ABR Blog

Everyone knows an on-time (temporary) worker can act as a quick fix when a secretary or line worker calls in sick at the last minute.  But if that’s the only way you think on-time employees are good for you, you may be underestimating their value as true pain relievers.

Here are some common “aches and pains” you may face at work, and ABR’s prescriptions for using on-time staffing to cure them:

1. High fixed expenses. Bring in expertise on an as-needed basis.  On-time employees with specialized abilities can deliver the experience and skills you need without impacting fixed expenses.  If your business faces an unknown future, consider using on-time staff to keep your workforce lean and flexible.
2. Wasting time on non-critical activities.  Free up your employees’ time to focus on core competencies.
3. Paying benefits.  Limit your benefits expense by using on-time workers.
4. Meeting tight deadlines.  Bring in on-time employees – even at the last minute – to help you complete projects within tight time and budgetary constraints.
5. Bad hires. Let a staffing service assume this risk for you.  If you need a direct employee, use try-before-hire staffing and evaluate the candidate on the job before making a final hiring decision.
6. Training. Reduce training costs and shorten learning curves by bringing in on-time employees who are trained and have experience using the skills you need.
7. Turnover. When you use on-time employees in high turnover positions, the burden for replacing those workers (e.g., recruiting, training, etc.) is on the staffing service’s shoulders.
8. Seasonal crunch-time. If your business has predictable surges in demand, planned staffing may be right for your business.  With a staffing specialist’s help, you can analyze your business cycles and plan your staffing needs.  Then, during your busy periods, you can staff-up with on-time employees to supply the extra help needed to get work done.  As an added benefit, planned staffing can reduce layoffs.  When things slow down, you can let on-time staff go and hold onto your core employees.
9. Overtime. Use on-time help to avoid paying higher overtime rates and eliminate the employee burnout overwork causes.
10. Lack of expertise.  Bring in on-time or contract executives, professionals or technical gurus to teach new skills to employees in your organization.  Use their expertise on a short-term basis to complete a special project, or until your core employees have learned the new skills needed.

No panacea exists for every challenge you face on the job.  But for headaches like the ones listed above, ABR Employment Services’ complete staffing and HR solutions for Wisconsin employers are just what the doctor ordered.

The use of credit checks has grown over the last several years.  According to a 2010 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 60 percent of employers use credit reports for some or all of their background checks.

Employers use credit reports as a screening tool for a number of reasons:

• They believe it allows them to predict future behavior based on a candidate’s financial history.
• They are trying to prevent employee theft and assess the applicant’s trustworthiness.
• They want to reduce legal liability and negligent hiring.

But checking a job applicant’s credit is not without its potential drawbacks:

• An applicant who has been unemployed for a long period of time may have no choice but to incur inordinate amounts of debt and fall behind in paying bills.  If candidates have been out of work for months, that doesn’t necessarily mean they should be disqualified for employment.
• Credit reports fail to provide context.  For example, if debt problems were the result of expensive medical procedures, a low credit score may not indicate anything about future job performance.
• Credit reports are not perfect.  Ambiguous, dated, inaccurate and/or redundant data create the potential for credit score errors.  While these errors are generally minor, employers should be aware that they exist.
• Credit reports may not be relevant for the job in question.  Unless the person you’re hiring will have access to sensitive financial information, make financial decisions or handle money, a candidate’s credit report may be of little significance.

Checking a job candidate’s credit can be a viable screening option. But, is it the best option for your business? It is important to weigh the points above to determine if credit checks are relevant to your specific needs. Ultimately, a comprehensive screening strategy can be the most effective way to avoid bad hires.

Ensure Successful Placements with ABR’s Six-Point Screening Process

ABR Employment Services follows an in-depth candidate screening process. Our comprehensive process provides a more thorough check, helping us provide a more well-rounded picture of candidates than you’ll find across most of the staffing industry. Our six-point process includes:

1. Pre-screen. We pre-screen potential candidates to ensure their experience and interests match those of potential employers.
2. Application. Our in-depth application captures vital employment information, including job skills, reasons for leaving prior jobs, supervisors’ contact information, etc.
3. Interview. ABR uses behavioral interview questions to ensure candidates meet our Expectations of Excellence and will fit well with your current culture.  If requested, we can also perform second interviews with questions specific to your available position.
4. Testing. Our E-AssessAbility is a powerful online assessment solution that helps us determine whether or not a candidate possesses the specific skills you require.
5. Referencing. All ABR candidates must provide one positive reference for any on-time position and two or more for all try-before-hire or direct hire positions.
6. Background Checking. ABR customizes all of our background checking to your needs and company.  We have the ability to complete state or nationwide backgrounds, drug screenings, educational verifications, driver’s checks and credit checks.

Benefits.  Perks.  Extras.  Whatever you call them, they really make a difference in today’s changing job market.  Here are a few key ways the benefits we offer our on-time (temporary) employees directly benefit you and your organization:

• Attract the best candidates. Today’s job seekers are savvy.  Most know to choose a reputable staffing firm that provides extras like insurance, vacation pay and free online job search assistance (see below).  ABR Employment’s value-added services help us attract, recruit and retain Wisconsin’s top talent – and put them to work for you.
• Keep the best candidates. Some staffing services are plagued by extremely high turnover rates, which translate into a “revolving door” of temporaries for their clients.  The benefits, value-added services and free online career resources (via ABR JobConnect) we provide not only attract top candidates, but keep them working for us.  When on-time employees stay with us, they’re much more likely to stay working for you, delivering greater continuity throughout your assignments.
• Ensure workers stay healthy, focused and productive. The medical and dental benefits we offer allow our employees to take care of their health issues, while available disability and life insurance options give them peace of mind.  Our employees can also qualify for vacation and holiday pay, motivating them to earn the time off they deserve.  When employees are healthier and happier, they have better attendance records and stay more focused on the work they do for you.
• Access highly skilled workers. Free online computer training allows employees to develop their software skills – improving their confidence, proficiency and value to your organization.
• View a complete list of our employee benefits.

About ABR JobConnect

ABR JobConnect is our free online career resource that guides and supports job seekers throughout the entire job search process.  To the best of our knowledge, the majority of our competitors do not have this capability.  For example:

• Kelly Services only offers a monthly career tips newsletter to job seekers.
• Manpower only offers online training to registered on-time staffing employees.
• Aerotek only offers articles, videos and question-and-answer material to job seekers.

ABR strives to treat all job seekers with dignity and respect, and ABR JobConnect supports our mission to do that.  For example, if a candidate does not meet the ABR “Expectations of Excellence,” or if we are unable to place him, we can refer him to ABR JobConnect for job search support and assistance.

We invite you to refer the job seekers that do not fit your current hiring needs to ABR JobConnect.  ABR JobConnect helps your HR department and hiring managers:

• Eliminate the call backs from people you don’t hire.
• Position you as an altruistic company.
• Help all job applicants.
• Provide a resource for laid off or downsized employees.

ABR Employee Benefits – The Right Thing to Do

The economy is still tough and we realize that many people who come to us have lost their jobs and health benefits, too.  Admittedly, ABR offers benefits to gain a recruiting advantage and deliver the best results for our clients.  But honestly, the main reason we do it is because it’s just the right thing to do.

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?

ABR Employment – Leveraging Social Media for Recruiting Success

ABR Employment Services posts available on-time (temporary), contract and direct hire jobs on Facebook and Twitter.  We leverage social media including LinkedIn to locate talented, experienced and hard-working individuals for Wisconsin employers like you.  How are you using social media in your job?  We’d love to know.  Leave your comments below.

On-Site Staffing, also known as Vendor-on-Premise (VOP), is exactly what it sounds like – a vendor (in this case, a staffing service like ABR Employment Services) provides an on-site representative to manage and coordinate on-time (temporary) employees at your company.

On-Site Staffing is an outsourcing management program, which encompasses every facet of coordinating, ordering, planning and tracking of contingent employees.  This program is managed by an ABR On-Site Manager, who acts as the central contact for hiring managers, coordinates recruiting activities, and handles a multitude of personnel related issues.

If you’re a high-volume staffing user, an On-Site Manager can greatly simplify staffing for you.  In essence, he acts as an extension of your HR department to streamline your staffing function.  Here’s how:

Increasing Efficiency

An On-Site Manager can:

• Handle the daily deployment of on-time (temporary) workers to get them on-task quickly.
• Make daily rounds to ensure on-time (temporary) workers stay productive.
• Provide detailed, customized reports like: staffing usage, cost analyses, attendance and tardiness.
• Evaluate personnel needs to plan for peak and non-peak periods, and handle worker reassignment.

Reducing Headaches

An On-Site Manager can:

• Manage daily work issues, like problem resolution and worker injury reporting.
• Handle scheduling to ensure departments are adequately staffed.
• Resolve payroll and administrative issues.
• Recruit new on-time (temporary) employees directly at your site.
• In some cases, even manage more than one facility so you can stay focused on core duties and responsibilities.

Managing Other Staffing Functions

An On-Site Manager can:

• Screen, interview and skill-test candidates before they’re approved to work for you.
• Check references, and if required, drug test applicants.
• Distribute paychecks.

Ensuring Safety

An On-Site Manager can:

• Provide facilities tours and customized safety orientations for your new on-time (temporary) employees.

Could your on-time (temporary) workforce benefit from an On-Site Manager?  Contact ABR Employment Services to find out more about our On-Site Staffing Solutions and determine if they’re right for you.

Not getting the response you want from your résumé send-outs?

Want employers to view you differently this year?

Try these 10 tips to shake things up and get your résumé noticed in 2011:

Ever play “whisper down the lane”?

Also known as ”telephone,” this popular children’s game provides a simple, yet critical illustration of how important information can get lost in translation.

Great fun if you’re just playing around, but not so great for business.

When it comes to ordering on-time (temporary) personnel, many clients call in their job orders.  Sure, it’s quick and convenient, but did you know that placing your order verbally is not the most effective way to work with us?

The reason is simple – verbal job descriptions can change as they’re transmitted from person to person, resulting in a “whisper down the lane” effect.  Consider, for example, how many people are potentially involved in the “lane” of communication when a job order is placed.  A department manager contacts HR with a need; HR contacts a staffing service coordinator with the order; the coordinator speaks with the staffing firm’s recruiter; the recruiter then communicates the job description to an employee.

See the potential problem?  While a verbal approach may seem easier, challenges can arise when duties get added or subtracted, or if job titles change over time.  As a result, the staffing provider may not send you the best match for the assignment.

At ABR Employment Services, we highly recommend that you submit or approve a written job description to which everyone in the line (or “lane”) of communication can refer.  Doing so will eliminate miscommunications, misunderstandings and confusion, and ensure that you get the best employee for the assignment.

Improve your staffing success with ABR Employment’s complete Human Resource solutions.

Have you recruited a new employee with great potential, but want a trial period to evaluate him on the job?

Are you trying to work around a hiring freeze?

Would you like a more efficient way to manage seasonal help, interns, retirees or contractors?

These are just a few of the reasons Wisconsin employers like you use payroll services.  This flexible outsourcing solution helps them reduce the cost and simplify the process of payroll administration.  Here’s how the service works:

1. You transfer an employee or candidate you’ve sourced onto the staffing firm’s payroll.
2. The staffing firm handles all required paperwork and becomes the individual’s employer of record.
3. The staffing firm then manages the entire payroll process, from payroll taxes to W-2’s.  Additionally, they are responsible for unemployment and workers’ compensation.
4. You keep control of your employees by setting pay rates, assigning jobs and managing their activities.

Payroll transfer services are a simple solution with a variety of benefits:

• Save time, money and work by offloading employee payroll processing.
• Mitigate employment risk.
• Lower employment costs such as workers’ compensation insurance, unemployment insurance and benefits.
• Reduce the hidden costs associated with hiring and termination.

Are payroll services right for your business?

Learn more about the features and benefits of ABR Employment’s Payroll Services by contacting one of our Wisconsin staffing service branches directly.  Our staffing professionals will help you assess your workforce challenges, to determine if payroll services make sense for you organization.

In the wake of historic employment litigation (e.g., Vizcaino v. Microsoft), some companies have adopted policies limiting assignment length for on-time (temporary) and contract employees from staffing firms.  Why?  These employers view assignment limits as a way to protect themselves from the kind of “retro-benefits” claims Microsoft faced back in the 1990s.

Unfortunately, these assignment limit policies have downsides.  They can cause economic harm to on-time (temporary) or contract employees whose assignments are terminated prematurely, and they can disrupt your company’s business operations.  To better protect your organization, you should closely examine its staffing policies to ensure that such limits are truly necessary – and not based on misinformation.

If you have questions about co-employment law, as it relates to assignment limits and associated benefits, here is a great resource with the answers you need.  The American Staffing Association’s Staffing Smarts Intelligence Report:  Assignment Limits and Concerns About Benefits Liability, by Edward A. Lenz, Esq., General Counsel, reviews the basic principles of law that apply to employee benefits plans, and then describes steps employers can take to avoid retro-benefits exposure:

Create a plan that expressly excludes staffing firm employees. The report suggests template language (that your legal counsel should review)  you can use for the purpose of excluding staffing firm employees from participation in your Erisa plan.

Use employee waivers. In addition to amending benefits plans, you may be able to achieve additional protection through agreements in which the staffing firm’s employees expressly waive their right to the company’s benefits.

Allow the staffing firm to handle employment related functions for on-time (temporary) and contract staff, such as:  recruiting, screening, determining wages, hiring, firing, assigning, resolving disputes, disciplining, etc.

Keep the lines between direct staff and contingent staff clear. The report includes several other steps (such as channeling social invitations through the staffing firm) you can take to avoid blurring the distinction between your core staff and on-time (temporary) employees.

Make Co-Employment Work with ABR Employment Services. Read our tips for successful co-employment, or contact ABR Employment with your staffing questions.  Our goal is to help you use staffing to achieve more.

“It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises but only performance is reality.”

– Harold S. Geneen

If you’ve ever managed a single person, then you know that employees make excuses.  They procrastinate, miss deadlines and blame others when they fail.

So how do you get them to consistently perform to the best of their abilities?  Use these smart suggestions to get better results – and fewer excuses – from your staff every day:

Make performance management a daily activity.  Annual and quarterly reviews definitely play their part in gauging performance, but nothing replaces the day-to-day guidance you give to your staff.  So talk to them regularly, leveraging every opportunity to improve employee’s efforts:

• Give them honest feedback about what they’re doing right – and what they need to improve.
• Discuss new projects and the opportunities they present for employee development and growth.
• Talk about overdue assignments or project difficulties and how to resolve them.
• Reinforce the importance of consistently doing a great job.

Limit excuses.  Eliminate the external factors on which employees often blame their poor performance by:

• Ensuring employees have the resources they need to do their jobs;
• Ensuring employees are adequately trained to do their jobs;
• Setting clear, mutually agreed-upon performance expectations for each employee.

Ask the right questions when problems arise.  Uncovering the cause of poor performance is the first step in creating a plan to remedy it.  So when an employee is failing at work, ask the following types of questions to diagnose the reasons why:

• What about the work system (e.g., tools, time, training, support) is causing the employee to fail?
• Does the employee know exactly what you want him/her to do, as well as the expected outcome?
• Does the employee practice effective work management?
• Does the employee feel valued, recognized and fairly compensated for his/her contributions?

Make performance goals SMART goals.  This goal-setting acronym is still widely used for one simple reason:  Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound goals are more likely to be achieved.  So as you work with your employees to set higher standards for the next quarter or year, teach them how to create SMART performance goals that will get them there.

Create a “performance mentality” among team members.  Football players won’t play their hardest in a game where nobody keeps score.  Likewise, your employees won’t deliver superior results when they merely see themselves as “doing a job” everyday.  Foster a “performance mentality” by showing your team why their efforts matter – and what’s at stake.  Make sure employees understand your mission, how their jobs fit into the “big picture,” and what they need to do to help your company win.

Improve Performance with ABR Employment Services

Performance management is a vital component in your organization’s continued success.  Ensure that success with ABR Employment’s full complement of staffing solutions.  Whether you need to improve productivity, increase operating efficiencies or streamline your staffing function, we can custom design a solution to fuel exceptional performance throughout your company.  Contact us today to learn more.