FOR THE PEOPLE

May/June 2012 A snapshot into the current issues affecting your people

The Pros of Hiring Ex-Cons

Even with unemployment as high as it is, employers are still having a difficult time hiring employees. Candidates either do not dress appropriately for interviews, do not know how to interview or cannot pass a drug test. So lets try something new. Hire an ex-convict. Before dismissing the idea as crazy, let's consider the real benefits of hiring an ex-con. 1. State and federal governments offer tax credits or incentives for hiring ex-felons. The federal government incentive offers up to $2,400 through the Work Opportunity Tax Credit program. Some states offer substantial incentives. The state of Iowa, for example, offers up to 65% of the wages paid to ex-felons during their first year of employment, up to $20,000. Five other statesCalifornia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, and Texas provide state income tax credits to employers who hire people with any criminal records. The most important qualifier for the state and federal programs is that the ex-felon gets hired within one year of his release or conviction. 2. Drug use during employment is unlikely. If the ex-con is on probation, parole or living in a halfway house, many states require the individual to take regular or random drug tests. This makes the parolee less likely to fail your company drug test or be using drugs. 3. Employment is required for the parolee to stay out of prison. The courts or the parole board require parolees to be gainfully employed to keep from returning to prison. Given this condition, the parolee is more likely to be grateful for the job and will do everything he can to keep it. 4. Employed ex-cons are less likely to return to prison. It is always said that charity begins at home. Business owners have the ability to give someone an honest days pay for an honest days work. Former convicts who find gainful employment are far less likely to reenter the judicial system. 5. Free bonds are available to protect employers against employee theft. If you are worried about potential theft by the ex-cons you hire, you can get free bonds to protect you. Over 40 years ago, the U.S. Department of Labor established the Federal Bonding Program to provide Fidelity Bonds that guarantee honesty for at-risk and hard-toPlease see Ex-Cons, page 2

Inside This Issue

The Pros of Hiring Ex-Cons Whos Up Next? The Art of Succession Planning Death of the 8-Hour Workday One for the Road: Criminal Background Checks Yup, They Said It

Ex-Cons
Continued from page one

place job seekers. The bonds cover the first six months of employment. There is no cost to the job applicant or the employer. As with any hiring process, an employer should be selective in his hiring decision. You should still consider the persons ability to do the job, the fit of the employee in your culture and whether the crime for which he was convicted should disqualify him because of the job he would be doing or the kind of company you run. It is clear that the decision to hire ex-convicts is not an easy one. It must be managed closely to make sure the experience is pleasant for the new employee, your incumbent employees, your customers and you as an employer.

Whos Up Next? The Art of Succession Planning

The good news is that your company has made it through one of the worst economic downturns ever. The bad news is that several of the people who helped your business to surviveand in some cases thrive are about to leave you. Many business owners, company presidents and managers didnt retire in the last five years for a wide variety of reasons. The business needed them; their retirement portfolio took a big hit; or their replacement wasnt ready. As the stock market trends upward and the economy slowly improves, leaders are starting to think about leaving. If you have a well-thought-out and assembled succession and transition plan, then you have nothing to worry about. For the rest (majority) of businesses, whether it is promoting a shift supervisor to manager or picking a son or daughter to take over the family business, a succession plan should be in place that is objective, individualized and complete. Companies often ask the person who is leaving to name his replacement. While this may sound like a good idea on the surface, keep in mind that the departing employee often names the person who helped him succeed in the role. This person typically only observed parts of the role. You may have other employees who see themselves as being better or more deserving than the selectee, or worse yet, you have key employees who refuses to work or produce for the selectee. In the case of a family business, the patriarch or matriarch typically names the child who has worked in the business or has shown the most interest. While this may often be the correct selection, it can be a colossal mistake if the selected family member has not learned everything he needs to know before taking the reins. American business is fraught with stories of sons and daughters running the family business into the ground. Sometimes it is because they were the wrong choice but most of the time it is because they werent properly prepared for the job. The irony of American business is that the last thing we spend money on and the first thing we cut when business is suffering is training. We have become a country that lives and dies with On the Job Training. The words I learned by being dropped into the deep end of the pool should be stricken from any sane persons business vocabulary. While some may learn to swim as well as Michael Phelps, others just learn to doggy paddle. And there are those who merely float while the rest drown completely, taking the business or department down with them. Even if you design a good succession plan, many companies cant resist the temptation to rush things, which will wreck the plan. Some employers execute the succession plan and then forget to design and implement a proper transition plan from the old leader to the new one. The transition gives the company a window into how the employees feel. It also allows the old leader to receive a proper send off and lets the new leader receive the proper introduction to the team. For any leader who believes that succession planning isnt important, you need to look no further than Steve Jobs at Apple or Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway to see how succession planning can affect a companys performance.

Death of the 8-Hour Workday

It seems as if the 8-hour workday has been around forever. Originating in Great Britain, the 8-hour workday began in the early 1800s at the start of the Industrial Revolution. It slowly made its way around the globe and reached the U.S. in the 1880s. It became the law of the land when the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed in 1937 as part of FDRs New Deal. This means that American businesses today run based on a practice that worked great 130 years ago during the manufacturing age. In the age of iPads, cell phones and laptops, must employees really work at least eight hours to do their job? Could fewer work hours cause employees to be more productive? Consider a couple of interesting observations, one historical fact and the other anecdotal. Back in 1914, Henry Ford decided to cut the hours for shifts at his plants from the industry standard of 9 hours each day to 8 hours. At the same time, he doubled pay in the plants. As a result, a couple of interesting things happened. Employee turnover dropped to an all-time low but productivity and profits reached an all-time high. Thats right: profitability and productivity both went up when employees work hours were reduced. In what came as no surprise, all of Fords competitors quickly switched to the new 8-hour workday and all of them enjoyed similar profitability and productivity increases. Ford also found out that employees made fewer mistakes on the assembly line because they were better rested. They produced more vehicles of higher quality in less time. For anecdotal evidence that the 8-hour work day is a thing of the past, lets examine an employees workday using the traditional 8-to-5 schedule for an office worker. This example can even apply to a service worker. The office employee arrives at 7:50 a.m. (yes, this is optimistic), goes to her work area and drops her stuff. She gets a cup of coffee, greets her fellow employees, then heads over to her desk where she checks voicemail and email. It is 9:30 a.m. before she starts to work on anything that is planned to be done today if none of the emails or voicemails rearranges her priorities. During the workday, she receives phone calls on her desk phone or cell phone. Somewhere in the day, she has to take an hour for lunch. To show her commitment to work, she eats at her desk but checks her personal email or Facebook using the companys equipment. If you are lucky, a worker may have three to four hours of actual quality work produced in an eight-hour day. The gist of this is that there is no magic in the eight-hour workday. Employers need to work on creating a productive work environment and reducing the distractions, many of which have been created by the employer. Some employers expect employees only to check email at home, on weekends or while on vacation. In other words, anywhere except at the office. This approach does nothing to create employee loyalty. Strict working environments contribute to the change-jobs-every-two-years mentality that is taking over corporate America. Who knows, maybe the 6-hour workday is the way, maybe not. One thing is certain: We need to understand our work environments and update work schedules to modern reality instead of adhering to a 19th-century management tool.

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One for the Road: Criminal Background Checks

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently passed some new guidance that will affect how businesses conduct criminal background checks. The guidance places a stronger test on the need for the background check as well as how employers interpret the data they receive. Specifically, the commission wants employers to consider the nature of the crime and how much time has passed since the crime was committed. Job candidates should then be allowed to answer the specific findings. Any company policies related to criminal checks must be job related and fit the needs of the business to conduct the check in the first place. The EEOC emphasizes that this guidance supersedes any state and local regulations that require such background checks. For example, in Texas, the state requires background checks on individuals who will work inside someones home. The real reason for the EEOCs new guidance regulations is that many companies wont hire former convicts as a matter of company policy. The problem is that according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, over four million Americans have been convicted of a felony and over seven million Americans are either in jail, on probation or on parole. These former convicts are having a very difficult time finding a job. Employers who use criminal background checks as a candidate screening method need to reconsider their entire candidate selection process and ensure they take into account all federal, state and local regulations.

Yup They Said It

A new manager was seen hanging a plaque in his office. When he went to lunch, several of his new employees went in to see what the plaque said. The Managers Creed When your employees take a long time, theyre slow. When your boss takes a long time, he's thorough. When your employees don't do it, theyre lazy. When your boss doesn't do it, he's too busy. When your employees make a mistake, theyre idiots. When your boss makes a mistake, he's only human. When your employee is off sick, hes faking it. When your boss is off sick, he must be very ill. When an employee has a great idea, it was just luck. When your boss has a great idea, it was a stroke of genius. If you are one of my employees and reading this plaque, I am just joking; stop reading this silly plaque. If you are my boss reading this, I believe every single word!