Month: March 2015

Are You Attractive to Potential Employees?

It is quite simple. In order to attract the best employees, you must look as if you are the best company to work for. Appearance is everything. A very basic first step in managing your image is to review how you present your company, says Jasmine Rojas, BLR® legal editor.

Best Practices for Building Your Employee Talent Pool

Building a recruitment strategy that can meet the ups and downs of everyday business in a volatile economy is a tough challenge. Ironically, the high rate of unemployment does not mean that the skills, education, and experience that your company needs are readily available.

Employer FCRA Requirements

Do you conduct background checks on job applicants before officially hiring them? If you do, are you in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)? When getting started with background screening, some employers don’t realize they are required to comply with the FCRA as part of this process.

Employee Handbooks: The Importance of Signed Acknowledgements

By Guest Columnist: Bridget Miller Requiring employees to sign an acknowledgement stating that they’ve received, read, and understood the employee handbook may seem arduous, especially if it’s done every time there is an update to the handbook. But this task is more than a mere formality—it serves an important purpose for employers: it is documentation […]

Diversity—It’s Hard to Achieve More Than Lip Service

Achieving workplace diversity isn’t easy—even for global powerhouses like Google. “We’re not where we want to be when it comes to diversity,” Google observes in a January 2014 demographic report, which reveals that 70% of Google’s employees are male and 61% are white.

Decoding the Military for Veteran Hiring Success

By Karin A. Vernazza, SPHR, as told to Archana Mehta Three years ago, President Obama announced a challenge to the U.S. private sector — hire or train 100,000 unemployed veterans or their spouses by the end of 2013. Many companies nationwide took on that challenge and started veteran-hiring job fairs to attract military talent but […]

Ban the Box Laws: Are You Affected?

‘Ban-the-box’ laws are laws that say you cannot have a question on your application that asks ‘do you have a criminal conviction?’ Typically, applications will ask for an explanation or description if the answer was yes. This forces immediate disclosure.

Avoid These Ugly Preemployment Pitfalls

In yesterday’s Advisor, we reviewed the good and the bad of preemployment inquiries; today, we take a look at some of the just plain ugly questions that you should never even think of asking.

IRS Adjusts Voluntary Correction Program, Including Fees

IRS on March 27 released a series of changes to its Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System that it said would improve the correction programs. Among the modifications to Revenue Procedure 2013-12  announced are new options for correction methods to recoup participant overpayments and lower compliance fees for participant plan loan errors. The 17-page Rev. Proc. […]

Preemployment Inquiries: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

When a company first meets with a prospective candidate, it’s not just the interviewee who needs to be on his or her toes. Interviewers must be careful to ask the right questions, not just to ensure they’re making the right hire but also to avoid legal entanglements.