so it can be difficult or impossible to win in court. If you choose to pursue the case and win, you will still need to seek another employment candidate. Most of the time, your damages will be financial, and you won’t be able to force the candidate to work for you. Even if you could, it’s not a good idea to do so unless you hate having good morale, hate productivity, and want to risk sabotage. As an employer, your best bet is to have an employment contract drawn up and ready to go when you extend your offer or have one sent to your candidate within 24 hours of extending an offer verbally. While that doesn’t necessarily work around at-will employment regulations, it at least provides evidence in the case of a dispute. Conclusion Do you have any questions about the legality of a job offer, whether written or verbal? If so, please feel free to leave a comment down below, and we’ll get a conversation started! It can be a tricky topic to tackle for many, so we’d be more than happy to help you out however we can! Learn About On Demand Recruiting Services

The global pandemic has led to a massive shift in how the employer-employee relationship works. For decades, the balance of power has tilted in favor of employers, and when an employee leaves, they take their fate into their own hands. Rarely would an employee be valuable or irreplaceable enough to warrant a counter-offer, and when they were, they largely didn’t accept . Today, the balance of power has shifted. The so-called Great Resignation has seen hundreds of thousands of people resign, either for better jobs, career changes, or just to get out of the workforce after a lengthy career. Combined with an ongoing worker shortage, many businesses are now desperate to find and retain employees. When faced with an employee who has decided to resign, you are given a choice. Do you let them go or try to keep them around? If you want to keep them around, the way to try is with a counter-offer. What Is a Counter-Offer? When an employee decides to resign, a counter-offer is an offer of an increase in their pay and benefits package to try to get them to stick around. In today’s environment, it’s not uncommon for a counter-offer to include as much as a 25% bump in pay and additional benefits, the most common of which is a shift to fully remote work. The idea is that it’s cheaper to offer a higher salary and keep the institutional knowledge, existing relationships, and skills of your current employee over having to hire, train, and integrate a replacement. This is exceptionally difficult if the resigning employee has a great deal of institutional knowledge and no time or inclination to develop training materials, train a replacement, or otherwise ensure continuity when they leave. Many businesses, used to employees sticking around despite unfavorable conditions, are now finding that their sway no longer holds and that shortcuts they have taken over the years (like not investing in redundancy or a company knowledge base) are imminent disasters waiting to happen. Generally, if an employee is resigning, it’s because other avenues available to them have failed. They may recognize that they can earn a much higher salary or better benefits elsewhere and may have even tried to get those same benefits out of you before resorting to a resignation. After all, resigning and changing companies is a considerable risk for an employee. Any number of things can go wrong, leaving them without either job. In some cases, an employee is using the threat of resigning to fish for more pay and better benefits. In these cases, a counter-offer can work to keep them around. However, most of the time, a counter-offer won’t be compelling enough for the long term. Statistics About Counter-Offers The unfortunate truth is counter-offers largely do not work. Statistics back this up: “70-80% of people who accept [a counter-offer] either leave or are let go within a year. Why is this the case? Usually for one of two reasons: employer distrust and continued employee dissatisfaction.” – Phaidon International . “9 out of 10 candidates who accept a counter-offer leave their current employer within the twelve-month mark.” – RecruiterBox . “50% of candidates that accept counter-offers from their current employer are active again within 60 days.” – UK Recruiter. In most situations, a counter-offer does not actually address the problems that led to an employee deciding to leave. If the problem is a too-low salary or a lack of a particular benefit, then sure, it can work. However, if the problem lies with management, workload, company culture, or another issue, a counter-offer cannot solve the problem. The Pros and Cons of Counter-Offers First, the benefits of a counter-offer.  You can retain your talent, institutional knowledge, and relationships with existing employees. The loss your business takes when an employee leaves can be immense, depending on how pivotal they were to their team, department, or the company as a whole. While some employees are interchangeable, others are indispensable. Keeping those critical employees around is exceptionally important, especially if their impending resignation draws into stark focus how unprepared your company is to survive their departure.  You save the money you would be spending to recruit someone to fill the position. Recent statistics put the cost of hiring a new employee at around $4,500, though the variance in pay, benefits, and other influences can change this number quite a bit. Add to this the fact that hiring a replacement for the departing employee is likely to require a significantly higher salary, and your retention offer might be cheaper in the long run.  You prevent a competitor from poaching your existing talent. Spite is a powerful motivator. Sometimes, you may consider offering a counter-offer to prevent your competitors from poaching your talent. Your loss being their gain can put them in a better position to compete with you, and that’s not a good thing. If the counter-offer can prevent the employee from jumping ship to a competitor, it’s beneficial to you and detrimental to the company that spent time courting them, only to fail at the last moment.  You may be able to realign employee fit to something better. Consider this anecdote from SHRM : “Less than a year after becoming office manager of a small testing firm in Chicago, Linda Sullivan was ready to quit. She believed her marketing skills were being wasted in an administrative position, and she felt underpaid to boot. Linda’s next step was one duplicated by thousands of other unhappy employees each day: She revised her resume and started job hunting. After a few weeks, Linda received an attractive offer from another Chicago firm, which she quickly accepted. Then she made an appointment to tell her boss the bad news. To Linda’s surprise, her boss was quite sympathetic. “I didn’t know you were unhappy,” he told her. “Why didn’t you come to me sooner?” The boss then explained how highly he valued her skills, and to prove it, he offered a change of responsibilities, a new title—director of marketing—and a $5,000 a year raise. Linda (not her real name) readily accepted the counter-offer. There’s no ill will, she said, because both sides now understand that her old position was a bad match.” This anecdote shows the best-case scenario for a counter-offer: a realignment to place the employee in a better position more suited to their skills. These are the best kinds of counter-offers because they don’t just rely on money to solve problems but rather address the core reason why the employee was departing in the first place.  You may be able to make the employee feel more valued. If an employee plans to leave and you make a compelling offer to keep them around, it can showcase to them that you value them as a contributor to the business’s success. However, this is a double-edged sword. The realization that they’re indispensable can lead to the employee slacking off, acting arrogant, or otherwise lording it over the place, which significantly decreases their value to the company. At the same time, there are plenty of other cons to counter-offers.  The rise in pay and benefits is often more expensive than the hiring process to replace the employee. The math will vary depending on the employee, the position, and the nature of the offers, but often it works out in favor of the retained employee. Letting them go while replacing them with a skilled candidate can often be cheaper. This is especially true when you recognize that retention offers only work for a short time, and the majority of people who accept them still end up leaving within a year.  The success of the counter-offer can spur more employees to threaten to leave as well. Any time an employee decides to leave, there’s a risk they will take others with them. After all, they will have made friends with their co-workers and likely share grievances with them. Another company will be more than happy to hire a fully-functional team rather than just an individual if the opportunity arises. A successful counter-offer brings with it another risk, which is that other employees will decide to use their own resignation as a means to increase their own pay and benefits. The knock-on effect of a single counter-offer can result in requiring higher salaries and benefits for your entire workforce or face massive turnover.  The employee may choose to leave anyway, 6-12 months later. The worst part about counter-offers is simply that, most of the time, they don’t work. They can buy you some time to pump the employee for knowledge and train up a replacement, but it’s nearly inevitable that they will leave regardless, and not all that long after accepting the offer. What Makes a Good Counter-Offer? If you’re determined to retain your critical employees, a counter-offer is largely your only available tool once they’ve already reached the point of putting in their resignation. A good counter-offer begins with one thing: understanding why the employee is leaving. Why have they made this decision? Is their workload too high, and the stress is too much? Do they want a benefit like remote work that you aren’t offering? Are they being dramatically underpaid for their position and skills? Is their current role poorly aligned based on their skills and experience? Do they feel undervalued and underappreciated? Do they not feel comfortable with company culture as it stands? Is their work/life balance tipping too far in favor of work? Is the company failing to invest in technology and infrastructure, leading to employees working with out-of-date technology? Has the company been merged or bought, and restructuring has made them dissatisfied with the new normal? Has their job stagnated, leaving them with no clear opportunities for growth or promotion? It’s also possible that the employee is resigning for reasons other than job-related reasons, such as a health issue or a family issue. In these cases, it can be difficult or impossible to retain them, even with an extremely good counter-offer. Once you know precisely why the employee is leaving, you can determine whether or not you can address their issues. For example, if they’re leaving because they have no clear route to advancement, you can establish ongoing training and promotions for them. If they’re leaving because they feel unappreciated, you could develop a system of employee recognition . If they’re leaving because of restructuring, you may need to realign their role in the organization to one that is more satisfactory to them. Of course, if the reason an employee is leaving is systemic or deeply ingrained in your company – part of company culture, part of management, or part of a problem that requires extensive budget and years to upgrade – it can be impossible to offer “fixing the problem” as part of your counter-offer. Should You Offer a Counter-Offer? The truth is, it’s a little risky to offer a counter-offer to a departing employee for two reasons. It can lead to more employees taking the same actions to get counter-offers of their own. It might only work for a short period before the employee reaffirms their desire to leave. With those in mind, it’s entirely your decision to make. A counter-offer isn’t worthwhile most of the time, and the risk might not be worth it. However, in some scenarios, particularly when a highly valued or critical employee is involved, you may need to do anything you can to keep them around. If you’re willing to take on the risk, and you’re capable of addressing the employee’s actual problems driving them to leave, then a counter-offer might be a great option. However, this will often require additional investment in culture, improvements, upgrades, and communication. If you aren’t sure you can make those investments, a counter-offer isn’t in the cards. Do you or your company have any questions about counter-offering or if you are in a situation to counter-offer a resigning employee? If so, please feel free to leave a comment down below, and we’ll get a conversation started. As we mentioned, a counter-offer may only work in specific scenarios and may not even be guaranteed to be effective. We’d be more than happy to assist you and your company with understanding the counter-offer a little more, if need be.

Imagine a team so aligned with your company’s vision and goals that every project they tackle drives your business forward. This isn’t just a dream—it’s a necessity in today’s competitive landscape. Yet, many businesses struggle to build and maintain such a high-performing team. At Emerge Talent Cloud, we understand the pivotal role a strong team plays in driving growth. In this blog, we’ll explore strategies to build a team that not only meets your needs but also propels your business to new heights. Understanding the Impact of a Strong Team on Growth A strong, growth-driven team is the backbone of any successful business. But what exactly makes a team capable of driving growth? Benefits of a Growth-Driven Team Increased Productivity:  A cohesive team works efficiently, leading to higher productivity and better results. Enhanced Innovation and Creativity:  Diverse perspectives foster creativity and innovation, leading to unique solutions and advancements. Improved Employee Satisfaction and Retention:  Engaged and motivated employees are more likely to stay, reducing turnover rates. Greater Overall Business Success:  A strong team contributes to the achievement of business goals and long-term success. Key Characteristics of a Growth-Driven Team What sets apart a growth-driven team from the rest? Here are the key characteristics: Shared Vision and Goals A team aligned with the company’s mission and objectives can achieve remarkable things. Ensuring that every team member understands and is committed to these goals is crucial. Strategies: Regularly communicate the company’s vision and goals. Involve team members in setting and achieving these goals to foster a sense of ownership. Diverse Skills and Perspectives Diversity isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a driver of innovation. A team with varied skills and backgrounds can approach problems from different angles, leading to creative solutions. Strategies:  Actively seek out diverse candidates during the hiring process. Encourage an inclusive environment where all voices are heard. Strong Communication and Collaboration Effective communication is the bedrock of a successful team. When team members communicate openly and collaborate effectively, they can tackle any challenge. Tools and Practices:  Use collaboration tools like Slack, Trello, or Microsoft Teams. Hold regular meetings to ensure everyone is on the same page. Adaptability and Resilience In today’s fast-paced world, adaptability and resilience are essential. Teams that can pivot quickly and handle setbacks are more likely to succeed. Strategies:  Foster a culture of continuous learning and flexibility. Encourage team members to embrace challenges as opportunities for growth. Strategies for Building a Growth-Driven Team Building a high-performing team requires a strategic approach. Here are some effective strategies: Effective Recruitment and Hiring The foundation of a strong team starts with hiring the right people. This means identifying and attracting top talent who not only have the necessary skills but also fit well with your company culture. Strategies: Use AI-driven tools to screen candidates efficiently. Focus on both technical skills and cultural fit during the interview process. Investing in Employee Development Continuous learning and development are key to keeping your team’s skills sharp and relevant. Investing in your employees’ growth shows that you value them, which can boost morale and retention. Strategies:  Offer training programs, workshops, and opportunities for professional development. Encourage employees to pursue certifications and further education. Fostering a Positive Work Culture A positive work environment can significantly impact employee motivation and performance. Creating a culture that supports growth and innovation is essential. Strategies:  Recognize and reward contributions. Promote a healthy work-life balance and create opportunities for team bonding. Empowering Leadership Strong leadership inspires and motivates the team. Leaders who support and encourage their team members can drive better performance and growth. Strategies:  Develop leadership programs and mentoring opportunities. Encourage a leadership style that is inclusive and supportive. Partnering with Emerge Talent Cloud At Emerge Talent Cloud, we specialize in helping businesses build high-performing teams that drive growth. Our tailored recruitment and team-building solutions are designed to meet your unique needs and objectives. Conclusion Building a team that drives growth is essential for business success. By focusing on effective recruitment, investing in employee development, fostering a positive work culture, and empowering leadership, you can create a high-performing team that propels your business forward. Ready to build a team that drives growth? Contact us today to learn more about our innovative solutions. For more information, visit our website or get in touch with us at info@emergetalentcloud.com .

Efficiency is a critical component of successful recruitment. In today’s quick-moving business environment, finding and retaining top talent quickly and cost-effectively can be the difference between thriving and merely surviving. At Emerge Talent Cloud, we specialize in streamlining recruitment processes to save time and reduce costs, ensuring that your business remains competitive and agile. The Challenges of Traditional Recruitment Traditional recruitment methods often come with significant drawbacks, including time-consuming processes, high costs, and inconsistent results. Time-Consuming Processes Traditional recruitment involves lengthy job postings and time-consuming application reviews. HR teams often spend countless hours sorting through resumes and conducting multiple interview rounds, which can delay the hiring process and impact productivity. High Costs The financial burden of traditional recruitment can be substantial. Costs include recruitment agency fees , advertising expenses , and the  hidden cost of lost productivity  during the prolonged hiring process. These expenses add up quickly, straining your budget. Inconsistent Results Despite the investment of time and money, traditional recruitment methods can still result in hiring mismatches and high turnover rates. Ineffective screening and assessment processes can lead to poor hiring decisions, ultimately costing more in the long run. Emerge Talent Cloud’s Efficient Recruitment Solutions At Emerge Talent Cloud, we have developed a suite of efficient recruitment solutions designed to overcome these challenges. Our approach leverages advanced technology and streamlined processes to deliver high-quality hires quickly and cost-effectively. Streamlined Job Posting and Application Review We utilize AI and automation to optimize job postings and application reviews. Our system quickly filters and ranks candidates based on predefined criteria, ensuring that only the most suitable candidates are considered. Additionally, our platform enables efficient job posting across multiple channels simultaneously, broadening your reach and attracting a diverse talent pool. Effective Screening and Interviewing Our advanced screening tools are designed to identify the best candidates faster. We use a combination of automated assessments and structured interviews to ensure consistency and thorough evaluation. This approach not only speeds up the hiring process but also improves the quality of hires. Comprehensive Candidate Assessments We believe in a holistic approach to candidate evaluation. Our assessments include behavioral and skills-based tests to gauge candidate suitability accurately. Moreover, we conduct cultural fit evaluations to ensure that new hires align with your company values and work environment, promoting long-term satisfaction and retention. Cost-Saving Benefits of Our Approach Partnering with Emerge Talent Cloud can lead to significant cost savings and productivity gains. Reduced Recruitment Costs By leveraging our efficient recruitment solutions, businesses can lower their reliance on expensive external agencies and minimize advertising spend through targeted job postings. This approach results in immediate cost savings. Increased Productivity Our faster hiring process means less downtime and disruption, allowing your business to maintain momentum. Additionally, better quality hires lead to improved performance and lower turnover rates, further enhancing productivity. Long-Term Savings Higher retention rates mean less frequent rehiring, reducing long-term recruitment costs. Consistent and effective hiring practices contribute to a more stable and efficient workforce, delivering sustained value over time. Case Studies and Success Stories Example 1: Tech Company A mid-sized tech company partnered with Emerge Talent Cloud to address their recruitment inefficiencies. By implementing our advanced screening tools and automated processes, they reduced their recruitment costs by 30% and cut their hiring time in half. The result was a more efficient hiring process and a stronger, more productive team. Example 2: Retail Business A growing retail business faced challenges in hiring for key positions. With our comprehensive candidate assessments and streamlined application reviews, they not only filled positions faster but also improved their overall employee retention rate by 25%. This led to long-term cost savings and a more cohesive team. Partnering with Emerge Talent Cloud At Emerge Talent Cloud, we are dedicated to helping businesses save time and reduce costs through our efficient recruitment solutions. Our commitment to quality and innovation ensures that our clients receive the best possible outcomes. Client Testimonials “Emerge Talent Cloud transformed our recruitment process. Their efficient screening and assessment tools saved us time and money, and the quality of hires has been outstanding.” – HR Manager, Tech Company “Partnering with Emerge Talent Cloud was a game-changer for us. Their streamlined approach helped us fill key positions quickly and cost-effectively.” – CEO, Retail Business Conclusion Efficient recruitment is essential for business success. At Emerge Talent Cloud, we offer advanced solutions that save time, reduce costs, and improve hiring quality. If you’re ready to enhance your recruitment process and build a team that drives growth and success, contact us today. For more information, visit our website or get in touch with us at info@emergetalentcloud.com