With business hotels in some cities hitting the $300 dollar plus mark, I believe couch-surfing may be the solution to your business travel costs. Couch surfing involves having travelers stay on the couches, floors, or spare bed of strangers in cities the person is visiting. Think of the money you could save by implementing a couch-surfing policy for business travel; except of course travel by HR staff and their consultants.

As the price of gas rises, and prices rise, many lower paid, i.e., (low grade) employees will have to choose between moving to be closer to work or changing their jobs to be closer to their home. The result will be increased turnover, unless companies take steps to reduce turnover in lower grade jobs.

A general point - even in low grade jobs, where turnover is very high, half of turnover is not voluntary. In many cases, individuals in low grade jobs face seasonal layoffs. In addition, individuals may not make it through the probationary period.

In addition, it is not enough to track turnover statistics. You should be doing exit surveys and stay interviews to find out why people leave and why they stay.

The following is my basic checklist for retention in low grade or low pay jobs.

Look at basic survival needs and soft perks, do you offer

• Transportation assistance?
• Housing assistance?
• Child care help?
• Health care? On site health clinics.
• Are you sensitive to work-family issues?
• Food, a company lunch room?       

A major factor in voluntary turnover is pay

• Make sure income level is adequate - are you paying a living wage?
• Do you do some time of market analysis and justify your position?
• Do you do some type of internal analysis - grading system?
• Do you have a fair system of raises?
• Do you offer competitive benefits?

Many low grade workers must work a second job

• Do you offer flexibility in hours or scheduling so an individual can work a second job?
• In rural areas, individuals may own farms, do you allow time off for farming?

Ask HRLite:  The job I have requires a college degree.  I lied when I applied for the job and said I had a college degree when I did not.  What should I do now?

HR Lite’s Reply:  You have placed yourself in a tough situation.  As is often the case, it would have been better to be honest in the beginning.  There is a risk in this situation that if the information comes out you may be fired.  You lack one of the minimum qualifications for the job you hold.  You might want to talk to a lawyer or in a confidential manner to someone in human resources.

However, our feeling is that if you wrote to us you are honestly bothered by this situation and feeling guilty about it. If you let this go, it will just continue to bother you and will start to affect your work performance.  So, you need to come clean and confess, even if you do risk consequences, including the possible loss of your job.  Before you do though, come up with a plan.  By a plan we mean a way to remediate your current situation.  For example, if you are missing one course, is there a way you could go to a night class and complete your degree?  Can you take distance courses to finish up?  Talk to your boss, or human resources, and see if there is an acceptable compromise or plan by which you can meet the requirements.

Continuing our discussion of issues involved in Googling for information on job applicants, I looked at two legal articles (one really a presentation) suggested by Martin Anderson and Deonda Scott. Some of the more interesting conclusions I reached from the articles (my interpretations not necessarily the author’s, and I am neither a lawyer nor do I give legal advice).

Overall conclusion is similar to that offered before. A lot of organizations and individual recruiters are already using searches of Internet information. There can be legal issues both with using information and with not using information. Overall, the legal risk may be less for publicly available information on the Internet than for other types of information. More specifics: Read the rest of this entry »

I have to admit — I am unprepared for disasters. When our house was hit by flooding several years ago, my home office was in the basement and the flooding caused a great deal of damage. Of course, people who have seen my desk at home or at the University would probably argue that both constitute permanent disaster areas, but that is a whole different issue.

As someone who is unprepared, I appreciated the articles on HR and Disaster Preparedness in the most recent Magazine of the International Public Management Association for Human Resources. I think it is great to be reminded of the necessity to be prepared and the dangers of a lack of planning. My own guess is that this is a much bigger problem for small businesses and employers than large ones. So we all need planning. And it does not have to be a big disaster, anyone who has had a computer problem knows how much havoc even a small disaster can wreck on a small business.

For HR, I believe the most important point is - how will you staff your response to the disaster and has your organization sufficiently trained your employees in the competencies they will need to respond pre and post disaster. It is especially important to update the staffing plan, as personnel may change quickly. The staffing plan should include contingencies for replacements and for communication. HR should also work with the Training Department to ensure that all employees have the knowledge and skill they will need to respond if a crisis arises.

There seemed to be less news coming out of the American Psychological Association (APA) meeting this year. Maybe it was because of the dominance of the debate within the APA over torture and a resolution dealing with locations of employment.

For those unfamiliar with the issue, over the years APA has passed a number of resolutions opposing torture. This year a resolution is up for vote by the membership that could potentially be seen as restricting where psychologists could work.

The resolution includes or ends with the following wording:

Be it resolved that psychologists may not work in settings where persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the US Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights. Read the rest of this entry »

I just got back from Boston where I attended the American Psychological Association Meeting. 15,000 psychologists together in Boston.

I had to attend quite a few administrative meetings, but I also presented a poster. The poster was actually presented along with my coauthors, Kevin Mahoney, Jeffrey Walczyk, and Diana Griffiths-Ross of Louisiana Tech University. It dealt with the topic of detecting dishonesty during the employment interview and with an alternative to the polygraph. Read the rest of this entry »

Ask HRLite:  My new job requires me to interview job applicants.  I was wondering whether I should take notes during the interview or whether it is more important to pay attention to the applicant’s answers?

HRLite’s Reply:  Our memories tend to be limited.  Therefore, it is a good idea to take notes during the interview.  Of course, you will need to balance this with paying attention to what the applicant says and also to nonverbal cues offered by the applicant.  So, take notes as needed but also be an active, involved listener. 

As with many skills, your ability to coordinate asking questions, listening for answers, and taking notes, will improve with time and experience.  Remember also, the person you are interviewing will probably be nervous.   So do not be afraid to be honest with them and tell them you are relatively new at interviewing and may need some extra time to take notes or organize your thoughts.  You may want to say “I want you to know that at times I will be taking notes during this interview.  I need to document what is being said.  This is a natural part of the process and I do it with everyone that I interview.”  This tends to relax the applicant and also helps to build rapport.

Many organizations have now moved to semi-structured or structured interviews. In this type of interview, each candidate is asked the same question. For this type of interview, you may be asked to take more copious and detailed notes.

If you have not had training in interviewing, it may be helpful. Contact your HR department to see if the offer interview training.

It’s back to school time. If you don’t believe me visit your local store, which probably already has the Halloween merchandise out as well.

I hate this time of year. Not only because it means summer is over, but because it reminds me I am growing older (and being a gerontologist I should embrace rather than despair over getting older).

Unfortunately, I have one of those jobs where I keep getting older, but the people I work with stay the same age. Students never age, they are always 18-26.

And if you want a real blow to your ego, wait until a student tells you the age of their parents, and their parents are younger than you. Or worse, they say, my mother had you as a professor.

So, enjoy the last few weeks of summer.

If you are looking for some reading, in searching for information on Googling for applicants, I came across this Workplace Prof Blog.

In January of 2007, a relatively young female teacher here in Northeast Ohio found herself in the middle of a local controversy, but one that has been repeated in similar versions around the country. The teacher ended up resigning her part-time high school teaching position following parental concern over the content of her MySpace page. Although we do not know if anyone has kept official numbers, this young teacher joined a number of others around the country who lost jobs because of controversies over personal materials found on the Internet.

Most of the news reports appear to have focused on individuals who were fired from jobs because of the content of social networking sites. However, it is clear that more interviewers, supervisors, and HR departments are now searching the Internet for information on job applicants, as well as current employees. This goes beyond traditional background searches to include social networking sites.

Scouring the Internet for potentially damaging information on job applicants does raise different legal and ethical questions than the review of data on current employees. For that reason, we raised the following question with a number of different audiences:

1. Would you look for information on a job applicant on MySpace or Facebook?

2. If you found damaging information about a job applicant online - would you use it?

The answers were somewhat surprising and we will summarize the responses here. Read the rest of this entry »