UNITEMP Blog

Great staffing results don’t happen by accident.

They occur when smart people (like you) invest in creating the best possible relationship with a quality staffing firm (like UNITEMP).  Don’t leave your staffing success to chance.  Use these 10 ideas to achieve better staffing results:

1. Give temporary employees formal job descriptions. Job descriptions should be well-defined, prioritized, current and submitted in writing to your staffing firm.  They should include your expectations in terms of candidate abilities and experience, along with specific performance goals and standards.
2. Give your staffing service as much lead-time as possible. This will optimize your chances of finding an ideal candidate for the assignment and may give you more than one suitable candidate to choose from.  And when lead-time isn’t an option, let your staffing provider know which skills and traits are most critical for the assignment.
3. Be mindful of cut-rate deals. People – including temporary employees – are your organization’s most important asset.  They should be viewed as an investment, not an expense.  When it comes to staffing, you get what you pay for, so work with a staffing service that takes the time to fill your needs correctly.
4. Train your staffing services representative. Educate your staffing representative on your company’s mission statement, goals, culture, history and current performance.  Tell them what types of work styles or personalities will fit best in your organization.  Familiarizing your representative with your company’s needs and preferences helps your staffing partner become a more knowledgeable extension of your human resources department.
5. Take full advantage of your staffing vendor’s resources. Invest a little time to learn about your staffing firm’s full range of capabilities and value-added services, so you can take maximum advantage of their resources.  A good service can provide not only qualified candidates, staffing flexibility and cost savings, but staffing expertise and employee relations support as well.  To learn more about your staffing service, request a tour or a capabilities demonstration.
6. Set clear expectations. Establish mutually agreed upon expectations for interaction with your staffing supplier at the beginning of your relationship.  This may include order-placing procedures, appropriate quality control checks and feedback methods.  Setting expectations will ensure clear communication and expedient service.
7. Benchmark performance. Find out what tests candidates are required to take at your staffing firm.  When candidates are referred to you, ask what their test scores are.  Establish preferred scoring levels for placements within your company, using your own employees as benchmarks.  Additionally, encourage your temporary employees to take advantage of training available at the staffing firm.
8. Provide feedback. Maintain an ongoing dialogue and honest relationship with your staffing contacts, keeping them abreast of changes in your company.  Provide feedback on their service and the performance of their temporary employees.  Meet regularly to obtain their input on what you can do to improve the quality of service and placements.
9. Create a partner in your success. Consider involving a staffing firm in your company’s business planning.  For example, you might include your staffing representative in an annual meeting to plan staffing strategies.  Staffing experts can offer valuable insight regarding the possible uses of strategic staffing to meet your needs for workload variations, new hires and managing attrition.  They can also offer valuable market data to help you retain key employees.
10. Reward results. High quality staffing firms focus on more than filling orders.  They want to help you save time, lower expenses and get work done.  When you find a vendor who does a great job, look for opportunities to enhance the relationship.  Invite them in.  Challenge them to help you solve problems.  See what you can do to reward their good results.  Not only will you make your top vendor happy, you’ll increase their commitment to your success.

What can UNITEMP do for you?  Give us a call.  Together, we can explore opportunities to enhance your staffing results by:

• identifying inefficiencies where work could be performed at a lower cost;
• providing access to qualified and diverse candidates seeking temporary employment;
• offering the staffing flexibility you need to stay fluid during economic challenges.

Still on the fence about using social media?  Consider these statistics from the recent Cone Business in Social Media Study:

• 93 percent of Americans believe that a company should have a presence on social media sites.
• 85 percent believe that these companies should use social media to interact with consumers.
• 60 percent of Americans regularly interact with companies on social media sites.

The truth is, social media can help expand your business network, enhance your career, recruit employees and more.

According to HR expert Susan M. Heathfield, About.com Guide, HR professionals need to participate in social media for career success – and she should know.  She is a management and organization development consultant who specializes in human resources issues and in management development to create forward-thinking workplaces.  Susan is also a professional facilitator, speaker, trainer and writer.

Heathfield’s About.com article “10 Reasons Social Media Should Rock Your World” details the rationale behind making social media time investment mandatory for every HR professional:

1. Stay in touch with colleagues and friends. Social media makes it easier than ever to re-connect with former colleagues, classmates, teachers and other professional contacts.
2. Make it easy for others to find you. Maintain both individual and company profiles to make it simple and convenient for customers, employees and candidates to reach you.
   
3. Find potential job candidates. For example, you can e-mail social media contacts with job requirements and ask them for referrals.
4. Investigate potential career opportunities. If you’re interested in finding a new job, social media sites like LinkedIn can be invaluable in your search.  You can use the site to network, garner recommendations and learn about new job openings.
5. Establish your online brand. You can use social media to promote your career progress by establishing an online presence that defines who you are professionally and what you want to be known for accomplishing.
6. Join groups that share your professional interests. As a group member you can give and get information about recommended reading, industry trade shows or other professional meetings/events.
7. Develop social connections. Sites like Facebook are rapidly gaining mature professional members.  Unlike LinkedIn, Facebook is ideally suited to having fun and developing social contacts over time.  A word of caution:  carefully manage your Privacy Settings and critically examine content – before you post or upload – to make sure it’s compatible with your professional image.
8. Provide a space in which users of your products/services can interact with you. Use social media to expand your customers’ opportunities to discuss their wants and needs – with you or with other customers.
9. Build community around your products or services. The people who are the “face” of your company should leverage social media opportunities to build relationships with consumers.  Forums and blogs on your company website (and within your HR Intranet), as well as fan pages, can help you build this sense of community.
10. Finally your company, in addition to individual employees, should establish a company presence on major social media sites to stay in step with the changing interests and needs of consumers.  The Internet has opened up worldwide communication.  Why not use its social media components to make you and your company more successful?

UNITEMP- Leveraging Social Media for Recruiting Success

UNITEMP leverages social media to locate the talented, experienced and hard-working individuals you need.  Contact us today to learn more about our temporary and contract staffing services for New Jersey employers.

Before you click the “Submit” button to upload your next job posting, consider the following:

1. Make sure the title accurately describes the position.  Consider including common keywords qualified applicants are likely to use when searching for an opening.
2. Provide a comprehensive list of skills and qualifications.  Differentiate between those that are required, as opposed to desirable.
3. To reduce the submission of unwanted résumés, be clear about:  salary range; start date; years and type of experience necessary; essential certifications; and required tests and/or background checks.
4. The Internet has created a global workforce.  Make sure you supply details about where the job is located, and whether or not telecommuting is possible.
5. Provide clear instructions for application.  Give candidates multiple methods of applying.  Be sure to list e-mail address, fax number, mailing address and the contact person’s name and job title.
6. Include preferences or equal opportunity statements.
7. When posting to multiple sites, assign unique job codes for tracking leads.  This step will help you monitor the quantity and quality of leads coming from each site.
8. Keep in mind that if you send an announcement to an e-mail list or newsgroup, it will likely be picked up by any number of websites and forwarded, re-forwarded, etc. – and you will have no ability to control the accuracy or content of these listings.
9. Don’t use all caps in your posting online.  It is the printed equivalent of YELLING. (See?)
10. Copy and paste from a simple text editor, and avoid special codes or characters used in word processing software.
11. Always, always proofread for content and check your spelling.

If a hiring need has created a gap in your workforce, UNITEMP can help.  We can provide temporary staff to ensure adequate coverage and ease the transition process while you’re conducting a direct search on your own.  As a leading New Jersey staffing firm, UNITEMP has the candidate network and resources to quickly and accurately meet your temporary staffing needs.  Contact us today to learn more.

Part 2:  Co-Employment Tips for Success

An earlier post featured a link to a brief quiz on co-employment laws.  How well did you do?

If your score was less than perfect, don’t worry.  This week’s post contains practical tips to maximize the effectiveness of your co-employment arrangement, while minimizing the potential for problems:

• Let the staffing firm do its job.  When co-employment problems occur, they often stem from situations in which a client company unnecessarily assumes employment responsibilities over temporary or contract workers.  So remember that when you pay a temporary or contract employee’s hourly bill rate, included in that rate are the services the staffing firm provides – recruiting, interviewing, testing and selecting candidates.  Head-off potential problems by allowing the staffing service (who is the employer of record for these workers) to perform these tasks.
• Take advantage of on-site coordinators.  If you have a large temporary workforce, ask your staffing service to provide an on-site representative.  This individual can reinforce the staffing service’s role as employer, by carrying out administrative functions, handling performance counseling and addressing disciplinary action.  Although there may be a charge involved, the benefits usually far outweigh the costs of an on-site coordinator.
• Give the staffing firm specific feedback on their employees’ job performance.  If performance issues arise, it may seem natural for you to speak directly with the temporary or contract worker assigned to you.  But to steer clear of potential co-employment problems, you should instead speak with your staffing representative about your concerns.  That way, when the individual is subjected to disciplinary action, the staffing service will be able to provide him or her with the performance-related reason for the action – making the individual far less likely to consider the action to be discriminatory, or to file a charge.
• Allow the staffing firm to handle employee termination.  If you are dissatisfied with a temporary or contract worker, ask your staffing provider to handle disciplinary action and / or termination and replacement.  Provide information about the individual’s work performance to your staffing representative, and then allow them to handle the rest.
• Review your benefit plan descriptions.  Ask an expert to make sure that the language in your benefit plan effectively excludes temporary employees.  To guard against lawsuits that stem from ambivalent wording, be sure to incorporate exclusionary language that makes benefit entitlement dependent upon your employment classifications – regardless of common law definitions.

Ensure Successful Co-Employment with UNITEMP

As a leading New Jersey staffing firm, UNITEMP’s staffing experts can work with you to develop effective co-employment procedures from both a legal and operational standpoint.  Give us a call to learn more.

Temporary employees can be a great asset to your organization.  They can help you meet critical deadlines, fill-in for unplanned absences and free your core staff to focus on their most important tasks.

But if your company uses large numbers of temporary employees, it’s easy for your direct staff to fall into an “Us vs. Them” mentality.  And while treating temporary workers as an entirely separate workforce may seem innocuous, the practice can have unintended consequences for your direct employees. 

For example, research from the University of Arizona has found that direct employees (particularly at lower levels) are less satisfied with co-workers and bosses when working with a higher proportion of temporary employees.  Why?  The responsibility of training and socializing temporary workers on company-specific processes is often assigned to direct employees.  As a result, having more temporaries can complicate full-time workers’ jobs.

Here are a few suggestions for improving the working relationship between temporary and direct employees to achieve even better staffing results:

• Make temporary employees feel welcome.  While temporaries are, in fact, a separate part of your workforce (and must be treated differently because of co-employment laws), you and your staff can still make them feel welcome in your organization.  By encouraging social interaction (e.g., formal or informal introductions) among all workers, you can foster social ties that are essential to a cohesive workforce.
• Educate your direct staff.  Take the time to clearly explain the role and value of temporary workers.  The better your direct employees understand the benefits temporary help provides, the more likely they’ll be to work productively with them.
• Take advantage of training.  If you use large numbers of temporaries, many staffing services will develop customized orientation and training programs for specific positions.  This shifts the time-consuming burden of getting new temporary employees up-to-speed off your direct employees’ shoulders.

Bottom line, there are a number of steps you can take keep relations between temporary and direct employees positive.  And the more positive their working relationship, the better your results will be.  Contact UNITEMP today to learn more about our smart staffing solutions for New Jersey employers.

You’ve just won a three-month contract with a major new client – congratulations!  Now, you need to figure out how to get the extra work done. 

Should you pay your current employees overtime, or bring in temporary help?  Consider the following sample cost analysis.  It is based on an annual salary of $40,000 ($20.51/hr.), vs. time-and-one-half overtime, for one employee:

Cost Analysis

Although this is just a sample exercise for illustration purposes, it clearly demonstrates the economic rationale for using temporary employees.  When you need additional productive hours on a temporary basis, staffing services can lower costs, reduce burnout and improve the productivity of your direct staff.

UNITEMP – New Jersey’s Staffing Economics Experts

Need help assessing the cost of a staffing strategy?  Contact UNITEMP.  Our experts will work with you to determine the most productive and cost-effective way to get your work done.

Cost Analysis Assumptions

* Temporary staffing rates vary by market, but the relationship (ratio) between pay rates remains the same.

** Fringe benefits include:  holiday pay, sick leave, vacation pay, personal days, insurance, F.I.C.A., S.U.I., F.U.T.A., worker’s compensation, etc., based on a national average of 31%.

*** Based on U.S. Chamber of Commerce national average statistic of 12%, which includes firms that pay no benefits.  For small firms with moderate benefits programs, this cost is typically 40-45% of payroll, and for larger firms with extensive benefits programs, the cost can be up to 100% or more of payroll.

Did you know…

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the policing division of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), has announced a 10-day window for employers to correct minor errors found on audited I-9 forms.

ICE is currently on a nationwide sweep to check employer maintenance of the I-9 form, which is used to verify employees’ authorization to work in the United States.

Minor, or technical, errors (also called “paperwork errors”) usually refer to the absence of a home address or birthdate on the form.  Such errors are to be corrected in 10 days to avoid any further difficulties, fines or adverse action.

Substantive errors, on the other hand, which are those involving core data such as citizenship status or even the employee’s signature, are subject to significant penalties.

The USCIS form I-9 must be completed for each employee upon starting work and must be maintained for three years or one year after the employee has left his or her job, whichever comes later.

As a leading New Jersey staffing firm, UNITEMP ensures that each of our employees is thoroughly screened and that all required paperwork is completed before our employee goes to work for you.  We stay on-top of compliance issues to effectively minimize your legal exposure.

Source:

http://www.personnelconcepts.com/compliance-alerts/ice-10-days-to-correct-minor-19-mistakes/

“Here we go again…”

“Why does everyone else seem to have all the luck?”

“What else could possibly go wrong today?”

Admit it.  At one point or another, you’ve had thoughts like these.  I know I have.  But while it’s perfectly normal to occasionally fall prey to negative thoughts – especially after losing a job or some other stressful event - you must guard against falling into a pessimistic mental rut.

When you’re stuck in a mode of negative thinking, you miss out on opportunities to improve your day and your situation.  Negative thoughts drain your energy and can even threaten your health.  So if your attitude could use some improvement, try some of these tips to eliminate negative thinking:

1. Recognize when you’re thinking negatively.  Pay attention to your internal dialogue and send up a mental “red flag” when you’re thinking pessimistically.
2. Realize that negative thoughts breed more negative thoughts.  Remember, you attract what you focus on – whether it’s what you want or don’t want.
3. Remind yourself that the negative thought is only that – a thought.  In fact, what you’re thinking may have little basis in reality.  Instead, your thoughts could be the result of projected fears about situations that rarely end up manifesting.
4. Find a positive thought replacement.  Rather than fighting against negative thoughts, try to replace them with more positive ones.  Picture a different scenario; affirm something to yourself that’s positive and self-supporting; remind yourself of a recent positive experience.
5. Use humor and fun.  Negative thoughts stress you out.  Change the energy of the situation by thinking of something funny or doing something enjoyable.  The key is to not let your negative thoughts have power over you.
6. Try creative visualization.  When something goes wrong, close your eyes and visualize a positive outcome.  Let yourself see what you want to happen like a movie playing behind your eyelids.  You’ll stop negative thoughts in their tracks and focus your mind’s energy on potential solutions.
7. Take a break.  Even if you’re up against a deadline, take five minutes to stretch, take a brief walk or talk to a friend.  Any respite, albeit brief, will help you reset your attitude and tackle your problem from a more positive perspective.

One More Tip…

If you’re stuck in a negative mental rut because of your job circumstances, UNITEMP can help.  A small positive action like registering with our staffing service can break your cycle of negative thinking and start you on a better career path.  So take control of your situation by envisioning yourself in the job you really want – then contact us to turn that vision into reality.