An excerpt from a recent Expert HR leader interview of Jumpstart:HR CEO Joey V. Price:
What are some of the recent compliance issues that are causing small businesses to alter their HR practices and procedures?
The false-start on overtime compliance regulation changes, potential minimum wage hikes, and the national conversation on immigration reform have small business HR experts on the edge of our seats trying to strategize for what comes next.
The false-start around overtime compliance caused a ton of headaches since employers invested time and resources into telling staff members about drastic federal policy changes that ultimately never happened – and it made companies evaluate their business practices. Those business practices that were impacted by the threat of overtime rule changes include: employee scheduling, accessing email while off-the-clock, greater emphasis on ROI from a 40-hour workweek, and job misclassification for employees in roles such as administrative assistant and non-managerial corporate employees.
Minimum wage hikes will cause employers to adjust pay scales from the ground up. Some retail and fast food companies are moving towards chatbots and artificial intelligence to manage customer order taking/tracking and reduce labor related expenses. Immigration reform is a huge agenda item for our current president. It’s resulted in a cutback on corporate travel for foreign-born and naturalized citizens, a push for unity and stronger corporate D&I stances, and a look at hiring practices for STEM careers (positions often dominated in the H-1B visa application process). It will be interesting to see how each of these challenges plays out because they all represent external forces that impact the way small businesses conduct themselves.
If a startup business owner were to say to you, “I don’t need to worry about workforce planning for the future. I’ll just hire on more people as I need them,” how might you respond?
I’d simply tell them about the old saying “failure to plan is a plan to fail!” You have to visualize and plan for what a successful organization looks like, or you’ll be driven to change based on the flavor or fire of the day.
Practically speaking, workforce planning while in the startup phase is the best thing you can do to chart a course for where you want a company to be and what values you want it to reflect. This is critical because it allows you to have clarity regarding the right person to attract to your organization and how to support them once they arrive.
This exercise adds value in the following measurable ways:
Read the full interview at JohnMattone.com