Horizon Point Consulting

Author: Lorrie Coffey

  • Today I Was Biased

    Today I Was Biased

    This morning my 16-year-old informed me that tomorrow is “Senior Day” for Homecoming week and as part of the SGA leadership team, he has to dress up as a senior citizen. The immediate image in my head was that of an old man with a branded t-shirt, khaki pants held up by wide suspenders, and clunky white tennis shoes. So that’s what we went with.

    Why that’s the image that popped into my mind, I don’t know. My dad is 71, he’s a senior citizen, and he’s never dressed like that. My uncles don’t dress like that. In fact, no senior men I know dress like that. But yet that’s the first image I have when I think of a senior man. And I realize that’s a very biased image.

    Biases and perceptions have been on my mind a lot lately. On October 24th, my colleague Jillian and I will be traveling to Perdido Beach Resort to speak at the Alabama Association of Regional Councils Annual Conference and one of our sessions will be on Overcoming Bias. I’ve also been researching job requirements and disability accommodations for my capstone thesis for law school and much of my research includes discussions on biases and perceptions.

    We all have biases and perceptions. Some are conscious biases, we know we have them, and some are unconscious. We may react a certain way in a given situation but haven’t yet connected the dots to understand why we always react that specific way. So, what are some steps we can take to minimize bias in the workplace?

    • Sit with your feelings. If you’re familiar with Emotional Intelligence, the first skill is self-awareness. Being aware of your own feelings. If you’re dealing with a difficult situation or decision, have to have a tough conversation, or just have some pressing thoughts running through your mind, find a quiet place where you won’t be interrupted and ask yourself how you’re feeling and be honest about it. Are you angry, frustrated, sad, happy, confused? Don’t try to talk yourself out of how you’re feeling or think you should feel guilty for the emotions you’re experiencing, just feel them and ask yourself why you feel the way you do. Acknowledging the feelings is the first step to understanding them and learning how to manage them, which is the second skill of emotional intelligence; self-management.
    • Understand that biases can be positive or negative, and both can have a huge impact. We tend to think that biases are negative beliefs or views, but that’s not always the case. Imagine you have a great employee that reminds you of yourself when you were “that age” and so without even realizing you do it, you begin to give them preferential treatment. They get all the best assignments, you take them under your wing and teach them everything you know, you end up going out to lunch together more days than not to discuss work, and eventually the other members of your team start to get resentful of always being left out. Their performance starts to deteriorate, their morale slips further and further down, and you just can’t figure out why. And before you know it, your star performer seems unhappy too and appears to be avoiding you. You’re guilty of engaging in the Similar-to-Me Bias, you showed a preference toward the employee who you felt was most similar to you, without even realizing you were doing it.
    • Practice change. Your biases and perceptions are formed based on your experiences and environment. When we experience similar situations, we begin to create biases towards those types of situations; same with people. For example, if you hate going to the dentist, you talk yourself into how horrible going to the dentist for your checkup is going to be and the closer it gets the more you dread it and you are miserable the entire time you’re getting your cleaning done and you come out and you think about how miserable it was. What if you purposefully changed your approach. Instead of self-talk about how horrible the visit was going to be, what if instead you gave yourself a pep-talk about how it wouldn’t be that bad and you could handle it and that the dentist and hygienist are both really nice. And during the visit you tell yourself how well you’re doing and when it’s over you congratulate yourself on doing so well and how it wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be. Do you think that maybe after a few visits that might help change your mindset about going to the dentist? Same with those dreaded weekly meetings that last forever – try some positive self-talk and see if you can’t change your biases and perspective towards them, even if just a little.

    My challenge for you this week: Pick one bias or perception that you want to change and start practicing.

  • Negotiation Styles and Why They Matter

    Negotiation Styles and Why They Matter

    Later this month I’ll be speaking at HR Florida about Negotiation Skills. We are all negotiators, even if we don’t realize it. Think for a minute. What did you do when your alarm went off this morning? Did you immediately jump out of bed or did you negotiate with yourself to allow yourself just “five more minutes?” Did your kid talk you into letting them pack cookies in their school lunch instead of a granola bar? Or did you agree to allow Jim to take the lead on the new project at work because Ally has too much on her workload as it is?

    While I’ll spend most of my session at HR Florida talking about how to navigate the negotiation session itself, there’s one important topic that I’ll tackle first, and that’s negotiation style. Based on the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) there are five styles:

    1. Competing: Those who exhibit the competing style are aggressive and uncooperative. They are power driven and pursue their own interests at the expense of others. Competing may mean standing up for what’s right, defending what they believe is correct, or simply trying to win.
    2. Collaborating: Those who exhibit the collaborating style are both assertive and cooperative. They attempt to work with the other party to find a solution that meets the needs of both parties by trying to understand the issue from both sides and identifying the underlying concerns, then trying to find alternative solutions that meet those the needs of both sides. This may mean exploring a disagreement to learn from each other, resolving some condition that would have them competing for resources, or trying to find a creative solution to an interpersonal problem.
    3. Compromising: Those who exhibit the compromising style are intermediate in both assertiveness and cooperativeness. The goal is to find an expedient, mutually acceptable solution that partially satisfies the needs of both parties. Compromising falls on the middle ground between competing and accommodating, giving up more than competing but less than accommodating. It might mean splitting the difference or some give and take.
    4. Avoiding: Those who exhibit the avoiding style are unassertive and uncooperative. They do not immediately pursue their own concerns or the concerns of the other person. They do not address the conflict, but instead choose to side step it, postponing the issue until a better time or simply withdrawing from the situation completely.
    5. Accommodating: Those who exhibit the accommodating style are unassertive and cooperative, this is the opposite of competing. They neglect their own concerns and instead choose to only satisfy the concerns of the other person, thus self-sacrificing their own needs.

    What’s important to understand about negotiation styles is that while we may have a dominant style, for example my dominant style is compromising, we use all five styles depending on the situation that we’re negotiating and it’s important to understand that the style you use in a negotiation can have a huge impact on the outcome of that negotiation.

    For example, think about the following situations and consider what negotiation style you would use and why.

    • Going to buy a new car
    • Asking your boss for a pay raise
    • Trying to negotiate a multi-million dollar contract at work

    Now, think about the negotiations that you will need to make in the next week and what styles you will need to use to successfully complete those negotiations.

  • 5 Tips for Inclusive Recruiting

    5 Tips for Inclusive Recruiting

    “Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At (company), we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyways. You might just be the right candidate for this or other roles.”

    This was recently included in an actual job posting. I found it posted in an HR group on Facebook and the feedback from HR professionals was pretty negative. The company may have had good intentions, but the message sent was, as one respondent put it, “offensive”.

    So how can companies ensure that they are being inclusive in their recruiting processes? How can they put their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policy to work and make it effective in recruiting talent? Yes, the statement in the job posting is correct, women and people of color ARE less likely to apply for positions if they don’t meet all of the requirements of the job posting. One study shows that men will apply for a job if they meet 60% of the requirements while women will not apply unless they meet 100% of the requirements, but what is the right way to combat that? It’s definitely not putting that statistic in a job posting.

    Here are 5 practical steps:

    1. Review your job descriptions. Be honest with yourself, are your qualifications must have or really wants? Break out your qualifications into required and preferred. Also ask yourself if the degree requirements are absolutely necessary. Can someone who is self-taught with five years of experience in the field perform the work just as well as someone who has a degree and no experience? If you’re job description has a weight lifting requirement, is it accurate for the job? Is that position really required to lift 50 pounds on a regular basis or are they lifting 15 pounds on a regular basis and once every month they might have to lift 50 pounds and can actually get someone else to lift that for them if necessary. If you’re not sure about your requirements, do a job analysis and ask someone currently in the role what they feel someone needs to have in order to be successful in that role.
    2. Use gender neutral language. Instead of using he or she, try speaking directly to the person reading the job description by using “you” instead. If that won’t work, use they/their.
    3. Consider where you are posting your jobs. While Indeed and Linkedin are great sources for candidates, are you utilizing resources that can help you target underrepresented populations? Are there veterans’organizations that you can send your job postings to? Are there job boards or associations that target specific populations (like Women Who  Code)?
    4. Incorporate diversity into every step of your recruiting process. Think carefully about who to include in the interview process. Imagine being a female interviewing for a leadership role and you’re scheduled for a panel interview with five members of the leadership team. You walk into the panel interview and the five individuals sitting across the table from you are all men. What impression do you think that would give? Would that be representative of the diversity of your organization?
    5. Train interviewers on biases. We all have biases, whether we realize it or not. And those biases play a part in how we interview and how we rate candidates. By understanding what the potential biases are, we can better identify them and minimize the impact they have in our decision making.

    How can you create a more inclusive recruiting program in your organization?

  • Top Payroll Errors

    Top Payroll Errors

    My theme for the summer seems to be money. It’s been a huge topic of conversation in my house and with clients, from trying to help my oldest navigate scholarships, FAFSA, and how to responsibly manage having a credit card, to teaching my 16-year-old to understand income taxes, to helping clients answer questions about wages and payroll. 

    Over the past few weeks, I’ve talked about misclassifying employees, both as Independent Contractors and as exempt employees. This week I want to shift a little and talk about some of the common payroll errors and how to avoid them. 

    Overtime Pay: 

    • Comp time for hourly employees: Unfortunately, unless you are a government agency, employers cannot opt to provide comp time in lieu of payment of overtime wages. Any employee who works over 40 hours in a workweek must be paid for that time. 
    • Averaging hours across the pay period: The federal law states that anything over 40 hours in a workweek must be paid as overtime. A common error that employers make is averaging that time over a two-week period. “Well, the employee worked 80 hours over two weeks, with 50 hours in one week and 30 in the next, so we don’t owe them overtime.” Unfortunately, this is not the case. If your workweek is Sunday through Saturday and an employee works over 40 hours in that workweek, they must be paid for overtime hours worked, even if you pay biweekly and they work less than 40 hours in the second week. And keep in mind it’s based on the workweek, not calendar week. So, if your workweek is from Wednesday to Tuesday, it’s 40 hours within those days. Keep in mind that a few states, such as California, have overtime laws that are more stringent than the federal law, so be sure to confirm state overtime laws as well. 
    • Overtime wasn’t approved in advance, so we don’t have to pay it: Regardless of whether or not the employee followed proper procedures, you are still required to pay them for all hours worked, even if it’s unapproved overtime. In such cases, you should pay the wages and then follow your disciplinary process to counsel the employee on not getting pre-approval to work the hours. 
    • Miscalculating overtime pay: Many employers believe that overtime pay is based on an employee’s hourly rate, but in fact, there are other wages that may need to be added to that calculation. The FLSA states that “employees must receive overtime pay for hours worked in excess of 40 in a workweek of at least one and one-half times their regular rates of pay.” Note that this does not say hourly rate, but “regular rate of pay.” This is important because an employee’s regular rate of pay could include shift differentials, premium pay, stipends, and nondiscretionary payments (for example quarterly bonuses based on production). 

    Improper Withholdings: 

    • Not withholding correct income taxes: This has become a bigger issue with the increase in remote workers post-Covid. Many employers are not sure how to navigate figuring out how to set up taxes for out-of-state employees. It’s important to know that some states have a reciprocity agreement, meaning that an employee can live in one state and work in another and only be taxed in the state where they live. For example, given the mobility across state lines in the Virginia, Maryland, and DC areas (DMV), employees who live in one of those locations but work in another DMV location do not have to pay taxes to the location in which they work. 
    • Not setting up state tax accounts: In addition to understanding reciprocity agreements, the employer must understand what business accounts they need to set up in each state. This will vary but usually includes a state tax account and a state unemployment insurance account. Failure to set up and pay into the proper state accounts can lead to hefty fines and penalties. 
    • Improper deductions from wages: Federal law allows employers to make certain deductions from an employee’s wages without their written consent. These include tax deductions, garnishments, and meals and lodging. Beyond that, employers must have written consent to deduct from an employee’s wages. For example, if you as the employer require an employee to pay for their own PPE, you must have them sign a payroll deduction consent form. 

    Direct Deposit:

    • Requiring direct deposit: One item that many employers are not aware of is that some states regulate whether or not an employer can require payment of payroll wages via direct deposit. While direct deposit is the easiest method of payment and the preferred method of most employers, it’s not legal to mandate direct deposit in some states. As with many employment laws, the regulations vary by state. 

    What are some of the payroll errors or questions you have faced in your organization? 

  • Are You Misclassifying Employees?

    Are You Misclassifying Employees?

    The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear a case that could have a big impact on the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the classification of employees as exempt versus non-exempt. The case of Hewitt v. Helix Energy Sols. Grp., Inc. involves a highly compensated oil rig worker who was paid a weekly “salary” and upon his termination sued Helix for unpaid overtime on the basis that he was not paid an annual salary and therefore was not an exempt employee. The outcome of this case could impact employers who pay a daily or weekly “salary” as well as those who pay salaried employees on an hourly basis.

    In the past couple of years, we’ve seen a large number of FLSA cases arise, costing employers millions. Below are just a few recent headlines: 

    Amazon.com Services and its Contractor Fined $6.4 Million (March 2021)

    Court Approves $8.5 Million Settlement for Juicers in Misclassification Case Against Lime (July 2021)

    Holland Acquisition Inc Pays $42.3 Million in Misclassification Case (October 2021)

    DoorDash Agrees to a $100 Million Settlement (November 2021) 

    Last month I talked about misclassifying employees as Independent Contractors. This month I want to talk about misclassifying employees as exempt. 

    I’ve recently been working with a couple of clients on classification projects and in each of those projects I’ve come across employees who were misclassified. In some cases, it was an easy find for me. But in others, classifying employees is not an easy determination to make. So how can employers ensure that they are classifying employees correctly? 

    The FLSA has very detailed guidelines on what qualifies an employee to be classified as exempt for the purposes of overtime pay. The first, and easiest, determination is pay – if any employee makes less than $684 per week ($35,568 annually) they MUST be paid as a non-exempt employee eligible for overtime wages. 

    If they meet the salary requirement, the next step is to determine which FLSA exemption test, or tests, apply to that position. A position can potentially qualify under more than one exemption test. The exemption tests are:

    • Executive
    • Administrative
    • Professional/Creative
    • Computer Professional
    • Outside Sales

    Once you determine which test, or tests, apply to the position, you will need to do an in-depth analysis of that position using the exemption test to determine if a position meets the requirements to be exempt. 

    As I mentioned above, some positions are relatively easy to assess, but others are much harder. A great example of this is Healthcare Case Managers. By evaluating the position of Case Manager against the FLSA exemption tests that apply, many evaluate the position to be exempt. However, the Department of Labor issued an Opinion Letter in 2005 in which it determined that Case Managers did not meet the qualifications to be exempt employees under the FLSA. The DOL has a searchable database on all Administrative and Non-Administrative Opinion Letters regarding FLSA which is a great tool to use if you’re unsure whether a position qualifies as exempt. 

    A great way to ensure that your employees are classified correctly is to ensure that you have updated and accurate job descriptions for each position within your organization and to review the job descriptions at least every 2-3 years.