Employment branding is the process of positioning an organization as an employer’s choice in the labor market. Employment branding is essential to analyze because employers can understand what motivates individuals to work for and continue working for particular organizations. Some employers such as Google, Apple, Sony, etc. have created images that are universal icons which remain competitive in the labor market. Employers can analyze their own employment branding simply by seeing into their strategies employed.

Employment strategies cover several components which often influence retention. Some strategies encompass:

• Creating positive, compelling images of the organization that convey social responsibility and industry impacts.
• Providing clear and consistent messages about what it is like to work at the organization through viral phrases such as “commitment to innovation”,” teamwork”, etc.
• Encouraging the best potential candidates to apply for jobs with advertisements using media.
• Decreasing the time-to-fill and cost-per-hire ratios.
• Lowering turnover by offering competitive packages and enjoyable work environment.
• Linking the employment brand with the company’s product brands by reinforcing the public’s image of the organization.
• Giving employees a sense of pride in their company by knowing they are working for an employer that has a competitive edge and/or positive contribution to society.

To help build and/or improve on a brand, it is vital to consider the channel of how employment branding is marketed upon others. Some popular channels are the company’s website, media ads (on television, radio, print), collateral materials such as brochures, having appearances at job fairs, campuses, or at other types of sponsored or non-sponsored events.

In today’s job market, employment branding is becoming important as the demand for skilled and talented workers increases. With the latest reliance on technology, the job searching and recruiting process has also impacted who is and who is not applying with particular organizations. The need for employment branding cannot be overlooked since it implies that hiring and retention rates may be stabilized. The goal is to make sure employees are satisfied, ensuring business goals are met, while being competitive and unique to one’s own core values.

Large corporations have long utilized e-recruiting strategies and tools to seek and secure top talent. As technology has evolved towards more cost-effective rates, more and more small to mid-sized employers have turned to e-recruiting as an affordable strategy to find, attract, and select job applicants for their companies’ hiring needs. Nowadays, one of the more popular e-recruiting tools is social media.

Social media is an online version of media that enables real-time, dynamic dialogue among readers and viewers to participate in content development, as opposed to traditional media which delivers static content. Social media networks have started out popularly for personal interests. In recent years, numerous business applications and approaches have emerged to market and promote products and services, as well as companies themselves for employer branding and recruitment purposes. Through social media, employers can gain a wealth of information about specific job candidates.

However, before fully engaging in “social recruiting,” be clear about your company’s strategy. If the strategy is non-existent or weak, little accountability for results exists. Best strategic practices include:

• Finding passive candidates. Social media can help you identify and develop relationships with top performers who are not active job-seekers yet.
• Focusing on talent groups. Participate in groups which share information and engage in dialogue based on common industry interests and certain skilled professions or talents.
• Facilitating education connections. Students – whether in a college or a vocational program – are highly tied to and accessible through technology such as social media.

Fully familiarize yourself with social media to help keep prospective candidates engaged throughout the recruiting process. When you finally have the real need to hire, you will already have your top candidates right at hand.

Published last October in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, a Duke University study estimated the cost of obesity among U.S. full-time employees to be $73.1 billion. According to the study, the cost of obesity accounted for (1) employee medical expenses, (2) job productivity loss (due to health problems), and (3) work absenteeism. Facing such mounting and costly challenges, an employer can hastily make adverse employment decisions against overweight or obese employees and thus jeopardize the business with risks of unfair discrimination claims. So, what responsibility must you as the employer exercise in order to provide a workplace free of weight-based discrimination and harassment?

Covering employers with 15 or more employees, the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prevents discrimination based on a disability and requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to a qualified employee with a disability. In general, obesity is not covered under the ADA, but morbid obesity is. Although no clear rule exists on whether obesity is a disability even under the recently amended (and more employee-friendly) ADA, employees have successfully made “regarded as” ADA claims. For example, if an employer refuses to consider a job applicant due to a perceived obesity of the individual, then the failure to hire may be deemed as an act of unlawful discrimination. Obesity-related conditions (i.e. diabetes and heart disease) may also be protected by the ADA. Moreover, be aware of state-specific laws which may provide additional or more stringent.

Whenever faced with hiring or managing overweight employees, some employer guidelines include:

• Establishing employee handbook policies emphasizing equal employment opportunities regardless of personal appearances.
• Reviewing job descriptions for any questionable weight requirements not related to the essential job functions.
• Avoiding assumptions about which job tasks an overweight employee cannot perform.
• Working with employees on mutually agreed-upon reasonable accommodations in order for the individual to perform the essential functions of the job.
• Educating managers on, at minimum, the basics of the ADA and related federal and state discrimination laws.
• Training periodically all employees and managers on how to address inappropriate or unprofessional behavior which may lead to weight -based discrimination.

In addition, to help counter the rising costs associated with obesity in the workplace, take a closer look at how you promote a healthy work environment. Your company could stock vending machines with healthy snacks instead of soda and candies, implement a voluntary weight reduction program, or partner with a local fitness center to offer special employee discounts. Maintain a healthier workplace culture over time, and your company could find the costs of employee obesity a diminishing issue that positively affects the bottom line.

Effective for all payroll dollars paid after June 30, 2011, the federal unemployment tax (FUTA) rate that employers pay on the first $7,000 of employee wages has been reduced by 0.20%.  This will reduce the effective rate paid by most employers from 0.80% to 0.60%, after a credit for paying their state taxes on time.  This will result in a reduction of the FUTA taxes due of $14.00 per employee per year, if the entire $7,000 limit of wages paid are paid after June, 30.

Many of our new customers these days are escapees from (ahem) another network ...er, payroll service.  Of course, we always ask them to tell us about the issues that are motivating them to change up ...and these are the Top Four answers we get:

4.  They keep messing up our payroll, and my employees don’t appreciate it.  Oh, and since I’m the one spending my time on fixes and re-runs... neither do I.
3.  The system they make me use is just plain clunky.  It’s not truly Web-based, not real-time at all ...and just fuggedabout being user-friendly.
2.  I can’t predict what I’ll be charged from run to run.  $25.00 for this, $1.25 for that;  it’s worse than our phone bill.  Every time I turn around, I discover the meter’s been running and there’s yet another fee category.  I’m sure you can imagine how much our CFO enjoys that.

(insert tympani roll here...)  And the Number One reason to hate your payroll service...

1.  I can never get the right person on the phone to get my issue resolved.  I get passed around from department to department.  No one ever gets assigned to our account ...so even after 5 years, they still don’t understand the quirks of our business.

But once those mistreated customers make the switch to MyPayrollHR’s online payroll service, all of those problems simply melt away... 

• Since they get to preview payroll runs online beforehand, there are virtually no reasons for messing up a run. 
• Our system gives you a foolproof, very user-friendly dashboard interface;  and it’s Web-based – and real-time – by design, from the ground up. 
• MyPayrollHR charges an all-inclusive flat rate ...no nickel-&-diming.  And we even throw in value-added services, like a resource center and HR consulting ...which those escapee customers could only dream about before. 
• You get a choice of support modes with MyPayrollHR:  Web, email, phone.  And we’ll assign you a permanent single point of contact, who will come to know your business.

If you’re one of those mistreated, unhappy clients of a sub-par service, don’t put up with those “Top 4 reasons” another day!

OK, so you did your homework and chose not to go with a traditional, batch-oriented payroll service.  And you resisted the siren song of your IT group, realizing that it’s just not likely that they could build a competitively-featured application in any reasonable sort of timeframe.

So instead, you went with an online payroll service.  But soon after signing on, you began having a severe case of buyer’s remorse:  not the generic, nameless sort of dread that attacks home buyers, but the very specific sort that arises from experiencing a number of very real problems.  For instance... 

• Just the other day, yet another employee just found a mistake with their W-2;  that makes 23 in just the first month that you used the system.
• You find several bugs in the system;  the vendor admits them, but it’s clear they have no intention of getting them fixed. 
• You’ve received your third tax notice concerning the very same issue.  Now, on your list of folks you really don’t want to have trouble with, the IRS ranks pretty close to the top. 
• When you call your vendor’s customer support line, you get an automated attendant ...and then (after holding for what seems like eternity) voicemail.
• You just got an invoice for making too many calls to their support line.  “Excuse me?! ...these are your service’s problems that I’m having to call about;  I don’t do this for the pure enjoyment of it.  And now you want to charge me?!  Sorry... not happening in this lifetime.”

It may seem like a made-up list, but these are actually real experiences we’ve heard about from real customers who finally called us to escape from their initial online payroll service.  Somewhere in a parallel universe, we’re so hoping that everyone simply calls MyPayrollHR to begin with;  everyone would be so much better off, all the way around!  Don’t make the same mistake these clients did;  call the pros at MyPayrollHR first:  (866) 697-2947.

So you’ve been comparing internet payroll solutions lately, and are leaning toward an online payroll service provider.  That’s good;  because (as we blogged about just recently) there’s virtually nothing to recommend the traditional payroll processing services, whose business model and technological foundation is largely unchanged since the 1960s.

But now the challenge becomes choosing the right internet payroll solution for your business ...and that won’t be easy.  Simplistic, one-size-fits-all answers won’t help, because there’s just too much variability from business to business.  Perhaps the best thing we can do here is to sketch out a set of factors that tend to discriminate among the various offerings;  then you can decide what’s best for you, based on the relative importance of the various factors to your business...

• Was the vendor’s system designed for a company of your size?  Some systems were designed for paying fewer than 5 employees ...which is fine, if your company is in that size range and planning to stay there.  Such systems tend to fall short on providing meaningful cost allocation information (among other things), which will become increasingly important as your firm grows. 
• Do you have full, real-time control over the system? ...or – harking back to the bad old days of traditional batch-oriented systems – can you only perform certain operations on some sort of vendor-defined schedule?  Are you beholden to someone in the “back room” to initiate certain common operations?
• Is the system intuitive?  Can you add deductions, departments, pay categories, etc., on your own, or do these need vendor intervention? ...and require how much lead time?  Does it provide a simple payroll “dashboard”?
• Does it enable online access, so that employees can easily view paycheck and paid time off information?
• Does it do more than process checks?  In particular, does it support tax filing/reporting and W-2 filing/printing?  And how about...

 task reminders
 HR performance statistics
 a custom report writer
 ability to post documents
 tracking employee paid time off, training, company assets

• Does the service charge only a single flat fee? ...or does it nickel-and-dime you with many miscellaneous charges?  Such charges – for things like delivery, direct deposit, reports, W-2s, etc. – can add up in a hurry.  Also, is the payroll service priced by the transaction ...even if you’re the one making the tax deposits and printing checks? 
• Does the vendor provide added-value services at no extra charge? ...for example, general HR consulting.
• Does the service provide multiple support options? ...most especially telephone, vs. Web/email only.  If so, will you be assigned to a specific person who will come to understand your business? ...or simply handed off to the “next available” agent in the phone bank?

You’ll find more in-depth information to facilitate your comparison on the MyPayrollHR website;  you’ll even be able to take a virtual tour.

If you’re a business owner, CEO or CFO, you probably think that you have the right to deduct from any employee’s paycheck who happens to owe the company money, for whatever reason.  But in light of recent events, you may need to inject some caution into such a decision ...because that God-given “right” (as they view it) may be far more constrained than you think.

Let’s take a specific case.  Say your business uses company-owned trucks for product and service delivery.  John Jones, one of your best employees, smacks up one of those trucks one day, and your investigation reveals that he was primarily at fault.  Now, because he has been on balance a good worker, you don’t want to let him go;  and you know it would be futile to demand restitution of the damage amount in a lump sum.  So in a mutual review of the situation, you steer John to agreeing to a small voluntary payroll deduction until the damage amount is repaid.

A win-win, right?  John stays employed and the company gets its money back.  You’re so pleased with the outcome that you send John off for a 3-day driver safety course, on the company nickel.  A textbook example of enlightened management, you think... should be written up as a Harvard B-School case.  It doesn’t cross your mind that there could be any sort of legal issue with such a terrific, mutually-satisfying outcome.  Except for one little detail...

It all depends where your business is.
If your business is in a state with workplace laws no more restrictive than the Federal code, you’d be in the clear.  The US Fair Labor Standards Act allows employers to make deductions for damages to employer property if such deductions do not bring the employee’s pay for time worked below the minimum wage in any given workweek.

But if you are a Massachusetts business, your nifty little arrangement just broke the law! ...in this case, Section 148 of the Massachusetts Wage Act.  A recent case before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court virtually mirrored our example ...except, that company had worked similar arrangements with 27 John Joneses, and had deducted $21,487.96 from their wages over a 2-year period.  The Court required the company to make full restitution to those employees, and in addition assessed a civil penalty of $9,140.  And then they took the opportunity to clarify the law, as follows:

“An arrangement where (the company) serves as the sole arbiter, making unilateral assessment of liability as well as amount of damages with no role for an independent decision maker, much less a court, and apparently, not even an opportunity for an employee to challenge the result within the company, does not amount to ‘a clear and established debt owed to the employer by the employee.’”

And of course, the fact that the employee agreed to the deduction has no weight, since the validity and amount of the supposed debt was never properly established. 

A couple of morals here... 

• You need to be up on all the laws (national and state) affecting treatment of employees, know where to find these laws, have a payroll service to help you with these matters ...and/or you need backup from a good workplace attorney. 
• Do not assume that because a planned action would fly with common reason or even Federal laws, it will be equally acceptable under your state’s code. 

For more on the Mass case referenced above, you might look at Constangy’s Client Bulletin #434.  For more on what companies should do to stay clean on this issue, see the post by David Casey and Vanessa Hackett in The Littler blog. 

According to 33% of respondents on a recent HR Support Center poll, the number one employer nightmare issue is “poor performers.” The concept of performance management is simply a method to enhance business success.

One key component of performance management is to bridge the company’s goals with the employee’s goals by creating development plans. For example, an employee may seek to obtain additional computer software training and/or certification to gain specialized skills to become more competent in the current job position or better qualified for a potential promotion. In terms of a company’s business plans and goals, the employer can provide employees with a great opportunity to understand where a business is, where it wants to be, and how they fit. For example, a business goal may be to increase sales by 15% using XYZ tactics.

When reviewing employee goals and business goals, sometimes, there is a disconnect. Managers may have long assumed that employees were working toward certain business goals when they were not. Employees may have built interests moving completely in different directions – a very frustrating but avoidable situation.

Five Tips for Employers:

1. Constantly question, understand, and communicate how to align the company’s business goals while assisting employees to achieve their individual goals. 
2. During the interview process, learn about each candidate’s goals early on. 
3. During employee performance evaluations, determine how well goals have been reached. 
4. In the course of planning and implementing new ideas or initiatives, take into account how the attitudes and motivation levels among your employees have changed, if at all. 
5. Establish realistic goals that are time sensitive, measurable and achievable, and determine what you can do to assist your employees during the process.

While course corrections are expected, performance management is most effectively applied when managers and employees are in constant alignment and mutual agreement with their individual, professional, and business potentials.

If you hold the payroll responsibility in your company, you undoubtedly know the drill. Somehow every other employee of the company has found your phone number, and/or knows the way to your office.

Why? ... because they have questions.  You know they’re perfectly legitimate questions and have got to be answered, but that doesn’t stop you from informally totaling up just how many hours this ad-hoc personal service takes out of your week.

You can probably even recite in your sleep the Top Three questions (although there are certainly a lot more): 

1. I lost my pay stub ... can I get a copy?
2. How much paid time off do I have left?
3. Can I get a copy of my W-2?

Hopefully, your payroll service provider provides you with some sort of instant access to your database, so that you can at least answer those queries on the spot;  otherwise, it’s an “I’ll have to get back to you on this” (meaning two interruptions for the same question).  But in your dreams, you may have fantasized about a system that allows your entire employee population access to their own information ... like maybe over the Internet, from the office or their homes.

That’s no fantasy, of course, with an online payroll service such as MyPayrollHR’s.  Our system provides precisely that type of employee self-service, so they can get answers to all of those questions on their own via the Internet, any time they want.

And what does that mean for you?  No more queue outside your office;  no more 20 or so phone calls a day with fairly straightforward questions.  Which frees you up to focus on clearing up all those other piles on your desk!

Oh... of course, there are always those oddball questions thrown in:

Can you help me get discount lift tickets at Sugarloaf?
   or
What’s the best Caribbean island?

Sorry... but as good as our payroll service is ...it really can’t handle those. I have hear good things about St. Lucia, however.