If you currently staff any part of your organization with temporary employees, your staffing partner should be looking out for your best interests and providing guidance on how to properly manage that relationship. I consider my Indianapolis staffing relationships with my clients as a trusted partnership and therefore it is my responsibility to consistently communicate with you to reduce any risk for your organization. Here are some important tips to keep top of mind:
Let’s begin with the candidate selection process.
- That’s Good HR reduces your risk by sending you candidates that closely match the compensation expectations for the position. For example, we would not present a candidate that has been making 40k previously to a position that is paying 20k. All compensation negotiations and discussions go through us so there is no confusion around who their employer is (co-employment risks)
- We complete a criminal background check on every candidate that we place even if it is not required by your company. Again, this is our responsibility as the employer to ensure you are protected.
- We make sure that our candidate is interested in the opportunity by giving them the client’s name before presenting their resume to the hiring manager (this may sound obvious, but the truth is, not all agencies tell the candidate the name of the company before they send their resume)
Next – the most important area of concern, once you have a contractor working for you.
The lines can get crossed once a temporary employee is on site and working for you. Here are some ways you can protect your organization from any confusion around this relationship:
- My most important reminder: The contract employee is an employee of our company, not yours. This is important due to all of the legal responsibilities around the employee/employer relationship which reside with us. Our employee should have no reason to misunderstand that relationship. We are the experts in our field and we are here to help you.
- All hiring and firing conversations must be handled by a That’s Good HR professional, not someone on your staff.
- If our temporary employee is not meeting your productivity standards, all performance concerns should come through us and discussions with the employee about these concerns are conducted by us.
- All attendance concerns should be communicated to us immediately. If we failed to inform you that our employee is going to be absent or tardy, that likely means we did know about it. While we make it very clear in our process, at times a temporary employee may forget and bypass communications with us (their employer) and only inform you (the customer) about time off. When this happens, please redirect them to us.
- Ultimately all employment related issues should come through us including harassment, injury, pay, benefits etc. This is why we are cautious even about discussing an employee’s pay with you as the customer. The less involved you are in employment related decisions and information, the clearer the lines are in the employment relationship.
My pledge to you, my customer is this: I will do anything possible to reduce your co-employment risks. This list is just a summary of what we do behind the scenes to look out for you and as it is with any vendor relationship, your understanding is critical.
Co-employment is the term often used to refer to the relationship between staffing firms and their clients and to the legal issues that arise from that relationship. Click here for more information on co-employment. Questions about this post? Drop me a line or give me a call!
