Horizon Point Consulting

Author: Lorrie Coffey

  • What the New Administration Means for HR

    What the New Administration Means for HR

    I often hear HR professionals and business leaders alike comment on how hard it is to keep up with the constant changes in labor and employment laws. HR is an ever-changing world and even more so when a new administration takes office. Many employers have questions and concerns about what this new administration will mean for their businesses and changes they will need to make in how they manage HR.  

    The Biden administration promises a focus that will push for more employee-friendly legislation and a strengthening of policy enforcement. There are a number of areas to keep an eye on this year and in the coming years of this administration, including: 

    • Labor Relations
    • Immigration
    • Retirement Benefits
    • Wage and Hour Regulations
    • Affordable Care Act/Healthcare
    • Paid Leave
    • Discrimination

    So how can employers stay updated on these issues? 

    1. Network: Talk to other business leaders and HR professionals. Join associations that help keep employers informed and help them navigate these changes. Your local Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) chapter is a good resource as are industry-specific associations. 
    2. Subscribe: There are so many resources out there, including newsletters created by employment attorneys and HR professionals, podcasts, and government publications. You can subscribe to the Horizon Point newsletter here.
    3. Attend: Seek out opportunities to attend workshops on employment and labor law. A few great places to find these workshops are your local SHRM chapter, employment attorneys, industry associations, and your local Chamber of Commerce. 
    4. Contract: Seek out help from the professionals. Consider contracting with an HR Outsourcing/Consulting agency or an employment attorney that can help your organization stay up to date on labor and employment laws and ensure that your organization is compliant. 

    For more information on what to expect from the new administration, join Horizon Point Consulting and Redstone Government Contracting on April 6th for our New Administration, New Rules: Navigating the Workplace in 2021 workshop. 

  • Four Simple Steps to Improve Your Business Writing

    Four Simple Steps to Improve Your Business Writing

    I often work with clients who aim to improve communication within their organizations. Many of them naturally focus their concerns on the verbal communication issues within their company but fail to evaluate the impact that their written communication may have. 

    Here are four simple steps to help improve your written communication: 

    1. Consider your audience. When preparing to draft written communication, whether it’s an email, marketing materials, or a business report, consider your audience. How you address a customer may be very different from how you would address an employee. How you present information on your company’s fourth-quarter earnings and goals for the next quarter will be very different when addressing top leadership versus addressing an all-staff meeting. 
    2. Plan out what you want and need to say. What is the purpose of your written communication? Think about what you need to say before you actually start writing. What are your key points and how can you best address those points? If you’re writing a report or preparing a presentation, create an outline of key points and the order in which you want to address them. 
    3. Write and review. Write with purpose and don’t rush through it. And review what you’ve written as you go, and often. Does what you’ve written get the right point across and does it flow well? As I’m writing this now, I’ve already gone back and re-read it four times from the start. After I wrote #1 and #2, I re-read them two or three times and made adjustments. 
    4. Have someone proofread it. While I’m not suggesting you have someone proof every email you send, if you’re drafting longer documents such as reports or proposals, or materials that will go out to the public such as marketing materials or articles, have a second set of eyes look it over. They may just find some minor typos or grammar adjustments, or they may provide feedback on how to improve certain sections or points. When I finish writing this article, one of my colleagues will proof it before we post it.  

    Evaluation is also key to improving your written communication skills. As you implement the four steps above to help improve your written communication, consider ways to measure your success. This may include having employees fill out a brief survey after a staff meeting, evaluating sales after a new marketing campaign, or tracking the number of proposals submitted and how many contracts were won or the feedback that was returned. 

    What is one way that you can evaluate the success of your written communication? 

  • Selecting an HRIS that’s Right for You

    Selecting an HRIS that’s Right for You

    Relatively early in my HR career, I worked for an organization that decided they wanted to move to a new HRIS. The parent company owned a PEO and a temporary staffing agency and wanted to go from using two separate systems to one combined system for both services. The executives vetted systems and made their decision. My team was trained on the new system and was responsible for manually entering over 3,000 employees from the old systems into the new system. This process took weeks and some very long hours, including weekends. And we ran into issue after issue where the system didn’t contain the fields we needed, didn’t have tax tables set up correctly, and so much more. We kept going back to our executive team and explaining the shortcomings of the system. Our test payrolls were a total failure. We became beyond frustrated, discouraged, and honestly, felt that the executives were brushing off our concerns.

    While that horrible experience is forever engrained in my memory, it was a huge learning experience for me and taught me that there are some key things to think about when vetting a new system.

    1)    Involve the right people. While executives need to be involved and ultimately make the decision, talk to the people who are in the trenches day in and day out. Invite them to system demos, allow them to ask questions, and ask for their feedback.

    2)    Make a list and check it twice. If you have a system that you are looking to replace, ask why. What is it about that system that is lacking, what are your must-haves in a new system? What are those bells and whistles you’d like to have but could live without? And what are those things your current system has that you absolutely do not want in a new system? If you don’t have a system in place, sit down with those right people and brainstorm. What’s on their wish list, and which wishes are needs versus wants?

    3)    Anticipate growth. Don’t select a system based on where your organization is today, select a system that will get you to where you’re going in three to five years, and maybe even beyond. There are some systems that are better for smaller businesses and there are some systems that are better for larger businesses. If your organization is growing rapidly, you may want to focus your search on a more robust system that has more to offer. If you’re a smaller organization, you may not need all of the features that a larger system may offer (and you’d pay more for).

    4)     Check references. Ask around before selecting a system. If you have narrowed your search down to one or two systems you really like, get feedback from other organizations who use that system. Find out what they like and don’t like about it. Don’t ask the vendor to provide you with references, they are going to connect you with companies they know are happy with the system. You want to hear the good and the bad. One way to do this is to ask other HR professionals you know or pose the question to social media outlets. I see this done a lot on Facebook HR groups, and respondents give honest feedback. And keep in mind, what is a negative for one organization may not be a key factor for you in your decision, so weigh the feedback you receive appropriately.

    So, what happened with the HRIS that my former employer selected? After months of entering data and trying to work with the vendor to get the system to do what we needed it to do and finding out that the vendor had only recently acquired the system from another company and didn’t understand yet the full scope of the product themselves, the executives made the tough decision to back out of the contract and stick with the two old systems we already had in place. It was a huge expense and costly mistake for the organization. And one that could have been avoided if they involved the right people, understood their needs and sought out references.

  • Are Your Employees SAD? How to Help Employees Who Struggle with Seasonal Affective Disorder

    Are Your Employees SAD? How to Help Employees Who Struggle with Seasonal Affective Disorder

    It’s that time of year. The weather is changing, the leaves are falling, and you’re SAD. But you’re not alone. Nearly 10 million Americans suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. While SAD is most prevalent in those ages 18 to 30, it can affect anyone, and the effects are different for everyone. 

    Symptoms of SAD include: 

    • Fatigue
    • Loss of concentration 
    • Insomnia/Inability to wake up
    • Mild to severe depression
    • Weight loss/gain

    Employers may see these symptoms in the form of attendance issues, decreased productivity, mistakes in work completed, or a lack of concentration in meetings. Your initial reaction may be to consider disciplinary action, but before you do, consider the behaviors you’re seeing. Are these recent changes to an otherwise well-performing employee? If so, did these changes occur around the change of the season? While SAD affects most people in the cold weather seasons, some individuals do suffer SAD in the warmer season as well. 

    So how can you help an employee who may be suffering from SAD? 

    • Utilize your EAP. If your organization provides employees with an Employee Assistance Plan, now might be a good time to remind employees of this benefit. Send out a communication to all staff reminding them of the EAP benefit and the services it can provide to them. 
    • Up the lighting. Take a look around your facility at the lighting. Are all areas well lit or does your office exude that dim ambiance? While dim lights might be preferred in the summer months, you might want to turn up the lights in the cooler months. 
    • Encourage employees to get outside. If your office is in a great location for walks, encourage your employees to take advantage of that and get moving outdoors. Consider forming a walking team that meets daily to get outside and walk for 15-20 minutes. Think about setting up a basketball hoop, volleyball net, cornhole, or other outdoor activity to encourage employees to get outside during their breaks or lunch. 
    • Talk more. Check-in with your employees more often, just stop by to say hi and see how they’re doing. And be an active listener. If you listen, you may read between the lines that they aren’t as okay as they say they are. 
    • Offer flexibility. If possible, consider a more flexible work schedule. That may include shifting your hours and letting employees arrive a little later or it may mean allowing affected employees to work from home on their bad days. 
    • Offer up FMLA and/or ADA. Understand that while most people who suffer from SAD are able to struggle through, some aren’t. In some cases, SAD can be debilitating and lead to severe depression. In these cases, employees may need and qualify for FMLA and/or ADA accommodations. 
  • Is Employment Really At-Will?

    Is Employment Really At-Will?

    One of the questions I often help employers work through is can they terminate an employee. And too often I hear “But we’re in an at-will state” or “we’re an at-will employer”.

    At-will employment is often misinterpreted to mean that an employer can terminate an employee whenever they please, and while at-will employment policies do state that the employee or employer can terminate employment at any time, with or without cause, and with or without notice, there are limitations to that on the part of the employer. 

    First, all states are at-will employment states. Some states have added legislation that further limits the bounds of at-will employment, but the overall objective is the same. 

    So what does at-will employment really mean? 

    Yes, employees can resign their positions at any time, with or without notice, and with or without reason. And yes, employers can impose penalties if employees do not give notice within the limits of federal, state, and local laws, such as setting a vacation policy that requires 2-weeks’ notice to receive a payout of accrued, unused vacation time upon termination. And yes, if an employee gives a 2-week notice, the employer can opt to take that notice effective immediately, and it’s still considered a voluntary resignation. 

    But what at-will employment does not mean is that an employer can terminate employment with or without notice, and with or without cause, if doing so violates other employment laws. 

    When reviewing an employer’s request to terminate an employee, there are a few things that I take into consideration:

    1. Is the employee in a protected class? For example, are they female, are they over the age of 40, are they a minority, are they disabled?
    2. What is the employer’s reason for wanting to terminate employment? Are there performance issues and if so, have they been addressed with the employee, and has the employee been given the opportunity to improve performance? And have those performance issues and conversations been documented? Is it an attendance issue? Is there documentation of poor attendance and disciplinary action for violation of the attendance policy? Is there a written attendance policy? 
    3. Is the termination a layoff? If so, is it truly a layoff or is the employer using that reason as means to get rid of an employee they just don’t want? While there are no legal limitations on how long a position must be vacant in order to constitute a layoff, the adhered to standard is six months unless there is a significant change in business. If an employer lays off an employee and refills the position in 2-3 weeks, chances are it wasn’t really a layoff but an excuse to terminate an employee they didn’t want. 
    4. Is there an employment contract that impacts Employment-At-Will? Employment contracts are a legally binding document that outlines the terms of employment, and often includes the length of employment under the contract and penalties for terminating the contract early, both for the employee and the employer. Such contracts may create limitations to employment-at-will.  
    5. Would a judge find this termination justified? If an employee were to file a lawsuit for wrongful termination, how would a judge see it? Have I as an employer covered all my bases to make sure the termination was within the law? Documentation is critical to this decision. If an employer wishes to terminate an employee, they must be able to show justification for that decision. 

    Employment-at-will is not a free pass to terminate employees “just because.” The employer is still responsible for ensuring that the termination is justified and within the limits of federal, state, and local laws.