INFINITI HR SVP Daniel Mormino was recently featured on Franchising.com on navigating PPP loan forgiveness and how to manage layoffs during these trying times.  Check it out here or see the transcript below.

Navigating PPP Loan Forgiveness & Managing Employee Layoffs During Covid-19

1) PPP loan forgiveness

If you’ve received a PPP loan and are using the funds to continue business operations, you’ll want your loan to be forgiven to the greatest extent possible. The key to forgiveness is spending money on forgivable expenses during the 8-week period following receipt of the loan. When applying to your lender for forgiveness, you’ll need to be prepared to provide documentation of how the funds were spent, including:

• Number of employees on the payroll
• Employee pay rates
• Payroll tax filings
• Payroll costs paid in the eight weeks following disbursement of the loan
• Mortgage interest payments in the eight weeks following disbursement of the loan
• Rent or lease payments in the eight weeks following disbursement of the loan
• Utility payments in the eight weeks following disbursement of the loan
• Any advance received under the CARES Act’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) Emergency Advance program

Loan forgiveness will be reduced:

1. If the total salary or wages are reduced in excess of 25% compared with the most recent full quarter preceding the loan date; and/or
2. By dividing a) the monthly average number of full-time equivalent (FTE) employees during the 8-week covered period, by b) the average number of FTE employees for either the period beginning February 15, 2019, through June 30, 2019; or the period beginning January 1, 2020 and ending on February 29, 2020.Exception for rehires: If from February 15, 2020 through April 26, 2020, there is a reduction in FTE or salary, and by no later than June 30, 2020, the company has eliminated the reduction of staff (i.e., rehired FTEs), then the loan forgiveness will not be reduced.
3. If a business receives an emergency advance from the SBA’s EIDL program, the PPP loan forgiveness amount is reduced by this grant amount.

2) Adapting to working remotely

If you are able to have your organization work remotely, here are some useful Remote Work Tips for Managers and Employees.

3) Ongoing operations guidance

If you are an essential business and continuing operations, here are some additional resources on how you can keep your employees and customers safe:

• General Industry Guidance

• Healthcare Industry Guidance

• Grocery & Food Industry Guidance 

4) Legal considerations for layoffs and furloughs

Finally, from a legal perspective, if you have to reduce pay, hours, or even close your business, what regulations may apply?

Daniel Mormino is Senior Vice President at Infiniti HR, a leading PEO that provides payroll, human resource consulting, and risk management services to businesses nationwide. Contact him at daniel.mormino@infinitihr.com or 623-455-6234.

“But… but… it’s not fair!”

In a perfect world, you could make all your employees happy all the time; reality may be different story.

Fairness is relative in the world of business.  Mandatory overtime may be necessary, causing some employees to need to shift their personal lives around to accommodate it. Not all employees will like their jobs or assignments.  Things, at times, just won’t seem fair to some employees.

This is not to say that all employees can – or should – be treated equally all the time. Not everyone will meet performance goals, be promoted or get a raise at the same pace. Some jobs are more flexible than others or offer work-from-home opportunities.  High performers will earn more coveted work. Low performers may get jealous, but simply are not capable.

SO IF ALL EMPLOYEES DON’T ALWAYS HAVE TO BE TREATED EQUALLY, WHAT IS WORKPLACE FAIRNESS?  DOES IT EXIST? IS IT REALLY SOMETHING TO WORRY ABOUT?

It is. Treating employees fairly goes beyond keeping an eye out for discriminatory bias or workplace cliques that may affect employment decisions. Day-to-day decisions can have a huge effect on the perception of whether your workplace plays fair.

Workplace Fairness in Rewards

Even when rewarding good performance, employers can run afoul of fair practices:

 A company was struggling to manage a young employee who was in her first job.  She was becoming unreliable and making mistakes on her scheduling app. Simultaneously, she began complaining about her hours and how management was “treating her”.

After extensive discussion, what was at the heart of the problem? It wasn’t that management was mistreating her at all, but rather, an emergency made it necessary to change the scheduler temporarily, revealing that the first scheduler was rewarding strong performers by giving them preferred hours and shifts, and the new scheduler was slower in processing, putting the schedules out later than normal.  

The preferential adjustments for the strong performers were inadvertently making the rest of the employee’s schedules strained and difficult to balance. Sensing the biased schedules for a few employees, the rest of the team was assuming the worst of management and becoming demotivated. 

The solution? Reverting to a more equitable scheduling plan regardless of performance, having timely corrective discussions with employees when their performance was not meeting expectations, and communicating more openly with the staff in general.  

This is not to say that good performance should not be rewarded; just that the rewards should not punish others by default.  The company just needed to find a different way to acknowledge their high performers.

Workplace Fairness in Time Off

Time off, whether mandated by law or given by a company, is a precious commodity to many employees. Examining reasons managers are approving or denying requested time off outside of what the law requires is a must to ensure that it is done fairly.

Jean has been working at XYZ, Inc. for seven years. Each January 2^nd, she submits her time off requests for the entire year to lock them in. It was a small department – only Jean and one other person, Tim – and Tim generally stayed close to home and didn’t mind working holidays. When Meg was hired into the department, after about eight months, she was ready to schedule some vacation time at Easter to visit family.  hen she submitted her request, the supervisor apologized, stating that she could only have one person take Easter off, and that Jean had an approved request.  

Meg was disappointed, but went back to her supervisor and changed her request to the 4^th of July weekend.  She thought it would be fine, as she was giving the company plenty of notice.  Again, the supervisor had to let her know that the 4^th of July was also not good because Jean was going to be off that day.

Meg went to Jean to ask if she would consider working one of the holidays she had requested off so she could visit family.  Jean became upset, told her that she had seniority, and that Meg shouldn’t expect to get all sorts of perks because she was new. 

The supervisor was now left with a dilemma – let Jean continue to dominate the time off calendar and risk losing a new employee or risk upsetting Jean to instill a new, more balanced time off request policy – such as a rotation – that all employees could take advantage of?  

An employer who is overly generous to a small handful of employees for any reason (be it due to seniority, pregnancy, or parental responsibilities, among other things) may well find that it sets a precedent that can be hard to break free of in the future. Starting off with clear policies in an employee handbook that outline requirements for attendance and scheduled time off, and adjusting for extenuating circumstances as they arise, could prove to be a better option in the long run.

Workplace Fairness in work assignments

As an employer, you may have hungry employees who are always willing to jump in and seem to have no breaking point.  They work long past closing time without complaint and seem to always be available.  Are they getting the more interesting projects by default simply due to visibility rather than skill and results?

Liam took any and all assignments, preferring to work weekends and long days to get them done. His new coworker Joe was enthusiastic about getting involved as well – or so it seemed to Liam. However, during the first project where they worked jointly, Joe needed to leave work a bit early one evening to bring his son to a doctor appointment.  Liam was annoyed, but said nothing. 

A few weeks later, Liam asked Joe about working the weekend to get a jump on the following weeks’ work but Joe declined, citing family plans out of town. On one Tuesday evening, Joe gave Liam a head’s up that he could not stay late as he had volunteered to fill in for his son’s t-ball coach.

 The project was right on schedule, but the manager happened to run into Liam one morning, who confessed that he was disappointed with Joe’s level of commitment and hinted that he seemed to have other priorities that got in the way.  The manager was surprised to hear this and wondered if he’d made a mistake in giving Joe such a big part of an important project.

Are employees being given assignments or evaluated based on availability to work outside of the hours they agreed to work?   Some employees love to work late into the night and on weekends when the office is quiet; others use off time to recharge, pursue hobbies or spend time with friends and family.  If job descriptions and offer letters clearly outline the expectations of the work schedule, penalizing employees who have other commitments outside of that range – or have rare exceptions to the normal schedule – but still maintain performance standards is not a fair practice.

So what does this all mean?

Periodically reviewing your internal practices regarding work distribution, scheduling, rewards, and time off to see if they could stand up to scrutiny when evaluated from a workplace fairness – and not just legal – standard is highly recommended. Actively working to ensure that employees are being fairly – even if not equally – treated will go a long way to making them feel that they are.

Click the link to view the recent blog: Re-opening: Returning to Work in the Midst of Covid-19 or check back for more on human resources, payroll, insurance, and benefits.

John is frustrated. He has been working at his new company for less than a month and feels like he was hired under false pretenses. The job is nothing like it was described in the hiring process or even to a similar position he held at his last company. Meetings are called at a moment’s notice, and he is never given time to prepare. The workspace is all open plan, and he is used to an office where he can close the door for sensitive calls. He expressed his concerns to his manager, who admitted while the pace was maybe more hectic than John was used to, he was still confident that John could be successful.

Honesty is key in the recruiting process, and lack of it can easily lead to turnover. While the interview team may not intentionally mislead candidates, not giving them a clear picture of the job may hurt their chances of keeping a new hire or newly promoted employee engaged. In a tight job market, it may not take long for another company to recruit your new star away from you.

Is there a way to “show” a candidate what their job would be like versus simply trying to explain what they will be doing and give them a real idea of the position they are applying for?

Realistic Job Previews (RJPs) may be one solution. RJPs are planned situations as part of a recruiting process that act as an inside look at what the company – and the job – is really like. They are “show” versus “tell”.  They do require advance planning and, done properly, they include release of liability signed in advance, but with consistency in use they can be easily and confidently managed internally.

For a position in a restaurant environment, candidates for kitchen staff may be shown a video of the kitchen in action during a busy rush and then be taken to a simulated work environment where he or she needs to assemble ingredients or prepare an easy dish in a similar time frame as would be expected on the job. For the host, observing phones ringing, “customers” approaching to ask about reservations or their place on the list and a party of 10 arriving late – all create an interesting challenge for the candidate to contemplate. For server candidates, observing employees greeting customers, taking orders, and carrying trays of items while winding through a busy dining room and lively bar area may provide great insight on the actual job itself.

For office roles, videos, and tours, as well as the opportunity to speak with those in the department they would be working with, are a great peek into what their working life may be like. Bring them into the break room, even if it isn’t floor to ceiling windows with a gleaming espresso machine in the corner.  What does the workspace look like? How many meetings per week? What are the hours and pace like in any given week?

For the hiring manager, taking the time to observe and note, “What questions did they ask?”, “How did they interact with employees?”, or “Was the candidate engaged and present? Or were they on their phone during the observation session?”, can bring critical insights that bring value to the overall “interview” picture.

It won’t all be pretty, and that is okay. Remember, a job preview isn’t an ad. Having employees wax on about how wonderful it is to work at the company on a video or during a meet and greet, even if completely true, really isn’t helpful. The whole point of a job preview is to give a candidate an actual idea of the workday and environment. No job is perfect. Being honest about the challenges and issues with someone looking to work within – or head up – a work department or take on a role will only help that person get a clear picture of the position and environment to help him or decide if it is a fit.

What could Joe’s company have done to create an RJP for him prior to being offered the position?

Giving Joe a chance to peek behind the curtain would have been helpful in his decision-making process.   Some ideas on how to do it in this case?

1. A job description – first and foremost, sharing a well-written, honest job description is vitally important. The interviewing team could have allowed Joe to review it and ask questions, compare the experience requested to his or her own and get specifics on the day-to-day requirements of the position.
2. A tour – A simple tour would have allowed him to view the working environment and decide whether he would feel comfortable in an open working space. It isn’t for everyone, and not having an office where he can free himself from distractions may be not be his cup of tea.
3. A meeting – After having Joe sign a confidentiality agreement, he could sit in on a few meetings to get an idea of what they would be like. Are they organized? Is there an agenda? Does everyone talk at once? Do people arrive late or not at all? Are they collaborative in nature?
4. Employee interviews – Who are the colleagues Joe would most likely work with? Allow him to meet with them one on one to get the skinny on the day-to-day. Coach employees beforehand that the idea is to give Joe a clear picture of the job and company, but not be a place to list a litany of their work woes. Ask them instead to list positives, challenges and, if what they personally enjoy about the job in spite of the challenges or less than ideal conditions.
5. Engagement prior to day one – sending John his onboarding schedule, identifying key resources, or assigning a “peer buddy” that will assist him through his initial training and work, all before day one, would help John to more accurately develop personal expectations and the expectations from the organization. Though you don’t want to engage candidates in work prior to day one, having these resources immediately at their fingertips give a sense of support and professionalism that wins trust and loyalty.

Again, the primary point of an RJP is to show, not tell. Telling a candidate that the company is an amazing place to work has little value without a visual. Putting the good, bad, and the ugly into an RJP will assist a candidate in making the important decision of perhaps leaving a current position to come and work with you without regrets.

Click the link to view the recent blog: Welcoming Gen Z into the Workplace or check back for more on human resources, payroll, insurance, and benefits.

My son is Gen Z, born between 1995 and 2012. As employers, what do we know about Gen Z in the workforce? Not a lot so far, but I know how he spends his time in school, how he experiences, and what he has grown used to:

• He has a chrome book instead of text books.
• He turns in his homework online, not on paper.
• He doesn’t know how to write in cursive, but can type faster than many people two and three times his age.
• He has customized assignments and instruction tailored to his educational needs.
• I had more records for diagnostics, assessments, and analytics on his achievement opportunities in my hand before he entered middle school than I remember having my entire life through college.
• When he is stuck, he rarely asks me for help, instead, he finishes his homework by maximizing online references, educational sites, and subscriptions to “school approved” materials.
• With help from an official geek, he built his own gaming computer because off the shelf computers “just didn’t cut it.”
• If he doesn’t know something, if he wants something, or if he needs to communicate, he goes online, chats, texts, or snapchats and receives instant knowledge or gratification via a community of friends. He reeks of internet savvy.
• He expects to learn and work the same way he keeps himself entertained – online.
• His generation and some of the generation before his has grown up with highly sophisticated media while my parents still don’t know how to use the TV remote.

Why am I telling you this?  What can this possibly mean for the small business community? Well, it is just a little insight into what it will take to improve and maintain the “employee experience” of the future and your HR services better get with the program.

Wait. What? My HR services? How? Why?

Simply put, the workplace is evolving to one that gets shopped around like a brand-new TV.

Consider how his expectations play out for HR: What are your benefits? Can I do some work remotely?  Can I get answers on my medical carrier at 8 pm? If I took a class, where and when can I pull the materials as a refresher? I can’t sleep, can I pull my career development program down to review at 2 am? I need to take FMLA, can I get policy information and forms on a Saturday? What is the point of awesome benefits when I can’t access them as soon as I need them?

Companies need to start providing the tools and technologies necessary to enable these employees to be productive in settings they are familiar with, else they will miss out on the potential of this workforce.

Now this does NOT mean that employers need to turn away from the “human” in human resources.  Quite the opposite. HR at the small business level needs to be leveraging online resources, mobile, and social technologies, and data so they can more effectively personalize employee development and experiences.  They need to spend the time they are no longer spending on administrative and informational tasks by strategically interacting with and leveraging an employee’s abilities.

Intranet-based interaction systems are now the norm for many larger businesses that see improved performance results by engaging their employees through internally managed social platforms. Small businesses are now in need of catching up.

The new objective for small business is to create a seamless experience for current employees and potential employees.  This doesn’t mean organizations need to invest in the design and creation of expensive customized systems, rather many niche organizations provide these services to small and large organizations for everything from benefits to payroll or timekeeping and HR forms administration, from legal compliance issues to record keeping and documentation, from training to career development.  Online, 24/7.

There really isn’t a reason that employees can’t apply for jobs online, clock in and out with apps, can receive important documents electronically, and can’t have a consistent hiring, onboarding, and career experience by streamlining through technology.

Let’s put Gen Z aside for a moment and step into a reality where this is already overdue: IBM tells us that more than 22% of millennials expect a response within 10 minutes of reaching out to a brand via social media, according to a recent Desk.com study. In addition to this, 52% will abandon online purchases if they can’t find a quick answer.

This generation has already responded to your job postings and moved on to companies who provided them job offers before you finished reading their resume.  You’re too late, you lost out and when Gen Z fully arrives on the scene, it is not going to get better.

Okay, I automated everything from my hiring process to onboarding to internal project management to general communication, what do I do with the time it has freed up on administrative management?

The first thing is to work on a personalized relationship with your employees. Larger HR departments are now turning to research principles, such as design thinking and sentiment analysis to better understand and serve the needs of the 2020 workforce. In English, this simply means taking a human centered approach to solving business problems.  or small businesses this means stop doing all the hard work at the top, and start asking your employees for input and ideas to make the workplace and their experiences better.  IBM used social media to invite employees to ideate on a better performance management system (design thinking).  They then used a tool they called social pulse to gauge responses and alignment or disagreement from other online uses (sentiment analysis).

How exactly does this work when you’re a company management team of one?

1. Talk to your employees, often. Have you always hated the annual performance review process? Well, guess what? If you have on-going feedback sessions where you listen and provide feedback consistently, and you take a little time to document as you go, you can ditch the annual review. What you gain in exchange for a form you hated and never looked at again once it was signed, is an engaged employee who is not only loyal, but keeps you in touch with all aspects of the business because you actually know how to have conversations and share information with respect.
2. Have team meetings on important challenges or changes. Having a group meeting to discuss ideas and problems (brainstorming) and choosing the most feasible (research) and engaging option (polling) is just the old-fashioned way to perform sentiment analysis. And having a forum where everyone is sharing information together ensures buy-in. When you’re just sharing information, it gives a sense of community. When you can level up to AI and chatbots, congratulations! But don’t miss out on the present.
3. Put your ego aside.  Yes, you completed college while they were still in diapers. Yes, you did your time in corporate America. Yes, you boldly endeavored to start your own business and successfully built it from the ground up. But no, you don’t know everything, and the success of your business will be partially reliant on your employees. Hence, you have to accept that they will have good ideas that might conflict with your past, but also better align with your present and will move you into the future, faster. Millennials have already been in your face with this, so beware, Gen Z will do so even more.  The risk if you don’t? Gen Z will shop for a new place to work; one that engages in design thinking and sentiment analysis to ensure they are being heard.
4. Cooperate and align with federal and state labor laws. Why is THIS here? Because nothing will break trust and erode all your efforts to attract and retain top talent than the impression that someone is not being paid correctly, is being treated unfairly, that you’re not taking their complaints seriously, or that they are not safe at work, physically or mentally.  The worst employer offenders are those who don’t know they are breaking a law and defend their actions without listening and bothering to check in with their HR resources or free state/federal resources online or over phone. I can’t tell you how times I have heard that someone has instantly shopped around because they believed their employer wasn’t paying them correctly, and left before the employer realized they were in the wrong.  That turnover adds up, and comes right off your bottom line in the thousands for hiring and training costs. For what? $38.00 that you improperly didn’t pay for a mandatory meeting?  If technology is saving you some time to showcase your internal services and documents, spend your new-found freedom on a holistic approach to employee wellness and engagement that includes doing things ethically and legally.
5. Be able to share your values and culture: We know that more so than previous generations, millennials and Gen Z want to work with employers they believe in and align with.  It’s right out of the consumer playbook: “Do I buy from a small business and made in America? Do I eat farm to table or internationally sourced? Do I invest domestically or globally?” When an employee is motivated as an employment “consumer”, you’ll need to be able to articulate who your organization is, which means you’ll have to live and breathe a vision. For candidates to shop your place of business, you’ll need to project your culture on your social media page, in your job postings, within internal communications, and enforce it in your business practices.

What have we learned?

With less face-to-face interaction during varying schedules, organizations will need to level up delivery of internal information, HR administration, and quick access to FAQs so they can better glean productivity and engagement from employees who are not distracted by avoidable inefficiencies and frustration.  Employees now expect or need information that affects their personal lives at their fingertips, at all hours.

We are the generations that have been gifted with innovation, efficiency, and technology, but we still struggle with communication.  The newest generations in the workplace have grown up with options, and are more mobile, more willing to move around to find a place where they fit in.  This does not mean they are less loyal, they perhaps just practice more self-care in their careers and will leave when they find something that makes them happier.

So, it is time for us to be better service providers of HR basics to these very important consumers who could, ultimately, make our businesses stronger.

Click the link to view the recent blog: An Engaged Workforce is an Effective Workforce or check back for more on human resources, payroll, insurance, and benefits.

As concerns about the spread of the Coronavirus in the US grow, INFINITI HR feels it is important to talk to your team about the importance of relying on trusted sources of information, like the CDC.

One of the best things you can do to create a sense of safety early on is to make sure your team knows where to go to get trustworthy, up-to-date, and accurate information, and to think through what steps you can take as an employer to prevent infection, as well as prepare for it. Below is a graphic of steps you can take now.

Helpful resources include:

• Cough and sneeze etiquette
• Hand hygiene
• Clean hands webpage
• Staying home when sick
• Teleworkers eBook
• CDC recommendations
• Employee business travel safeguards

Depending on your industry, such as healthcare, or if you have employees overseas or who travel frequently, additional steps may be helpful or required. Additional resources with relevant info are:

• CDC Guidance for Businesses and Employers to Plan and Respond to Coronavirus Disease 2019
• Fisher Phillips FAQs For Employers On The COVID-19 Coronavirus

Click the link to view the recent blog: Communication Skills for Leaders or check back for more on human resources, payroll, insurance, and benefits.