|
Server : Apache/2.4.62 System : FreeBSD fbsdweb2.web.rcn.net 14.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE releng/14.1-n267679-10e31f0946d8 GENERIC amd64 User : www ( 80) PHP Version : 8.3.8 Disable Function : NONE Directory : /domains/highlandlabs/cqi-bin/ALFA_DATA/alfasymlink/root/domains/hrahg/hru/otj/ |
Upload File : |
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HRA - On The Job</title>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="robots" content="noarchive, nofollow" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="hronthejob.css" />
</head>
<body>
<div id="header" align="center">
<img src="../../graphics/logo.jpg" style="height: 100px; margin: auto; display: block; text-align: center" />
<b style="color: blue">Human Resource Associates</b>
</div>
<div id="wrapper">
<div id="content">
<h2>HR - On The Job</h2>
<hgroup>
<h3>Position Descriptions</h3>
<h4>Why You Need Them</h4>
</hgroup>
<p>Position descriptions (PDs) are the foundation for almost all HR issues. So, it’s hard to understand why so many companies fail to create them or do them so shabbily. A well prepared PD affects many things, including:</p>
<ul>
<li>Performance evaluations</li>
<li>Employment regulations</li>
<li>Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO)</li>
<li>Exempt vs. Nonexempt status</li>
<li>Independent contractor or employee decisions</li>
Compensation</li>
<li>Wage ranges</li>
<li>Training needs</li>
<li>Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)</li>
<li>Job duplication</li>
<li>Candidates for promotion</li>
<li>Conflicts of authority decisions</li>
</ul>
<p>Indeed, PDs can help you determine if and why the job should exist at all.</p>
<p>Beyond the list above, properly prepared PDs can collectively identify the purpose, philosophy, and profile of an entire company. A professional job analyst reviewing your PDs can show you things about your company you may not have realized. You might discover that you’re working your resources in a direction that’s opposite where you want to go. The skills your company has may be focused too heavily on the wrong things. You may not even be the kind of business you think you are. PDs are a documented photograph of who and what your company is. It all starts by preparing the first PDs.</p>
<p>Why is it that so many companies don’t have PDs? Most probably feel that it’s just too big a job or that they don’t have the knowledge, skill, or experience to write them properly. Even if you can’t yet professionally craft them, don’t lose out on the value that having basic PDs can bring. Feel free to bring the employee into the process and let’s start now.</p>
<h4>Hourly Paid Employees</h4>
<p>Job descriptions for nonexempt (hourly paid) employees should be focused on the <em>functions or activities</em> you want a job to accomplish. Think about the end result you are trying to achieve. What steps, actions, or functions will it take to get to that end result? Make a bulleted list of those functions, such as:</p>
<ul>
<li>Operates mowers</li>
<li>Sharpens tools</li>
<li>Delivers supplies to customers</li>
<li>Returns all tools to the garage cleaned and sharpened</li>
</ul>
<p>You can add more detail to each function and get more specific about how you want that function to be carried out. If the employee is performing these functions but the products or services aren’t being completed as you wanted, then you have the wrong functions.</p>
<p>You are hiring the nonexempt employee to perform these functions and would evaluate him at performance appraisal time based on how well he performed those functions. You might provide a pay increase to an employee who carried out these functions properly, or you might terminate an employee who fails to do so. It’s about the functions.</p>
<h4>Salaried Employees</h4>
<p>Position descriptions for exempt (salaried) employees are focused on the end results you expect them to produce rather than on the functions to be carried out. Instead of a bulleted list of functions or actions, the list describes the five to 10 end results you require of this position with less focus on how they are accomplished. A bulleted list of these accountabilities might be as follows:</p>
<li>
<li>Assures an adequate, well trained, motivated and productive workforce.</li>
<li>Assures the timely completion of all assigned projects.</li>
<li>Accountable for the profitable results of the Maintenance Department.</li>
<li>Assures the timely, accurate, and auditable completion of all financial reports and records.</li>
</li>
<p>If the employee is producing these end results but your company is not successful and profitable, then you have the wrong accountabilities.</p>
<p>You are hiring the exempt employee to accomplish those end results, even if she has to find different methods to achieve them. As an exempt, she is expected to have a set of skills, knowledge, experience, education, and creativity to identify better ways to get to that targeted end result. You evaluate this employee on whether or not those end results were met. If they were met, even though different methods or new ideas had to be used, then you might provide an increase or even a promotion. If the end results were not accomplished, you might terminate this person, regardless of how hard she worked or which methods she used. It’s not about the process; it’s about the end results.</p>
<p>The Department of Labor (DOL) has a great interest in determining whether a position is truly exempt or actually nonexempt. When it conducts a job classification audit, the DOL always asks to see the job descriptions. One of the guides it uses to determine whether a job is exempt or nonexempt is to see if the PD is full of <em>functions</em> or <em>accountabilities</em>.</p>
<p>There is much more to writing professional job descriptions than this, but you can see the value when both you and the employee fully understand and agree to just what the job is and what is expected from it. So, even if you’re not ready to jump in with both feet, knowing the difference in the content of an exempt versus a nonexempt PD is a good start.</p>
<hr />
<p align="center"><b><i>Have an employment question?</i></b></p>
<p align="center">Send it to <a href="mailto:[email protected]?subject=From HR On The Job">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p align="center">Please include Company Name and Association in your e-mail. Company identification will be kept confidential.</p>
<hr />
<h2>Hitchhiking on the Information Highway</h2>
<h3>Just Who Should Have “The Right To Work” Anyway?</h3>
<p>Most of us have heard a lot about The Right To Work Law just passed in Michigan. But we sometimes receive calls from members who confuse the regulations on The Right To Work with the regulations on Employment at Will. Here's a quick comparison:</p>
<ul>
<li><i>The Right to Work Law</i> states the no citizen can be forced to join a union in order to have a job.</li>
<li><i>The Employment at Will Doctrine</i> says that both the company and the employee have a right to cease employment at any time and for any reason.</li>
</ul>
<p>These seem like laws that everyone would agree to and want to have as the law of the land. So what's wrong with these two laws?</p>
<p>Let's start with the <i>Employment at Will</i> (EAW) doctrine. The primary entity that opposes EAW is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). In order to protect individuals from illegal discrimination the EEOC forbids using Employment at Will to terminate employees due to their race, age, religion, sex or for any other such discriminatory reason. Of course this also applies to whistleblowers. The company may not terminate an employee for ‘blowing the whistle” on company wrongdoing. Such opposition to the EAW sounds reasonable and something I assume most of us support.</p>
<p>But let's take a look at the issue of Right To Work (RTW). Now who could be against that? The primary (and possibly the only) entity opposed to RTW are unions. Unions feel that once they have unionized a company, then the company should be responsible for unionizing every new employee for them. They feel that no one they do not approve of should ever be allowed to work there. Further, they require the company to enforce their position by automatically deducting the union dues from every employee's paycheck and sending it to the union and, to terminate anyone who should ever get behind in his dues (due to refusal to allow the deduction or long leaves with no paycheck etc.) That way, no employee can ever decide to quit the union or to neglect paying his union dues on time. As a point of interest; If companies would refuse to deduct the union dues from the employee's paycheck, unions would likely lose most of their members in short order.</p>
<p>Unions from all over the country were in Michigan to fight against the RTW law, even those unions that have no members in Michigan. Auto workers, truck drivers and state employees called in sick from all over the state to show up for the big protest. They lost the battle and the law passed which now says:</p>
<p>No individual can be required to do any of the following to obtain or continue employment:</p>
<ul>
<li>Become a member of a union</li>
<li>Remain a member of a union</li>
<li>Resign their membership in a union</li>
<li>Refrain from financially supporting a union or paying dues</li>
<li>Pay to any charity or third party the dues equivalent required of union members.</li>
</ul>
<p>So why did the state of Michigan, one of the founding states of the labor movement, decide to go to battle against the unions with this new law? There are two primary reasons:</p>
<ol>
<li>
The 24 states that have Right to Work Laws have a much better economic standing. Examples include:
<ul>
<li>Over the last 20 years, of the top 10 performing states, 9 were RTW states. (The 10th Washington state, ranked high because it has neither state sales tax nor state income tax.)</li>
<li>Of the lowest 10 ranking states, none are RTW states.</li>
<li>The average unemployment rate across the country is 7.7% The average unemployment rate in RTW states is 6.9% The average unemployment rate in non-RTW states is 8.7%</li>
<li>The cost to employee someone in a non-RTW state is almost 20% higher than in RTW states. That's why companies are leaving those states and moving to RTW states, and employees are moving there because that's where the jobs are.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>The states of Wisconsin and Indiana, also founding states of the labor movement, recently became RTW states while their neighboring state, Illinois, one the most unionized states in the country refused to consider it. Hundreds of companies packed up and left Illinois and moved to Wisconsin and Indiana, who are now experiencing economic growth and state debt reduction.</li>
</ol>
<p>And that's why Michigan did it.</p>
<p class="quote">
“Reality is the leading cause of stress,<br />
for those in touch with it”<br />
– Jane Wagner</p>
<h3>What You Don't Know Can't Hurt Me</h3>
<p>For some of the information in the article above, we accessed the government reports that show the tax rates and economic standings of states. Those reports also show the movement of companies and individuals between states. It allows everyone the ability to track the migration of companies and people out of states that are non-RTW states, have high labor costs, high taxes and even overly burdensome labor restrictions. It also shows which states they are migrating to, those that are RTW, have more reasonable labor costs, tax rates and labor regulations.</p>
<p>But once the government agencies began noticing those migrations, they realized that their records were being used to identify that activity. In December that information was not available. When contacted they announced that the data was no longer being provided.</p>
<p class="quote">
“Safe upon the solid rock, the ugly houses stand.<br />
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand”<br />
– Edna St. Vincent Millay</p>
<hgroup>
<h3>Unemployment Is A Numbers Game</h3>
<h4>(And Someone's Not Very Good With Numbers)</h4>
</hgroup>
<p>Uncle Sam keeps telling us the economy is improving and people are slowly going back to work. They say that over 5,000,000 new jobs have been added since January 2008. Last year at this time the unemployment rate was 8.7%. This year it's down to 7.7%. Who could argue with that? Well the numbers they report tell a different story.</p>
<p>The unemployment rate is calculated using a complicated process of incoming reports, outgoing phone calls and some mystifying legerdemain. Such machinations include no longer counting people as unemployed once their unemployment benefits run out, counting an employee who loses his full time job who later finds a job working 2 days a week as a gain in employment, and forgetting to count the unemployment numbers of our largest state thereby lowering the unemployment rate.</p>
<p>But there's a pretty simple method to knowing whether the unemployment rate is higher or lower. Here's an example: The number of people unemployed is reported monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) as is the unemployment rate. By their reports:</p>
<table>
<th>Number of People Unemployed</th>
<tr><td>January 2008</td><td>8,221,000</td></tr>
<tr><td>January 2009</td><td>11,616,000</td></tr>
<tr><td>January 2010</td><td>14,852,000</td></tr>
<tr><td>January 2011</td><td>13,863,000</td></tr>
<tr><td>January 2012</td><td>12,758,000</td></tr>
<tr><td>November 2012</td><td>12,829,000</td></tr>
</table>
<p>In January of 2008 there were 8.2 million people unemployed. In November of 2012 there are 12.8 million people unemployed. There are 4.6 million fewer people working today than in January 2008.</p>
<p>But Uncle Sam is trying to do his part. Since January 2008, the federal government has hired 101 new federal employees … every day. 10,000 new federal employee were hired one month before the election. The average wage for federal workers is now $84,000 annually, that's $13,000 more than in the private sector.</p>
<p class="quote">
“What experience and history teach us is…<br />
that people and government have never learned anything from history”<br />
– George F. Hegel</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: center"><sub>© William J. Cook</sub></p>
</div>
<div id="sidebar">
<span class="heading">Labor Stats</span>
<hr />
<b>Federal Minimum Wage</b>
<hr />
<p align="center">
<b>$7.25</b>/hour<br />
</p>
<hr />
<b>Average Income</b>
<hr />
<table>
<tr><td /><td class="u">January 2012</td><td class="u">January 2011<td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Hourly</td><td class="b">$23.78</td><td class="b">$23.28</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Weekly</td><td class="b">$818.03</td><td class="b">$803.16</td></tr>
</table>
<hr />
<b>Federal Povery Level</b>
<hr />
<table>
<tr><td class="i">one person</td><td class="b">$10,956</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">family of four</td><td class="b">$21,954</td></tr>
</table>
<hr />
<b>IRS Mileage Allowance</b>
<hr />
<table>
<tr><td class="i">business</td><td><b>55.5</b> cents/mile</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">medical or moving</td><td><b>23.5</b> cents/mile</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">charitable</td><td><b>14.0</b> cents/mile</td></tr>
</table>
<p>January 1, 2013</p>
<table>
<tr><td class="i">business</td><td><b>56.5</b> cents/mile</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">medical or moving</td><td><b>24</b> cents/mile</b></td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">charitable</td><td><b>14</b> cents/mile</td></tr>
</table>
<hr />
<b>Postage</b>
<hr />
<table>
<tr><td class="i">1 oz</td><td><b>46</b> cents</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">postcard</td><td><b>33</b> cents</td></tr>
</table>
<p>On January 27, 2013, the 1 oz rate will increase to <b>46</b> cents and the Postcard rate will increase to <b>33</b> cents.</p>
<hr />
<b>Population</b>
<hr />
<table>
<tr><td class="i">world</td><td class="b">7 billion</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">U.S.</td><td class="b">314.9 million</td></tr>
</table>
<p align="center">
<i>one birth every </i><b>8</b><i> seconds;</i><br />
<i>one death every </i><b>14</b><i> seconds;</i><br />
<i>one new immigrant every </i><b>44</b><i> seconds;</i><br />
<i>net gain of one person every </i><b>13</b><i> seconds.</i>
</p>
<hr />
<b>U.S. Civilian Workforce</b>
<hr />
<table>
<tr><td /><td class="u">January 2012</td><td class="u">January 2011</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Total</td><td class="b">155,654,000</td><td class="b">154,356,000</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Employed</td><td class="b">143,322,000</td><td class="b">141,608,000</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Unemployed</td><td class="b">12,332,000</td><td class="b">12,748,000</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Want A Job</td><td class="b">6,631,000</td><td class="b">6,313,000</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Unemployment Rate</td><td class="b">7.9%</td><td class="b">8.3%</td></tr>
</table>
<br /><hr />
<b>U.S. Workforce Productivity</b><br />
<sub><i>(The amount of goods produced, divided by the number of work hours it took to produce it)</i></sub>
<hr />
<table>
<tr><td class="i">1992</td><td class="b">3.7%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1993</td><td class="b">0.5%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1994</td><td class="b">1.3%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1995</td><td class="b">0.9%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1996</td><td class="b">2.5%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1997</td><td class="b">2.0%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1998</td><td class="b">2.6%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1999</td><td class="b">3.3%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2000</td><td class="b">3.4%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2001</td><td class="b">2.9%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2002</td><td class="b">4.6%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2003</td><td class="b">3.7%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2004</td><td class="b">2.8%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2005</td><td class="b">1.7%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2006</td><td class="b">0.9%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2007</td><td class="b">1.9%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2008</td><td class="b">1.8%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2009</td><td class="b">+5.8%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2010</td><td class="b">+3.6%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2011</td><td class="b">+0.7%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1st quarter 2012</td><td class="b">(-0.9%)</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2nd quarter 2012</td><td class="b">+2.2%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">3rd quarter 2012</td><td class="b">+2.9%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">4th quarter 2012</td><td class="b">(-2.0%)</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Total 2012</td><td class="b">+1.0%</td></tr>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>