We wanted to reprise a few past tips to help you enhance your HR practices this summer. We’re happy to share these before taking our own e-letter break for the summer.
NOTE: These are not presented in order of importance. Your school may have already attended to some or most of these. (If you have, kudos to you and your administrators!) Or, if your school is just starting to formalize its employee practices, you may need to tackle all of them … eventually. (If so, don’t lose heart—remember, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”!) So, the “priorities” will vary for each school.
Item #1: Establish a Relationship with an Employment Attorney
When the chips are down and you desperately need an employment attorney—e.g., when you receive notification of an employment lawsuit or EEOC charge—that is actually the worst time to select an attorney due to the pressures and urgency involved. Instead, summer is the best time to establish a relationship with an employment attorney. There's not much is going on at the school (well, at least not from a legal perspective, we hope), and you don’t have employees and managers streaming through your doorway with concerns and issues.
You now have (more) time to arrange to meet a prospective counselor for lunch or coffee, chat about the school, and give him/her an opportunity to get to know the school’s mission, culture, and values—while you learn about the attorney and the firm’s culture, values, and client service philosophy. In the calmness of day, you’re able to make a much better decision as to whom to establish a relationship with (usually on a retainer basis), so that they can best serve your needs in the future.
Item #2: Get Sexual Harassment Training Into the In-Service Plan for Next Year
It is vital that all schools train managers and employees in identifying and preventing sexual harassment and all other forms of harassment (racial, ethnic, etc.). This summer’s objective is to gain the Head’s agreement that this is a critical risk management issue—you need your Head's support to make sure proper time (and emphasis) is allotted for this training.
One way to carry out the training is carve out 60–90 minutes at a scheduled summer meeting/retreat to train the school’s administrative team. This can be followed by similar training for all employees—either as part of the getting-back-to-school meetings in August or during an in-service session during the school year. You can either contract with a local vendor to provide the training—or, if you are confident in the material, provide the training yourself.
Note: California, Connecticut, and Maine have more extensive requirements. See your employment attorney for details.
Item #3: Prepare to Conduct Interview Training In Advance of Next Year’s Hiring Season
As hiring mission-appropriate talent becomes more and more vital to the long-term success of the school, it also becomes more and more risky (regarding potential discrimination lawsuits and claims). To help your hiring process become both more effective and less risky, it is crucial to properly train all administrators on effective interview techniques and legal issues involved in hiring. Work this summer to put this training in place prior to your next hiring season.
Item #4: Update Your Employee Handbook (for Compliance Purposes)
As painstaking as it may seem (and yes, even for the detail-oriented amongst us, it is a tedious process), it is vital to review your Employee Handbook each summer to:
- Make sure that the written policies still reflect the school’s actual practices
- Make any legal updates you may have missed in the past (such as recent updates to FMLA or new protected classes in your state)
- Make certain that your policies (particularly time-off policies) answer common questions from employees. For example, if your sick time policy doesn’t indicate whether accrued but unused sick time is paid out at termination, it should. (This is something employees will be interested in when they are leaving the school.)
- Make arrangements for a brief annual review by your attorney, for compliance purposes. (Note: do this AFTER you’ve upgraded the document and fine-tuned the wording as best you can—there’s no need to pay an expensive labor attorney to do “word-smithing” that you are able to do for yourself.)
Item #5: Plan to Review the Exempt/Non-Exempt Status of All Positions
Are you certain that all of your non-exempt employees are completing timesheets appropriately—or, at all? Are there are few positions that you’ve always been unsure whether they should be exempt or non-exempt (such as, possibly, entry-level “professional” positions in the Development or Marketing or Admission functions)? Summer is a great time to start assessing this.
After you give all positions an initial once-over, it would be money well-spent to contract with a local compensation specialist (or your employment attorney) to formally pass judgment on the exempt/non-exempt status of all “borderline” positions in the school. If any changes are necessary after the review, meet with your employment attorney to establish a plan. (He/she will help you determine whether it is better to try to rectify past FLSA mistakes or to just clean things up from this point forward.) Studying up on this issue, highlighting its importance to the Head, and putting initial plans together would represent significant steps forward this summer.
Note: The Department of Labor continues to put out press releases emphasizing their increased enforcement activity regarding wage-and-hour (exempt/non-exempt) issues—they aren’t kidding and must be taken seriously (or you risk very costly penalties and fines).
“Bonus” Item: Invest in HR Professional Development for Yourself (This Is Not Optional!)
Are you someone who naturally looks to take care of everyone’s interests before your own? While commendable, taken to the extreme, this can be damaging to both yourself and the school. Everyone needs time for professional growth and reflection—INCLUDING YOU!
Make sure you take time to establish a growth plan for yourself. This may include seeking out HR (or business office) workshops that interest you, or attending a national or regional HR conference (that covers a wide range of HR topics), or taking the time to study for and take the PHR exam (this is the “Professional in Human Resources” certification—information is available at: www.hrci.org). No matter what you decide to do … DOING SOMETHING is what is important!
