Sherry Griffin‘s insight:

Nice example of how easy it is for your Independent Contractor’s classification to come into question. I’ve seen the exact same scenario only fortunate enough to have plenty of documentation such that the investigation ended almost immediately. Being prepared for a classification audit makes all the difference in the world.

Sherry Griffin‘s insight:

In contracts, be mindful of whose laws you want to apply. For example, if you contract workers in Texas but your business is in California, you may be tempted to say California laws apply to the contract for your convenience should it go to court. However, you’d be better off applying Texas’ laws when dealing with workers because the employment laws in Texas are not as stringent and their regulations regard who is an employee and who is an Independent Contractor are not as broad as those in California. The regulations determining classification in Massachusetts are some of the broadest in the country. Using the laws of Massachusetts in an Independent Contractor agreement will likely leave them misclassified.

Sherry Griffin‘s insight:

And the dominos begin to fall… The last several months have seen several cases of drivers being declared misclassified workers, meaning their employer has been calling them Independent Contractors but they are actually employees. It can be a complex test to determine a worker’s classification as the criteria changes from agency to agency but the cost for misclassification can be painful. If it is determined that Harbor Express misclassified 400 drivers, it is going to be very painful for them financially. If your business uses contractors, hire a specialist to make sure you’re doing it right. Have questions? Call me at 775-826-9933 to schedule a free consultation.

Sherry Griffin‘s insight:

Yes! Skills testing is the key to good hires. The skills a degree brings vary significantly from school to school and program to program. Even skills brought from prior experience can be disappointing. Develop a test that requires essential skills and the results will shock you! Now personality testing can be risky? Why? Because so much of the responses are impacted by culture and experience and if the personality tests eliminates minority candidates by a higher percentage than non-minorities you have a problem. You have to be able to prove that the test is job related. Using the personality test isn’t necessarily bad, but you need to be very mindful of who is and who isn’t being screened out.

Sherry Griffin‘s insight:

HR encompasses a ridiculous number of regulations that are heavily litigated. Running an HR department and keeping abreast of the new regulations and multitude of judicial decisions is increasingly difficult. The benefit of a 3rd party audit is in having someone who has the ability to focus on the changes to best practices come in and help you apply them to your business. They have the time to focus on the changes because that is their job. They aren’t trying to looking for behavior patterns and implementing alignment with the company objectives. Their responsibility is to be very, very good at compliance. The more specialized the auditor, the better off you are. I prefer several different auditor that focus on specific areas than having just 1 auditor trying to stay current on everything. The next time your department is being audited look at it as a workshop where instead of hypothetical scenarios that kind of apply, the instructor comes into your office and actually works with you to address your needs and help you be better at what you do.

Sherry Griffin‘s insight:

Interactive training with real purpose. Great way to teach managers! And I love the core value "be direct."

Sherry Griffin‘s insight:

I like her overall message, though, not so much on her action plan. Employees should know more than then they are doing a poor job – they need to know when they’re doing a good job. Silence should not be what your employees strive to hear. At the end of each day make short notes in an incident diary about positive and negatives from the day. Provide your employees with short summaries once a week or every two weeks. Remember these are short verbal and written summaries and not drawn out reviews. There are 8 benefits from managing this way: 1) your bad employees will know it and fire themselves, 2) you have all the documentation you need to support a promotion or raise 3) you will have documentation supporting why one employee was termed and another retained (yes, one was late often but also exceeded monthly goals vs the one who was always late and never seemed to get started), 4) performance reviews will be easy because you already have the info and your employees already know where they excel and fall short 5) you can make adjustments to work assignments because you have a much better (and documented) picture of each employees strengths and weaknesses, 6) employees have the opportunity to change behaviors before they become habits, 7) you’ll be able to spot patterns sooner and have the documentation to support the patterns (look for both good and bad), and 8) you have a record prepared should you end up in court. Make sure to give a copy of the weekly/biweekly summaries to your HR manager (or at least offer to provide them – not every HR person knows what they’re doing – sad but true).

Sherry Griffin‘s insight:

Ah! Trying to avoid FMLA by limiting employee to 3 hours why of the number of qualifying hours, specifying that working outside hours is pretty much required, give the employee a review thanking him for working long days, and then be decide to pay a lawyer to claim the extra hours over the course of a year wouldn’t equate to 3 hours… Seriously, can’t make this stuff up. Remember that in the state of Nevada ALL employees are required to be tracking their work hours. Yes, that means even those employees exempt from being paid overtime must fill out a time sheet. With a time sheet you’ll save money paying a lawyer for a case your obviously going to lose…

Sherry Griffin‘s insight:

Terminations for violating unwritten policy are suspect. If it’s a personality issue, say so. If it’s a culture fit, say it. Made up reasons, though, indicate weakness, lack of integrity, inability to lead, or illegal termination. Just saying…

Sherry Griffin‘s insight:

This is a great product that coaches, players, parents, and fans alike will love.  It has been so much fun working on this project and even more difficult to stay quiet about it!  It has the bells and whistles while being school budget friendly.  A couple of answers to questions you probably already have:

What platform does this work on?  ALL SmartPhone platforms (it even works on Kindles)What sports is it for? ALL sports.  If your sport isn’t in the dropbox when you start entering your information, let us know and it will be added.What is "fan chat"? Fan chat is very cool!  Fan chat allows your fans to connect whether they’re at the game or across the country.  Comments are all posted to Facebook.What does a team do with this? Post schedules, game locations, rosters, include video highlights, pictures, and moreWhat about sponsors? This part is really exciting!  You can charge sponsors whatever you like to be in your app and keep ALL the $$$ for your program!  Include as many sponsors as you would like.

If you have more questions, just shoot over an email, connect with us on Facebook, or send us a Tweet!