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Blog

Understanding What Makes Up a Powerful HR Department

10/30/2019

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Human resource departments can have a dramatic impact on strategic planning, productivity, administrative cohesion, employee engagement, and various other aspects of running a business.
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Indeed, a strong HR department can help your business establish a productive and profitable company culture.
So the question is:

What makes an effective HR department?

Recognizing that HR can be a strategic function is the first step in being able to build the most effective HR department. This has to be recognized and supported by senior leadership. Start by defining the role of your HR function. Look at how they will manage their responsibilities, some of which include:
  •  Identifying, Attracting and Retaining Talent
  •  Building and Reinforcing Company Culture
  •  Employee Training
  •  Company Assessments
  •  Benefits and Compensation
  •  Organizational Analysis
 
The HR department must build a relationship of trust. Employees and leadership need to know that they can trust the HR department to work in the collective best interest of the company and employee. This requires a partnership between the business leaders, employees and the HR department. This partnership must be based on mutual respect between these parties, all of which need to be working toward the common goals of the company.

Recruiting the Right Employees

A human resource department doesn’t just keep an eye on your current staff; they also help attract the best talent to ensure your company’s success. With the changes in demographics facing the United States, employers are facing a war for talent. Unemployment is reaching historic lows and the skills of the workforce do not always match the needs of the employer. The HR department needs to develop a holistic, creative approach to identifying and attracting talent. Attracting, developing and retaining talent will be a hallmark of the most successful companies in this era of the war for talent.
 
Building and maintaining company culture is an important mission for every HR department, so it’s important to find people who are the right fit. The company culture can be a valuable tool when recruiting talent. Building that culture is not easy and is never complete.
So who is the right fit?
 
Obviously finding people with the right skills is foundational. However, finding employees who share similar values and will align with the company’s culture is equally (and some say more) important.
 
Once new staff members are identified, they need to be “onboarded.” This process will provide new team members with a clear sense of the goals, history, and the culture of the business. This, in turn, can increase productivity and ensure that their efforts are properly aligned.

Business Impact of Human Resources

For many companies, the “secret sauce” is the company culture. A unique culture can create a strong drive and help keep employees on track and mission focused. This can increase productivity, which in turn can boost revenues and profits. Culture also acts as a guidepost for employees when faced with critical business decisions. The HR department is one of the key builders of the company culture.
 
Regardless of an organization’s size or industry, human resource management plays a vital role in impacting business direction, strategies, and objectives. Ultimately, a successful HR team can help improve an organization’s overarching performance, enhancing their company culture, and positioning them at the forefront of a competitive market environment.
 
While many perceive HR functions as primarily focused on employee recruitment, business leaders who engage HR as a strategic partner are able to integrate the department’s initiatives with “big-picture” company objectives. The activities of Human Resources, in strategizing how to attract, select, develop and reward personnel, can benefit company performance tremendously. This is why it is imperative that HR truly understand the company culture and strategic objectives. With this vision, the HR function can help company leaders put in place processes to develop the right skills, culture, performance appraisal systems and performance objectives to drive the business toward its strategic objectives.
 
Traditionally, HR recruitment and selection processes aimed to identify talent through a “best fit candidate for the job” approach. Today, however, a strategic HR department will focus on hiring candidates for positions that will accelerate the growth and direction of business, not singularly their contributions to an internal role. By evaluating employees for more than their skill-set, and implementing training and development programs, HR can align the core values of both the employee and company, and establish a common goal across individuals, various departments, and business leaders.
 
By definition, training and development refers to the process of obtaining or transferring knowledge, skills and abilities needed to carry out a specific activity or task. HR can help refine and grow employee talent, and ultimately drive the value and potential of a company. By aligning talent development with company goals the HR department can help provide a key element to company success.
 
Further, HR secession planning, the holistic strategy behind employee recruitment, development, and preparation for advancement, benefits business leaders and employees alike. From teaching team-building skills to sales staff, or helping C-Level executives cultivate their leadership skills —the HR process ensures that employees are continually developed and capable of filling dynamic roles, ultimately maintaining the talent pipeline and mitigating the risk of employee turnover.

Equip Your HR Department

Because the Human Resource Management landscape is complex and multifaceted, it is vital for business leaders to not only equip their HR department with tools for performance evaluation and employee development, but provide them with internal support and communication outlets as well.
 
Because HR departments typically control a mass aggregation of data concerning employee and business operations, having multiple systems can cause a huge headache and be detrimental to their functional efficiency. Therefore, companies must collaborate with HR to integrate best-fit analysis systems that will capture, manage and report business/employee activities in an organized, single-system process. To improve employee performance, retention rates, and business functions, HR departments should work with business leaders to measure KPIs in alignment with the overarching company expectations and goals.
 
Reviews and reward systems should also be continuously tested and refined, a task not singular to the HR department. By revisiting old feedback processes and reward systems, and collaborating with HR about what employee/operational assessments require the most attention, business leaders can help their HR department optimize company culture and incentivize employee performance in alignment with a common goal. Additionally, use the insights from your employees to figure out what benefit package will encourage the most engagement. A good work/life balance will go a long way in the eyes of your staff.

Outsourcing HR Functions and Specialties

As you can see, a lot goes into building a strong human resources capability. However, your company doesn’t have to take on the entire challenge by itself. Often, outside contractors, experts, and others can be brought in to provide assistance. This can range from expertise around a specific topic to help assessing your complete HR function.
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By finding the right partners, it is possible to bring great expertise without having to invest in the full-time staff, which in turn can produce bottom-line payoffs. Often the most effective and efficient structure is a combination of some internal team coupled with a trusted partner.

HR is Serious Business

A strong human resources capability is crucial in today’s hyper competitive market for talent. At the end of the day, your human resources staff will be responsible for helping build your company culture and attracting retaining and developing your talent. Ultimately, your business is as good as the people you have running it day in and day out.

Of course, accomplishing all of the above is easier said than done. Fortunately, Lauber Business Partners has helped numerous companies build effective and efficient HR functions.
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Click here to find out more about how Lauber Business Partners can help you
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7 Responsibilities of Human Resource Management

10/30/2019

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Your business’s most valuable resource isn’t the tools or equipment you’ve purchased over the years. It’s your employees. These talented individuals are responsible for pushing your business to new heights and with creating innovations that allow you to grow.
 
Without a strong human resources team, though, you may not be able to get the most out of your employees.
Your HR department needs to be one of the most effective in the business. If it’s not there yet, how can you build it up?
 
One way of improving your HR team is to look at its responsibilities. If you understand what your HR team should be doing, you can determine if they are meeting these responsibilities. If they are not, you can work with them to develop processes that do.

Recruitment and Retention

Your HR department is likely responsible for a large portion of the hiring process. This includes advertising available positions, attracting qualified candidates, screening those applicants to create a short list, and then interviewing these candidates. It also may involve establishing relationships and working with recruiting firms. While parts of this process do require the HR team to work closely with the supervisor the new employee will work under, much of the work is shouldered by HR. That includes guiding the new employee through the hiring process and onboarding.Retention is another task in which HR can be instrumental. Once a smart, talented employee is brought in, how do you keep them? There are numerous ways to do so, but there are also some misguided ideas here, too. Your HR team, especially the HR leader, needs to know the most effective retention methods. This is not to say these responsibilities fall solely (or even mostly) with HR but HR has a responsibility to help the business and its leaders put in place elements leading to high retention.

Relations and Business Culture

Your HR team is responsible for fostering the strong relationship between you as an employer and your employees. Much of this connection can be driven by the company culture. Creating culture needs to be a very conscious process and there are concrete measures that can be taken to create it. It’s HR’s job to help build the company culture. While they are not responsible for determining what the culture is, they are key stewards in helping build and nurture it.

Safety

HR should assist in providing safety training courses and materials as needed. Often, this is the responsibility of each department, but HR should reinforce and supplement that training. They are also tasked with keeping reports of training, workplace injuries and fatalities and reporting them to the correct federal authorities.
 
Even more important that the mechanics of safety is building a culture of safety. Safety is not just driven by periodic training. To truly be successful in terms of safety a company needs to ingrain safety into its very being and culture.

Community Outreach and Social Consciousness

HR is tasked with providing support to departments or employees who participate in philanthropic activities, including:
  • Charities
  • Non Profits
  • Community Events
 
This community outreach also includes monitoring and influencing how the company is viewed socially. Many consumers/customers are now very conscious of how companies spend their money, how they affect the environment, and what they stand for morally. This can have a much larger impact on profits than many realize until it’s too late. HR can play a key role in advancing this element of the company.

Professional Development

One key factor in employee retention is providing employees with a path to advancement. That often requires employees to learn new skills and knowledge through professional development. These courses may focus on learning skills or new technology, or they may focus on leadership and communication. HR should put in place plans for employees to develop themselves in order to advance professionally. This includes understanding the different needs of the groups of employees in the company. Each group (i.e. baby boomers, Gen X, millennials, …) may have a slightly different view on how this should occur.

Benefits and Compensation

Your HR team, in conjunction with the business leaders, will handle employee compensation and benefits. This includes researching what compensation and benefits are offered by competitors and adjusting the company’s compensation structure when necessary. Benefits include a vast array of things today including — insurance plans, employee assistance programs, education assistance, wellness programs, affinity programs and more. Being plugged into the most compelling benefits can make a big difference in terms of attracting and retaining the best employees and the culture which is built.

HR Expectations

In today’s business world, HR teams have to be self-starters and take ownership of their responsibilities. Executives no longer hand down directives for HR teams on a regular basis. Instead, HR management has to develop their strategic plan, metrics, and evaluating tools to show executives that they are meeting the business’s needs and addressing strategic business priorities.

Consider Outsourcing Certain HR Functions

As you can see, HR has a full plate of responsibilities in order to be truly excellent and strategic. However, as a small to mid-sized business, you do not have to be and probably cannot achieve excellence in every area. Have you considered outsourcing some of your HR needs? While it may not be possible to outsource everything, there are many HR tasks that can be outsourced in order to achieve high levels of performance in each key area of HR management. Lauber Business Partners can handle this type of outsourcing. They can provide fractional, interim and project employees, including executives, for businesses that don’t need to or cannot hire someone full-time but are in need of assistance for specific functions/priorities.
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The Role of Human Resources in Business Ethics

10/30/2019

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Human resources professionals have a more significant role in businesses than recruiting talent and handling internal activities, such as payroll. They are instrumental in creating and maintaining the culture of a workplace, and, in that way, they shape the code of ethics that a business follows. Maintaining a definite code of ethics is appropriate for both employees and customers, and it creates goodwill on all sides.
 
An organization’s culture can be the strongest predictor of how much money it will make because a company with a good business culture is able to consistently retain employees and satisfy customers. Practicing good ethics is a vital part of conducting good business, and this simple fact is being emphasized more and more as companies realize its benefits
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There are four ingredients which serve to make up an ethical workplace: compliance, fairness, trust, and an ethical self-concept. Most companies fall into one of three different workplace models: compliant ethical, positive ethical, and virtuous ethical. Compliant ethical businesses promote the minimum ethical standards which are required by law, and their sense of responsibility toward ethical conduct is limited to what the law specifically requires.
Positive ethical businesses attempt to go beyond the bare minimum and actively seek to promote a positive workplace culture whenever possible. Virtuous Ethical Businesses make justice, and social responsibility their priority, and they make a point of holding themselves to the highest possible ethical standards. Also, each of these models implement the four ingredients of an ethical workplace in different ways.
 
Compliance consists of the norms, values, and ethical expectations an organization sets. These may be backed directly by laws, or they can be an expression of a business founders’ moral preferences. They must be expressed, however, in terms that employees can understand and use within their daily activities.
 
It should be made visible how compliance standards safeguard the company’s mission and benefit employees so that employees will be directly motivated to follow them. Merely doing the bare minimum in terms of compliance will not motivate employees, and this could, in fact, contribute to the creation of less ethical workplace culture.
Fairness involves the perceived justice of the policies and practices that affect employees and their work. When employees feel that they are being treated fairly, and when customers feel that a company’s policies are just, trust in the company can be built over time.
 
This trust is built through the way in which decisions are made, how information is shared, and how people interact with the company, among other things. Respecting customers and employees is essential in terms of building an ethical workplace and taking the time necessary to demonstrate that respect is beneficial to everyone involved.
 
Trust, specifically motive-based trust, is based upon the assessment employees make about the ethical character of people they interact with at work. These individuals can be coworkers, bosses, or customers. To maintain trust, people must actively work to foster it. They should be willing to listen to criticism, to admit and take responsibility for ethical mistakes, and to take corrective action when necessary.
 
Managers and leaders should also be good role models for other employees by demonstrating principles that encourage trust because the positive effect of trust translates throughout all of a company’s functions and various undertakings.
 
Success can be measured by the degree to which employees make the ethical values of the organization part of their own daily lives within the company. Organizations should promote the idea of internalizing the company’s positive moral values. Each company has different ways of doing this yet encouraging ethics can be as simple as giving employees easy ways to remember the values they should promote. This can be achieved using abbreviations or acronyms that help employees remember concepts, specific goals that they are expected to reach, or anything that brings together people’s aspirations and the various aspects of their work.
 
With all this in mind, human resources professionals should seek to foster a balance between the ethos, or ethical climate of an organization, and the ethics that the company wishes to promote. These two things should, ideally, always go hand-in-hand, and, consequently, they should also have a reciprocal relationship. The ethos of a company results from the ethical behaviors of its people. Ethos and ethical behavior should reinforce one another within a workplace culture.
 
Human resources professionals, therefore, should strive to help ensure that everyone in a company feels valued, as well as mediate disputes in a way that is consistent with the company’s positive values. These professionals should guard and champion the company’s ethics. They must protect people from inappropriate conduct in order to help their workplace flourish. They should make sure that people’s rights are respected, as well as that they are treated with dignity and fairness, in addition to ensuring that all employees have ample opportunities to contribute to the accomplishments of the organization.
 
Over time, the standard for company ethics is shifting from a mostly compliance-based approach to one that includes the enhancement of a company’s culture. Human resources professionals realize that a company’s most significant resource is its people and holding a high ethical standard for the sake of those people is key to effective leadership, both inside and outside the company.
 
At a time when many people don’t consistently trust companies to do the right thing, showcasing positive ethics is the best way for a company to enrich itself and provide security to its customers. It all starts with human resources, but it doesn’t end there, and sustaining an ethical culture within an organization is an ongoing process.
 
Lauber Business Partners can assist you in defining your code of ethics, designing policies and programs to help employees live the ethical values of the organization, and measuring adoption of these values. We can also help select the right tools to ensure candidates are evaluated against the organization’s ethical values.
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4 Methods for Creating an Effective HR Plan

10/30/2019

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While having a business plan is vital to starting a new venture and creating a strategic vision is necessary for success, few business owners think about creating a talent plan for their human resources department. An HR talent plan, however, is just as vital as a business plan. This plan allows you to prepare your team to fulfill your vision and execute your business plan. It helps you with employee onboarding process development, prepares you for turnover, and outlines a process for hiring.
 
Without an HR talent plan, your managers may not hire the best employees or be ready when employees leave. This can lead to disruptions, especially if a high-level executive decides to leave the company unexpectedly. With an HR plan in place, you’ll be ready for this situation and others. Since most businesses don’t have an HR talent plan, many don’t know how to go about creating one.
 
Here are four steps that will assist you in preparing your plan:

Step 1: Assess Your Team

If you already have a business but do not have an HR talent plan, the first step is to do an HR assessment. Look at the team you have and identify each employee’s skills, abilities, and knowledge. What do they bring to their position? Which of those skills and talents are necessary to the job? Which talents do they bring that allow them to work beyond their regular duties? Some employers take these extra talents for granted until that employee leaves. Understanding an employee’s potential, beyond his or her current role, is key to the talent plan. This assessment should be performed at all levels of the business from the newest hire to the CEO.

Step 2: Look at Succession

If a critical manager, supervisor, or executive leaves, it can be very disruptive to the company. Entire departments may suddenly be leaderless, which can lead to a drop in profits and productivity. A succession plan will reduce these disruptions by creating a clear path forward. When a vital employee leaves, you will know which of your employees have the knowledge and skills needed to immediately step up into the vacant position. This will ensure that there’s a seamless transition should the need arise.
 
Having a succession plan doesn’t mean a business never looks outside the company for new talent. The company should always be evaluating its internal talent against the outside market. There will be instances where there may be no likely internal successor. This is one of the key reasons to conduct succession planning. By understanding these gaps early on, one has the chance to develop an internal successor or, when hiring for other positions, look for someone that could be a successor for a gap in the organization.

Step 3. Have an Employee Development Plan

Employees turn to HR for some different services. HR support in the employee development process is vital for those employees who want to grow and move beyond their current position. By putting together a development plan, you can offer employees a clear path to learning new skills and moving forward in their careers.
 
Employees need to play a key role in developing this plan. While supervisors and HR personnel may have their own goals and ideas about how employees can move forward, it’s the employees themselves who will implement this plan. They should have a seat at the table during its development.

Step 4: Have a Plan for the Future

While a succession plan will ensure that your business doesn’t see a disruption when a critical employee leaves, it doesn’t necessarily touch on how you can increase your human resources when your company needs to grow—including your HR department.
 
Eventually, you will need to bring in more professionals to continue growing as a business.
 
Your hiring plan should look at what positions you need to create, which ones need to be filled first, and which potential employees will fit those positions the best. Once you’ve done this, you’ll be able to see if any of your current employees should be promoted or if it’s time to bring in outside talent.
 
This is also an area where you can look at bringing in contractors or outsourcing some of your functions. Fractional HR teams, for example, may offer you the skills you need during the awkward period where you’ve grown beyond what your current team can do but aren’t yet ready to create a new position.

Regularly Review Your Plan

HR planning isn’t something you do once—like all of your strategies—it needs to be regularly reviewed and updated as necessary. If you’re not sure how to get started with your HR talent plan, you can get assistance from Lauber Business Partners.
 
We’re experts in the area of HR strategy and planning. If you’re ready to develop an HR talent plan, contact us today. You can reach us by phone at 414-273-8060 or by email at [email protected].
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Effective Labor Rate Calculation

8/6/2019

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Maintaining an up-to-date analysis of effective labor rates for different categories of employees in your business is an important tool. It can be used to monitor the labor cost used for:
  • Quoting
  • Job Cost
  • Benefit Administration
  • Compensation Plans
  • Benchmarking

While this tool has always been important, we believe having this information will become more critical because of the unknown impact on employee costs of health care reform..

The Concept:
To calculate your Effective Labor Rate, you accumulate for a year all of the costs that go along with the pay rate including benefits, taxes and insurances and divide by the actual hours worked. This can be done by individual employees or on an average basis for a group or class of employees.

The Components of the Effective Labor Rate:
  • Hourly Base Pay Rate –  from the payroll system. The actual straight time rate paid to the employee.
  • Paid Time Off  – often referred to as PTO. This would include vacation, holiday, sick, funeral or bereavement, jury duty, personal time, etc. In some businesses, mandated training or recertification time would be included as it is not time directly related to the production of revenue.
  • Health Insurance – from your monthly invoice. If you are averaging a group of employees, pay attention to the mix between levels of coverage like single vs. family. If you are self insured, your COBRA rate is an approximation of your cost per employee.
  • Other Insurances – similar to health insurance, the actual rates for dental, disability and any other insurance coverage will need to be determined.
  • Workers Compensation – from the policy, you can determine the rate for each class of employee. You may want to increase or decrease the base rate to take into consideration your unique experience modification, discounts and refunds.
  • Employer Retirement Plan Contribution – depending on the type of plan, this might take the form of a percentage match or an annual fixed dollar contribution.
  • Payroll Taxes – determine the employer’s share of FICA (6.2%), Medicare (1.45%), Federal Unemployment  (0.8 ) and State Unemployment (varies based on experience). Your rate is shown on your quarterly U/C Return.
  • Other Costs – uniforms, employer sponsored lunch, education reimbursement, etc.

How overtime is incorporated in an Effective Labor Rate Calculation will vary from company to company. When calculating overtime costs,  only the hourly rate paid an employee  ( typically time and a half )  plus payroll taxes,  workers compensation and retirement plan match are considered.  All other benefits are already absorbed in the straight time rate.   Often the overtime cost approximates the fully loaded straight time cost, but, depending upon your individual circumstances it may be more cost effective to work OT than hire new employees, or vice versa.
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Click here for a calculation for an employee making $18.00 per hour.
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Removing the Mystery from the Employer’s Unemployment Contribution

8/6/2019

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Wisconsin’s Unemployment Insurance (Tax) is a complicated and often confusing system. In this Tip we will address the funding side of the program, how the amount an employer pays is calculated. We will leave the benefit eligibility side for another issue.

What is the unemployment insurance program?
  • The unemployment insurance program provides weekly benefits to eligible unemployed workers. These benefits provide economic stability to the workers and their families during temporary periods of unemployment and help lessen the effect of unemployment on the local economy. The program is financed solely through employer contributions (taxes).

What is the relationship between Wisconsin’s Unemployment Insurance Law and the Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA)?
  • Unemployment insurance is a federal-state program jointly financed through federal and state employer payroll taxes. The federal unemployment tax is used, in part, to finance the administrative expenses of each state’s unemployment insurance program and certain federal costs related to extended benefits. Employer payroll taxes collected under the Wisconsin Unemployment Insurance Law and all other state unemployment insurance laws are used only to pay benefits to unemployed workers.

When is the tax paid?
  • Quarterly an employer is required to file form UCT – 101 which includes the calculation of  the amount of unemployment tax due. The form and payment is due by the end of the month following the end of a calendar quarter. The State encourages filing on line and fill in the blank forms are available.

How is the Quarterly Tax (contribution) Calculated?
  • A state statutory combined rate (adjusted for an individual company’s experience in drawing on their fund balance) is multiplied times a company’s eligible payroll. Each of these factors will be discussed below.

What are the State Statutory Rates?
  • The Wisconsin Unemployment Statute contains 4 different rate tables labeled A – D. Each year, depending on the dollar amount in Wisconsin’s Unemployment Fund balance, a determination is made as to which table will be used for the following year. If the balance is low, as happens in an economic downturn, when benefit payments increase, the table with higher percentages is used. Conversely, as the fund balance grows, a table with lower rates is used.
  • The rate table identifies a Basic Rate and a Solvency Rate. Together these make up the combined rate. A separate schedule exists in the table for small firms and large firms. Small firms are identified as having annual eligible payrolls of under $500,000.
  • The Basic Rate – this portion of each tax payment is credited to an individual company’s account balance. The account balance is discussed in more detail below in the section on Adjusting for Experience.
  • The Solvency Rate – this portion of each tax payment is credited to a shared risk account called the balancing account. It is the condition of this account that determines which rate schedule, A – D, will be used in the next year.

What is Eligible Payroll?
  • Historically eligible payrolls were the first $10,500 of wages paid to an employee in a calendar year. In 2008, the Wisconsin Senate passed a bill that increased the payroll limits to $12,000 for 2009 – 2010, $13,000 for 2011 – 2012 and $14,000 for 2013 and thereafter.

How is the Statutory Rate Adjusted for Experience?
  • The State maintains an account balance (contributions minus benefits paid) for each individual company. An annual calculation is made by the state of the ratio of a company’s fund balance compared to their prior eligible payrolls. The resulting percentage determines where a company falls in the rate table. If a small business’s fund balance is 15% or more of eligible payroll, they pay the lowest rate (currently 0.27%). A small business with a ratio of negative 6% or less pays the highest rate (currently 9.8%).
  • As a result of the experience adjustment, a significant difference in Unemployment Taxes can exist between a company with good experience (limited benefits paid) and bad. For example two companies, each with 15 employees making over the limit of $12,000 per year. One with the best rate and the other at the bottom.
    $12,000  X 15ee  X  0.27% = $648 annual tax
    $12,000  X 15ee X 9.8% = $23,520 annual tax
  • The State has established two rates for new employers. One for construction businesses and one for all other. These rates stay in effect for 3 years, allowing time for the company to establish their own experience.

Some business owners question whether it is better to lay off employees and pay the higher tax in the future needed to replenish their reserve account or keep the employees on the payroll. The straight financial answer appears to favor lay-offs especially for higher paid employees.
  • With some exceptions, the weekly Unemployment Benefit an employee receives is roughly 50% of what their pay averaged over the prior year up to the current maximum of $363 per week.
  • Employees with annual pay in excess of approximately $36,000 would therefore receive less than the 50% because they would hit the ceiling.
  • Normally benefits and payroll tax cost also stop with a lay-off.
  • Historically the benefit period is 26 weeks although Congress has extended this period in times of broad spread economic distress.
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Right-size with a Department Staffing Analysis

8/6/2019

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A question we often hear is: “How do we determine the appropriate staffing level in our Accounting Department”?  A helpful tool to facilitate this evaluation is a Department Staffing Analysis.

In the example below we take a look at an accounting department that needs to add staff, but this tool can also be used throughout the company and can be very helpful in situations where the goal is to reduce hours due to downsizing or a lean initiative.

To create a Department Staffing Analysis, list all the tasks done in the department and estimate the time required for each task, by person.

Getting credible information is the difficult part. It is helpful for people to maintain a daily diary or time sheet to help determine where they are spending their time. It also requires a healthy dose of discussion and input from the supervisor.

Employees often fudge on the time because they anticipate what the manager wants to see. You need to reassure them what the goal is. Emphasize that accurate information is important and that their job is not in jeopardy.

To get started:
  • Set up an electronic (Excel) spreadsheet.
  • List the tasks in the first column.
  • Have a separate column for each employee.
  • Have 3 sections of columns, one for current, one for changes and one for the resulting staffing level.

This would be a good time to retrieve the sample. Click here for a sample Department Staffing Analysis and follow along.

We have found it is easier if you break down the tasks into broad categories. This may vary depending on your unique circumstances but a simple scenario would be:
  • Daily
  • Weekly
  • By-weekly
  • Monthly

The Situation at Sample Company:
  •  CFO already has too much on her plate and does not have the time for key strategic initiatives.
  • Accounting Manager is capable and would be able to take on additional responsibilities but is already working considerable overtime.
  • Clerk 1 is currently working about 1.5 hours of overtime per day.
  • Clerk 2 is borrowed from another department approximately 16 hours per week and they need him back.

Goal:
  • Redistribute the work load.
  • Reduce Overtime.
  • Free up the CFO and Accounting Manager for more value-adding tasks.
  • New hires should be part-time to avoid the additional benefit costs.
  • Provide flexibility to deal with vacations, peak demands, etc.

Result:
  • Using the Department Staffing Analysis, work was redistributed creating 2 new positions of 24 hours per week.
  • These positions picked up work from the Accounting Manager freeing her up to take on work previously done by the CFO.
  • The 2 new staff also picked up work from Clerk 1 reducing his overtime.
  • This redistribution freed up Clerk 2 allowing him to return to his home department.
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A word of caution, as mentioned earlier, the hardest part of this analysis is getting credible time estimates of what is currently happening. This will need to be reviewed and edited. Seldom is the first pass anywhere close to reality.
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8 HR TIPS FOR MANAGERS

7/18/2019

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Being a good human resources employee, executive, or consultant requires a particular set of skills. Lauber Business Partners often helps businesses with fractional HR and part-time human resources. Through countless HR assessments, we’ve learned that a lot of companies want to have an effective and strong human resources function. However, many companies lack the experience and expertise actually needed to do so.

Bringing the right HR competencies into an organization is a key step to driving the company along the path to growth and prosperity. The right HR competencies helps drive the right culture and help provide the key resource and talent to accomplish the objectives of the business. You have to find the right employees with the exact skills you need. The same is true if you’re looking to hire fractional HR or part-time HR assistance. You have to find the right skills. Wondering if you or a prospective employee has what it takes to be an effective HR manager?

Let’s dig in.

8 HR Tips for Managers that Will Improve Department Efficiency 

1. Be able to Compartmentalize

A good HR manager must be able to compartmentalize. Human resource challenges never end. The HR manager is often dealing with difficult employee issues, managing talent, and planning how to boost company morale. These challenges often involve friction and emotion and require objectivity and the ability to compartmentalize things. Keeping the big picture in mind, even while mired in problems, is crucial.

Often, it helps to bring in outside parties through fractional or part-time HR. This way, they can provide an outside perspective and offload some of the burdens that your company faces. Further, outside HR specialists will have an easier time staying objective and neutral.

2. Possess the Needed Legal Knowledge

Employment and workplace laws are complex legal fields. An HR professional likely won’t be able to develop as intricate of an understanding of HR law as a career lawyer. However, it is important that your HR professional understand key employment laws and regulations in order to ensure legal compliance.

This is an area where hiring an outside HR consultant can often be vital. Consider working with an HR consultant to catch yourself up on the relevant HR laws, regulations, and requirements. Doing so will help you mitigate risks.

3. Understand Benefits and the Evolving HR Industry

While the main goal of every business is to turn a profit, the benefits package can be a fundamental element in attracting and retaining talent. Each industry has different market conditions and has alternative ways to stimulate their employees. It is important to understand what in your industry sparks engagement among your staff, and provide that accordingly.

The benefits arena is rapidly changing and has many new innovative offerings. Being aware of these new offerings and the prevailing practice in your industry is important to crafting the most attractive offering to attract talent. The war for talent is real and your performance in this war may determine the level of success your company achieves in the future.

4. Exhibit Strong Management Skills 

Due to the tightening labor market and skills gap, HR is playing an increasingly important role in helping companies achieve success. This is moving HR to a more central role in companies. As HR’s profile rises, they need to be adept managers, able to facilitate change and deliver and develop the resource and talent, that truly drive a company’s performance. This requires working with all areas in the business to truly understand their needs and be a partner helping them succeed. Being the person that has to work cross functionally in a business where he or she does not have line control is a challenging task and requires a person with advanced managerial skills.

5. Recruit and Retain the Right Talent

The human resources department is vital to attracting talent. Often, it’s the HR department that leads the recruiting efforts for new employees. The HR resource needs to deeply understand the needs of the company and the market in which it operates. This person also need to be able to clearly illustrate to candidates why the company is an attractive place to work and be able to articulate the business vision. Additionally, the HR resource needs to be able to help the company use interview techniques that truly get at the skills and behaviors of the candidate.

6. Be a Multitasking Guru

HR managers need to know how to juggle a dozen things with their hands tied behind their back. Often, HR managers in smaller companies have a lot on their plate and resources are stretched thin. For this reason, HR managers need to be multitasking gurus—capable of tracking numerous issues, providing support when needed, and helping to guide fellow company employees.

7. Remain  Discrete

An HR manager isn’t a lawyer by practice, but in practice, they are constantly dealing with confidential matters and potential legal liabilities. Knowing what to say and when—and when to share what—is essential for any HR manager. HR managers must also be confidants that employees can trust and on whom they can rely.

8. Employ  Compassion

HR managers represent the company, its policies, and its issues. However, HR managers must also be advocates for employees. When an employee comes forward with a complaint, suggestion, or issue, the HR manager must listen, investigate and resolve issues. Further, HR managers have certain legal obligations when it comes to advocating for employees and their best interest.

A Jack of All Trades, and a Master Too

Human resources are one of the most sensitive aspects of running a business. HR managers have a lot of high-profile tasks to perform, and they have to execute them very confidently.

The immense pressure placed on HR departments often makes it necessary to hire outside HR consultants or to put fractional HR resources into play. By doing so, you can relieve burdens and contribute your distinct efforts to another area in the company. 

Lauber Business Partners can leverage our years of experience and advanced knowledge of HR requirements, laws, practices and policies to help businesses unleash their full potential. Learn how your business could benefit from a Lauber Business Partner by contacting us today. 

For additional HR tips for managers read our HR Blog Series.
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Tips for a Smooth Transition After Employee Resignation

3/7/2018

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An employee resignation is rarely a “fun” experience. For businesses, such resignations are almost always disruptive. Yet, there are steps you can take to smooth that transition. Just as importantly, there are proactive measures you can take to ensure that the now unfilled position is filled quickly and with the best possible talent.

Why do employees leave?
There are so many reasons that we could never possibly list them all. Maybe they weren’t performing their duties or they got a better opportunity elsewhere. Maybe their spouse landed a big promotion in another city, and the whole family is relocating. Perhaps the employee just needs a change of scenery or wants to change careers.

HR departments and business managers need to consider how they can reduce unwanted staff turnover. However, staff turnover is inevitable. It is always useful to try to truly understand why employees leave. This information can be very instructive in improving the company.

So how can you handle staff turnover? This includes:
  •  How do you announce departures and handle the farewell itself?
  •  Should you let the employee send out a farewell email or even hold a break room goodbye party?
  •  How do you handle generic reference letter requests?

Let’s review some of the important considerations to simplify the transition process.

Start the Process Right With a Dated Resignation Letter
  •  Among the first things to do it to make the resignation official.
  •  This means having the employee write and sign a letter. A verbal announcement is generally not enough. You want an official, signed letter that specifically states the final date for the employee. Often, this will involve some sort of notice, commonly a couple of weeks.
  •  What to do when the resignation letter is “welcomed”?
  •  Sometimes, the employee leaving is a good thing. This can be for one or both parties. Often, you will pay the employee for their time, say two weeks, but you won’t require their services. If so, spell this out clearly.

Figure Out the “Why” If An Employee Leaves On Bad Terms
As soon as the employee leaves, you need to send out a letter informing the team. There’s no need to get negative or to share unnecessary information, just say something like “the former employee is searching out different opportunities effective immediately.”

You also need to reassign responsibility and to reassure the team that you are working to find a new team member.

Next, you will need to determine why the employee is leaving on bad terms. Assuming your investigation reveals legitimate concerns, the goal is to eliminate or reduce such problems in the future. It is important to consider the following questions:
  •  Was there a problem with a co-worker?
  •  Toxic office politics?
  •  A bad cultural fit?
Learn from each situation and document what you can do differently the next time. Ask yourself:
  •  What can you do to relieve those issues going forward?
  •  Are there employee interpersonal skills issues?
  •  Is it a result of faulty talent management?

What To Do When a Good Team Member Leaves
Sometimes, you will not want to see the employee leave and he or she will fulfill their duties until the end of their notice. In some cases, there are conditions you can “mitigate” to keep the employee on staff. For example, you might offer them a pay raise or a change in their current status. When good employees leave it is, again, necessary to find our their reason(s) for leaving. If you are able to keep a desired employee by some action, what do you need to do to ensure other desired employee don’t get to the point of quitting. This is valuable learning for the the company.

However, the employee may have made a firm decision to leave. In this case, let them know how much you appreciate their contributions and that they were a valuable part of the team. A good employees is normally very respected by his or her peers. While you may be frustrated that he or she is leaving, remember that how you treat this employee on their way out will be seen and internalized by many others in the organization. Being respectful and appreciative to this valued employee upon exit will enhance your and the company’s standing in the eyes of the other employees.

The soon-to-be ex-employee can use that two weeks to train team members to take over their responsibilities. Of course, even a valuable employee won’t necessarily be valuable during their final two weeks. If they are going to be a distraction, it might be better to let them resign immediately.

If you do require their expertise for training purposes, make their exit as easy as possible. They will not respond in a positive manner if you slap an enormous workload on their desk on top of asking them to show someone how to do it. Leverage their notice to tap into their skill sets they have developed over their career with your company.

Handling the Notification Process/ Exit Interview
Often, HR departments are the first to learn of an employee’s resignation. This means you may have informed his or her department. At this stage, you need to provide a timeline both for the employee’s departure and also a tentative timeline to replace him or her. Always be gracious as it sends a powerful message to other employees.

Next, conduct an exit interview. The goal is to find out why the employee is leaving and if you can avoid similar situations in the future. Exit interviews can be immensely helpful for self-improvement.

Finally, if the employee is a respected member of the team, you can let them send out a farewell email approved by management. It may also be appropriate to allow them to hold (or even have the company host) a farewell lunch or to invite team members out after work.

Have a Referral Letter Ready
Never overlook a valuable employee’s considerable contributions. If the employee is leaving without a next job, send him or her off not just with a farewell letter but a recommendation letter as well. This will help him or her further their career. Even if you don’t want them to leave, it still makes sense to help them in the future.

It’s quite likely that they’ll recommend your firm to potential clients and future employees. It’s wise to have a basic template and approach for your recommendation letters.

Fill the Position With the “Right” Replacement
It’s smart to ask both the departing employee and their team to list out responsibilities. This will help you when looking for the right future employee. Often, job roles change so the responsibilities may have evolved. By figuring out how the role may have changed, you can better identify your next great employee. This is also a perfect time to reassess departmental structures and look for opportunities to promote from your employee base.

While seeking a replacement it may be smart to use an interim external resource to fill the gap if you do not have the right resource to plug in or if there is just too much work to accomplish with the remaining employees. A bungled transition can weigh down your company, reducing productivity and even hurting your company culture. However, a well-managed transition will ensure that your business continues to hum along. Lauber Business Partners can frequently fill such interim positions with experienced resources that can hit the ground running.

Transitions are a Challenge but also Provide Opportunity
Transitions are rarely a good thing in and of themselves. Even if it’s an undesired employee who’s leaving, you have to ask yourself how you got to that point. Bad hiring practices? Office politics? If it’s a desired employee, you need to figure out what you could have done to retain their talents. Pro-actively managing the transition can help ensure a smooth process while also learning lessons for the future.

When it comes to high-skill positions, such as senior software developers, key executives, or business leaders, the transition will be even more difficult. However, by working with HR consultants and fractional HR companies, you can smooth even these transitions.
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Give us a call at 414-273-8060 or contact us via email at [email protected] to learn more about what will work best for your company.
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