In February I focused largely on issues around employees – the good, the bad and the occasionally ugly. It generated a lot of response and a sold-out training session on how to avoid the many issues surrounding the recruitment, training and delegating of employees.
Why is this obviously necessary aspect of business development filled with such potential mine fields? I believe it’s this: the business owner who is new to building a team, who starts to recognize that s/he has more than can be handled on her/his own schedule, puts together a job description that largely focuses on skill and experience. They tend to forget that more than ‘skill and experience’ will show up for work – it’s a whole human being with behavioral and cultural needs, with personal priorities that may be at home yet with them daily in their thoughts and emotions.
As a result, this ‘soft skills’ element, often down-played if not completely ignored, creates a bad fit the employer just doesn’t want to see, doesn’t know how to handle and sometimes leads to more than just bad feelings – it can lead to choices from the employer that go against the many rigorous laws regarding employment. And, should someone be fired – without documentation, without attempted training or warnings – you may end up with a vengeful former employee who’ll cause more headaches in their absence than they ever did while working for you.
Here’s an example, shared with me by an acquaintance: an auto mechanic, very popular and always busy, had been in business for 20 years, paying his employees in cash and off the books – no check stubs, no time clock, no employment records of any kind – had to fire someone who had a habit of chronically showing up late, causing severe problems with scheduled work. That employee was vengeful and, the following month, the business owner returned from vacation to discover certified mail from the Dept. of Labor informing him he was being fined over $100,000 for not paying employees properly for overtime hours. Now, this had not actually happened; he was, in fact, quite generous with employees; however, the lack of records of any kind put him in a bad situation.
How did the Dept. of Labor come to this conclusion? They’d had an anonymous call – from the unhappy and vengeful ex-employee – that this was the case and, while the boss was away, Labor representatives were on the premises interviewing employees. The employees denied the allegations however, admitted being paid in cash only. And that created an opportunity for the Labor Dept. and a serious problem for the mechanic. You see, despite having not cheated his employees regarding overtime payments, he had, in fact, cheated them out of potential benefits due to not covering their social security, unemployment and workers’ compensation obligations. As a result, he was penalized a negotiated settlement of under $40,000.
Pretty steep lesson, don’t you agree? And, while you may never err to the degree this business owner did, there is a maze of Human Resource regulations, both state and federal, that can easily cause headaches. That’s why this month’s training was over booked and why I’ve scheduled an April date, the 29th; you can learn more about it here.
I urge you to check it out; you’ll be surprised at the range of Human Resources headaches that can creep into your business and turn into nightmares. Wouldn’t you love to prevent them or, at the very least, know how to handle them if they do show up?
I promise, you’ll come away with exactly the solution you need or the steps to prevent Human Resource issues from creating conflicts, reduced productivity, absenteeism, morale issues and more. Here’s just a taste of the questions I’ll answer:
- How to react when employees say, “Nobody told ME that wasn’t allowed”
- I didn’t know that’s how it was done in Montana; what else don’t I know that’s different?
- The person we hired isn’t the right fit for the position; now what?
- Out turnover is incredibly high, why doesn’t anyone stay in their position anymore?
- Why can’t employees just get along? Is it really that hard?
- Of-course it happened the way I said, why doesn’t anyone believe me? Don’t they trust me? Or value my word?
- Well, I have told this employee at-least 10 times this behavior isn’t acceptable! Why do they continue?
Any of this sound familiar? Then join me on April 29th with your registration here.