Coaching Gen Y Employees: What to Do When They Think They’re Ready to Advance … and You Don’t

Do you have Gen Y, or Millennial, employees who, in your opinion, think they are more proficient than they are or think they should advance faster than you believe is realistic? If so, join the club. This is one of the biggest frustrations I hear from managers. While it may be frustrating, how you handle this will make a huge difference in whether your Gen Y employees:

1. Listen to, and respect, your feedback now and in the future.
2. Stay.
3. Remain engaged if they stay.
4. Refer their friends to become job candidates at your company.

Just recently, I was coaching a senior executive who was feeling frustrated with one of his young managers, whom I’ll call Jenna. Jenna, a millennial, firmly believed she had mastered her present position and was ready to move on. The senior executive, whom I’ll call Bill, believed that anyone in that position needed several years in the position to experience the myriad of situations required to develop a deep understanding of the department she was in, and the wisdom to make sound decisions. Bill also believed that Jenna overrated her knowledge and ability. Jenna was a classic case of someone who “didn’t know what they didn’t know” — a common challenge for novices, especially young novices with the confidence, and sometimes brashness, that comes with youth. I’d like to share the key points we covered in our session with the hope that you’ll find it useful for your interactions with Gen Y employees who believe they are ready to progress faster than you believe they are. You’ll find that everything covered in the following points will help you with any employee, but doing these things—and being skilled at them—is especially important when dealing with your millennial employees. “It takes time” and “be patient” will douse the flame of enthusiasm and ambition, and leave you with a disheartened, disengaged employee.  You will end up with an employee who believes:

1. You don’t understand their ability.
2. You don’t value their enthusiasm and ambition.
3. Your organization doesn’t provide opportunities for advancement.
4. Growing professionally will require looking for a new job.

You need to first shift your millennial employee from Unconscious Incompetence to Conscious Incompetence.  Jenna doesn’t know what she doesn’t know, i.e. she has Unconscious Incompetence. To believe her boss’s assessment that she needs more time, and to become receptive to learning, she first needs to realize she needs to learn. She needs to become aware of what she doesn’t know and what necessary skills she doesn’t possess. In other words, Bill needs to help Jenna develop Conscious Incompetence. Helping someone shift to Conscious Incompetence creates cognitive dissonance in the person being coached. Cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable feeling created when our current viewpoint can’t hold up under the weight of new information (“Oh … I’m not as ready as I thought …”). Helping the Gen Y employee develop Conscious Incompetence also stimulates motivation. They now see a gap between where they thought their current ability could take them and their new understanding that it won’t take them to where they want to go. With this understanding, they’re more open to hearing what they need to do next. This sense of “I don’t know X and I need to know X to get to where I want to go” provides the fuel to power self-directed learning. Therefore, as a manager and coach, you need to make a list of the specific skills and knowledge that your Gen Y employee doesn’t yet know, but needs to, for them to progress.

Give Specific, Crystal-clear Examples

Don’t be vague when describing the areas you believe they need to develop. “I want to see you develop better conflict management skills” might be fine as a start, but it must be followed up with specific situations you’ve witnessed where the Gen Y employee fell short. Then give specific descriptions of what you would like to see them do differently in that situation. As I teach in my constructive feedback seminars: When we give vague, nonspecific feedback, the receiver feels helpless because they don’t have the information they need to remedy the problem. When people feel helpless, it triggers primitive hard-wired responses to helpless — from anxiety all the way up to fear. At a primitive, hard-wired level, fear is linked closely with aggression (that’s why you don’t back an animal into a corner). Thus, when people feel helpless, they often become aggressive. By being crystal-clear with your feedback, you help the listener feel a sense of control: “Ah … I know what he wants, what he doesn’t want, and what I can do to fix it.” So, make sure you’re crystal clear.

State Explicitly How Much You Value the Employee’s Enthusiasm and Ambition

Don’t forget what a gift enthusiasm and ambition is. Since only about 1 out of 4 employees reports being highly engaged, according to Gallup’s landmark study on engagement, you want to make sure your engaged employees stay engaged. You want to make sure they know that you notice and appreciate their enthusiasm and ambition. The executive I was coaching said: “I don’t want to dampen Jenna’s enthusiasm or have her leave.” My response: “Make sure you tell her that. Make sure you let Jenna know that you notice and appreciate her enthusiasm and ambition, and you really want her to stay and grow with the company.” By being this explicit both about valuing Jenna’s interest and about his desire not to dampen her enthusiasm, Bill communicates that he values and respects Jenna at both a professional and a personal level. Addressing both aspects of the relationship openly communicates to the Gen Y employee that you care about them as an individual. While wanting your boss to care about you as an individual is not generation-specific, it’s especially important to the Gen Y generation. Having been raised in a very child-centric time in history where many parents played coach and mentor — along with taxi driver — Gen Y employees are as a group more likely to become demoralized by an emotionally disengaged boss. This point cannot be overemphasized. The last thing you want is for your coaching meeting with your Gen Y employee to come across as cold and “all-business.” Attending to the human and relationship aspect of the conversation, doesn’t just increase your ability to get commitment to change from your Gen Y employee. It also helps to build a stronger, more productive relationship. This stronger, more productive relationship will make future conversations easier and more effective. Because they can see you care about them and want to understand their perspective, they will care more about you and your perspective. Also, because they feel respected, valued, and heard, they will most likely care more about pleasing you in the future. Isn’t that true for you? Haven’t you been more interested in pleasing bosses who care about you?

Remind Your Gen Y Employee That You Want to Help her Grow Professionally

This is important for three reasons. First, as Gallup’s Q12 research shows, having a manager who cares about your professional development is a major driver of employee engagement. Second, professional development is a huge priority among Gen Y employees, so it’s especially important to remind them you want to help them in this area. Third, showing that you care about their development helps frame the discussion in terms of “We have the same goal here” rather than you and your Gen Y employee sitting on opposite sides of the negotiation table.

Add the “My Responsibility to You and …” Frame

When someone sees us differently than we do, or they’re not giving us what we want, it’s easy to take it personally. You can mitigate this by emphasizing that your responsibility to your Gen Y employee is to help them grow and succeed. Doing that involves helping them get the experience they need — rather than promoting them too early and setting them up to fail. Thus, you’re communicating that you recognize this isn’t just about you and your job. You’re saying “I really am thinking about what I believe is best for you, which is one of my responsibilities.” Also, by stating that you obviously have a responsibility to your employer to grow employees — and not prematurely promote — it helps frame your position as you being a responsible manager, rather than you simply withholding something they want because you’re unreasonable. A quick caveat: I understand that saying these things doesn’t guarantee your Gen Y employee will understand or appreciate your position. They might even question your sincerity. But, as with any difficult discussion, all we can do is everything we can to increase the odds that the conversation will go well. We can guarantee it will work.

Provide a Vision of Hope

You want your Gen Y employee to see that there is hope — that there is a path to get to where they want to go. You do this in part by being crystal-clear about what you want them to work on. You give examples of how you would want to see them act or respond. I like the term “videotape descriptions” when describing the way to communicate clearly what you want. When describing what you want, imagine you are describing what you are seeing and hearing on a training video depicting the desired behavior. The more clear and specific you are, the more hopeful your Gen Y employee will feel about their chances of success. They know what the target is; they can see the goal. You also provide a vision of hope by making it clear that you want to help them get there and by working together to create a professional development plan. You don’t want to leave it as “OK, here’s a laundry list of things you need to get good at. We’ll reconvene in six months to see how you’re doing.” Working together to create a plan not only creates greater confidence that they’ll achieve their goal, it also makes it far more likely they will succeed.

7 Things to Remember

1. “It takes time; be patient” will douse the flame of enthusiasm and ambition, and leave you with a disheartened, disengaged employee.
2. You need to first shift your millennial employee from Unconscious Incompetence to Conscious Incompetence.
3. Give specific, crystal-clear examples.
4. State explicitly how much you value the Gen Y employee’s enthusiasm and ambition.
5. Remind your Gen Y employee that you want to help her grow professionally.
6. Add the “My responsibility to you and…” frame.
7. Provide a vision of hope.

So, Let’s Apply This…

Think of some conversations about an employee’s distorted perception of their readiness to advance that you’ve been avoiding. Think of how you can use these guidelines to increase the odds of that conversation going well. And then have that conversation.

How to Be Sure Your Job Req Attracts Anyone and Everyone

One of the things that frustrated me when I was a recruiter was a poorly written job description. This was just one of many puzzle pieces that provided the impetus for me to leave recruiting and work on aligning talent strategy with corporate strategy. For those of you who are responsible for writing job descriptions and/or approving them for your company (hiring managers, corporate recruiters, RPOs), what guidelines do you follow to produce exceptional and accurate job descriptions? Do you even follow any guidelines? Has anyone ever taught you how to write an effective and accurate job description? Have you thought about what’s necessary to attract the “right” candidate for you and used these things to recruit those top performers so they want to come to work for you? Do you just throw the job description onto your “careers” page, a job board, or social networking site, and hope (I always say “hope” is never an effective strategy) great candidates find you? But most importantly, is your job description a reflection of an aligned executive team, benchmarked employees, and well-thought-out recruiting practices that are directly in line with executive alignment and culture? One of my LinkedIn connections passed on a job description through his network for one of his connections who’s looking for inside sales folks. The individual who wrote it is a VP of Sales & Marketing. I’m not sure if he’s responsible for all their recruiting or if this company also employs corporate recruiters and/or 3rd party agencies. Either way, this is a wonderful teaching example of what won’t work, unless you’re looking for low-quality employees. I’ve included the entire job description (click to enlarge) with the company’s name removed, for obvious reasons. As you read this, can you see some of the main the issues I’m seeing? It occurs to me that they are just casting a very wide net to see what they may catch. Let’s look at the most important items. The company’s name is listed in the first sentence but there’s no indication of what this company does, a brief description of who they are, what makes them a company you would want to work for, etc. Is the writer of this job spec “assuming” the reader knows what they do? Do they think this is going to attract top talent? If they aren’t going to take the time to put together a well-thought-out description, how will they be to work for? This is the type of job description that will probably attract candidates who are just looking for a job because they need one. Maybe this job can tide them over until the economy improves … What does this company sell? It says that they want someone with experience selling the “SAAS Model,” specifically Sales 2.0 Tools. Is this the product? They are looking for an inside rep … Where will this candidate be located? Will they be required to work at the corporate office or from home wherever they live? What’s the territory? Is it vertically focused? Is there a quota? What’s the average deal size? What about the comp plan? Why is it missing? Leaving the plan out may cause the reader to assume some things.

• Candidates who aren’t looking for work will probably not even waste their time looking at this. If the plan range is not there the plan may be lousy.
• Leaving a comp plan out of a description makes me wonder what they’re trying to hide.

Putting the comp plan in the description like this can also do a number of different things:

• It may attract candidates who have never earned anywhere near the plan.
• It may keep higher quality candidates from looking at this if they’re already making more money than the plan. They don’t know if the plan is negotiable based on experience, talent, quality, etc.

Five years of inside sales required. Do you know anyone in inside sales who is just waiting to move to outside sales once they have enough experience? Granted, not all inside reps want to move outside, but many do. You may capture candidates who are happy in the status quo. What percentage of time is spent qualifying inbound leads vs. outbound target account penetration? It takes very different types of sales skills to farm (qualify inbound leads) and hunt (outbound penetration). It would be valuable to the candidate reading this to know where they need to be stronger. Lastly, and most importantly, they say they want a “team player with an entrepreneurial spirit …” Does that sound like an oxymoron to anyone else? I’m not saying one can’t be a team player and be entrepreneurial. Culturally, candidates (and companies) will be more heavily weighted to one or the other. I suspect this company has never invested the time to look at their culture and even attempt to align it to be sure they are all on the same bus headed to the same destination. That should be enough to get you thinking more broadly about what you should be doing internally to be able to generate a high quality job description. I’d love to hear any thoughts, comments, concerns, or questions about this topic.

Why You Must Kick the Sourcing Habit

As many of you know — I announced it at the ERE Expo in San Diego — I’ve decided to bring recruiting back to recruiting. This is my new old mission. Somehow this has been lost in the past few years when overall candidate supply exceeded demand. Hiring top talent is not the same as finding top talent. While sourcing is a step in this journey, it is only a step, and one getting easier each passing day. Consider this: at the current rate, by March 11, 2012, everyone will be connected by one degree of separation with everyone else either via LinkedIn or Facebook. (FYI: I define sourcing as the process of name generation only. If you pick up the phone and call a person who did not apply, and convince him or her to consider your position, you’re recruiting. If the person applied for a job and all you’re doing is qualifying the person, that’s screening, not recruiting.) While sourcing is getting easier, recruiting these now-more-visible folks is getting harder. This will become even more challenging as the demand for top talent accelerates, and everyone makes a wholesale shift to contact the same passive candidates you’re contacting. In this case, good recruiting skills will make all the difference as to who attracts and hires the person. Here are some interesting stats by way of a LinkedIn survey we conducted in late 2010, to validate this point. First, only 8% of the fully employed professional pool of candidates were actively looking and open to considering a lateral transfer. Another 10% were causally looking, but only interested in a better job than the one currently held. Everyone else needed a significant bump in compensation or a significant career move to even consider engaging in a conversation. Without a big employer brand, recruiters need to make the case that the jobs they’re representing offer something better. This is the first step in real recruiting. As part of this “bring recruiting back to recruiting” mission, I put together this quick list of things modern-day recruiters need to be able to do to recruit top passive candidates. While they’re all important, which ones would you select as your top three?

1. Know the job
2. Know the industry and competition
3. Partner with the hiring manager
4. Market the job via voice and email
5. Network, network, network
6. Accurately screen and assess talent
7. Recruit and influence top prospects
8. Negotiate and close the offer
9. Don’t take no for an answer
10. Sell a career move, not a lateral transfer

Your top three might be different, but here’s mine. Although the ability to partner with the hiring manager is essential, it’s second on my list, since in order to be a partner you need to know the job. That’s why knowing the job is first on my list. Third on my list is not taking “no” for an answer. To some degree these three in combination with all of the rest all represent a chicken-and-egg-type problem. (You can download a flyer with a more complete version of this Recruiter Circle of Excellence you see in the graphic, including a ranking scale, on the Recruiter’s Wall.) Without knowing the job, there is no way either a hiring manager or a top candidate will respect your judgment or be swayed by whatever eloquence you manage to muster. Without knowing the job, persistence won’t help much, either. It will be like pushing on a rope. While there’s more to it than this, this is the reason I consider real job knowledge as No. 1. Job knowledge is not simply knowing the list of skills and responsibilities listed on the job description. It’s understanding the actual work the person actually needs to do to be successful. For example, having a CPA, 5-10 years in corporate reporting including SOX, and strong international reporting experience is not knowing the job. Moving the company to the international financial reporting standards in two years, building a team of eight staff and professional accountants to assess and upgrade the current, cumbersome domestic SEC and SOX reporting process, and quickly developing a worldwide set of accounting policies, is knowing the real job. Without this type of detailed job knowledge, you’ll get little respect from the hiring manager, and top people with other things to do will dismiss you out of hand. Of course, to obtain this critical information you need to get it directly from the hiring manager. One way to better understand the job is to ask these questions during the intake meeting:

• What are the big things the person will need to accomplish in order to be considered a top performer?
• Why would a top performer who is not looking, who is fully employed, and has multiple opportunities, want this specific position?
• What are the biggest challenges the person will face on the job?
• What are the big areas of leadership and/or strategy the person would need to successfully handle?

After you have these answers, then go through every critical skill on the job description and ask, “What does the person need to do with the skill as part of the actual job?” For example, for strong communications skills, you might get something like “make weekly presentations to the design review committee.” If the manager asks why you need to have this information, tell him or her that this is the information passive candidates who aren’t looking need to know in order to decide if they just want to enter into a conversation. Then as a real zinger, ask the hiring manager if he or she would agree to see a person who could perform all of the work listed, but didn’t have exactly the same background listed on the job description. If the manager says “of course,” you now know the job. In parallel, you are moving toward partnership status. If the manager says no, persist and ask the questions again, or read this article before you ask the questions again. The key: do not start looking for a candidate until the hiring manager says the real job as defined is correct, and also agrees to see all candidates who have done comparable work. Otherwise everything you do afterwards will be problematic. With this “new age” job profile in hand, start contacting passive candidates and ask this question: “would you be open to talking about a possible career move, if it was significantly better than what you’re doing today?” They all will say yes. If not, persist and ask the question word-for-word again. When they say yes, you must then get these candidates to tell you about themselves first. Use this time to determine if the candidate is highly qualified and would see your job as a career move. If so, recruit the person. If the person is not perfect for your spot, network and get three names of some great people who are perfect. This is where persistence and all of the other skills listed in the Recruiter Circle of Excellence above will come into play. But if you don’t know the job, and aren’t a partner with your hiring-manager client, all of the persistence and skills listed won’t help much.

Know What Your Recruiting Competitors Are Up to

It blows my mind how the subject and function of competitive intelligence falls by the wayside in most HR/recruiting departments. Just what exactly is competitive intelligence and what is it used for? Let’s start first by defining it:

Definition: the action of defining, gathering, analyzing, and distributing intelligence about products, customers, competitors and any aspect of the environment needed to support executives and managers in making strategic decisions for an organization (Wikipedia.org)

A couple weeks back, I participated in a webinar about strategic recruiting methods along with over 400 HR/recruiting professionals. During the call, the host took a live quickpoll on the topic of competitive intelligence; here is the question that was posed to the participants, “Do you know today how your organization’s recruitment performance compares to other organizations in your industry?” After a quick minute of tallying the results, an overwhelming 70% of the participants did not know how their own organizational recruitment performance stacked up against their competition, which leads me to ask: why not? When I contemplate the concept of competitive intelligence and how it can impact a company’s recruitment strategy and performance, I cannot see how more companies are not incorporating this subject into a core strength of their recruitment strategy. I began to think further into some other industries/professions that I have strong interest in, where competitive intelligence is the starting point for strategies and plans. Professional football is the industry at the top of my mind when it comes to competitive intelligence. NFL teams step on the field every Sunday during the regular season with real-time intelligence of the opposing team’s playbook, tendencies, tricks, coaches, and players. They want to know ahead of time what the opposing team may do: what play will they run, and what personnel package they will have on the field, for example. They want to gain the advantage on the competing team. NFL teams typically spend the equivalent of a few days watching film, studying pictures, and reviewing playbooks and players before the first game whistle is blown. Former head coach Jon Gruden went as far to make it a point to know what types of shoes the opposing players were going to wear. Companies that sell products use competitive intelligence on a massive scale and on a daily basis. A perfect example is the competitive intelligence war in the soda industry. Coke & Pepsi are two industry leaders that use demographics, psychographics, consumer data, research, and numerous other data sources to locate their ideal consumers and then target consumers in various methods. So why is competitive intelligence not a larger part of the recruitment functions of companies? Why did 70% of HR/recruiting professionals on the webinar have no idea what their competitors are doing? There are numerous tools and resources available to help companies and organizations gain competitive intelligence when it comes to the recruiting function. For example, there are reports available that provide real-time business intelligence for the marketplace. If you don’t know where to look or how to get your hands on these reports, there are agencies out there that specialize in such technology and can help you. Cutting edge HR/recruiting departments use such reports and intelligence to analyze employment trends, gather competitive intelligence, forecast economic conditions, and source hard-to-fill positions. The same principles of competitive intelligence can be use within the recruitment functions and activities of companies. Using competitive intelligence can provide a dashboard of the competitions strategy. Give your organization a recruiting advantage. Use competitive intelligence to gain a step up on the competition and beat your competitor to the talent you desire. Don’t be one of the 70%’ers that are lost in the sauce.

Is Your Organization Optimized? 8 Questions to Ask Yourself

Our country has gone from conversations about how to recruit and retain quality employees in a market with low unemployment just a few short years ago to conversations about how to find a job in a market with record unemployment numbers. What’s missing is the most important conversation, regardless of our economic situation. No one is talking about what needs to be done by companies to optimize their organization with the highest number of “A” players possible. What percentage is possible? If done properly, 80-90%. In our current economic climate it is especially important to move away from mediocrity. The 80-20 rule, as it relates to sales, is just not acceptable if you truly want to be successful in today’s market. For those who aren’t familiar with the 80/20 rule, it says that 20% or your sales organization will produce 80% of your revenue. Is this really what you’re company is committed to? Have you considered the possibility of what your revenues would look like with 80-90% of your sales organization achieving quotas vs. 20-50%?

Optimization Checklist

These questions are just some that you need to be asking yourself. If you’re not asking these questions, you are headed for mediocrity or possibly even failure. 

1. Have you calculated the costs of your hiring errors over the past two to five years? This is truly the only way to know how many millions of revenue dollars you’ve lost.
2. Do you really know what type of people you’re looking for? Have you created a specific, measurable job spec using your current and past A players as the benchmark? Is the executive team aligned with regard to revenue and growth plans and how the sales organization directly helps to bring this revenue plan to fruition?
3. Are you clear on your corporate culture, and have you put a process in place to assess candidate fit with your culture?
4. Do you have a plan in place to assess your current employees and remove all your under-performers, as well as a timeline in which to complete this task?
5. How are you finding candidates? If you employ an internal recruiting organization, are they posting ads on job boards or actively searching out quality candidates? Are you using contingent recruiting firms to find your candidates? Have you retained a firm for the search?
6. Are you paying your internal recruiters at the same level you pay you’re top salespeople? If not, do you actually expect a 60-80k/yr recruiter to have the ability to find and attract a 300-400k/yr performer? If they had that ability, they’d be working for themselves, not for you.
7. Do you have a plan to retain top talent?
8. Have you created a list of questions, both open ended and closed, to qualify the competencies you require of your sales executives and management?

What Else Will Drive you Insane? The Form I-9 On-boarding Process

Many people know the definition of insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  Unfortunately, many employers are taking an “insane approach” to I-9 training by utilizing in-house trainers who are not qualified to teach Form I-9 compliance. These in-house trainers are not experts concerning employer sanctions and are simply training hiring managers to commit the same mistakes over and over again, perpetuating a pattern of non-compliance!  Worse yet, many hiring managers never receive any training because…well, it’s a one page form – how hard can it be? Form I-9 Compliance – What It Really Involves The problem is the entire Form I-9 process is much more complex than just filling out a 1 page form.  Form I-9 compliance requires an understanding of immigration law, anti-discrimination provisions, document fraud, identity theft, and many other factors. Failing to properly train hiring managers in proper on-boarding procedures may put an employer at significant risk. In fact, the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) lists “TRAINING”” as one of the Top Ten Best Practices for I-9 compliance, yet most employers are not addressing this very powerful solution to compliance issues. I-9 Compliance Solution Somehow, there is always an excuse not to “get around to it”.  Excuses run the gambit from “We don’t need training” to “It’s too expensive or too time consuming.”  Fortunately, I-9 Okay has heard these concerns and developed THE SOLUTION to I-9 training. Our information packed step-by-step Form I-9 Compliance Training is delivered on-demand via the internet, on your schedule and priced to fit any training budget.  There is no longer any excuse not to train every person who is responsible for I-9 completion for your company. For more information visit our website www.I-9okay.com W. Garnett & Associates Human Capital Management 1-303-658-9342

What’s New in March – E-Verify Self Check Goes Live

Have you heard about the “new” E-Verify Self Check? E-Verify Self-Check will allow individuals to check their own work authorization status prior to being hired by an employer. The purpose of allowing self-check is to facilitate the correction of errors which might lead to an employer receiving a tentative non-confirmation (TNC) at the time they process a new hire through E-Verify. USCIS will roll-out “self-check” to users who maintain an address and are physically located in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Mississippi, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. This limited trial will allow for feedback and proper testing before E-Verify Self-Check is available nationwide. Click here to see the DHS published info about self check. One has to ask the question, “Who does this benefit?” The current E-Verify process already allows for the possibility that a new hire’s information may be incorrect in government databases and has a very specific procedure the employer must follow if they receive a tentative non-confirmation (TNC) from E-Verify. In the case of a TNC, the employer must give the employee the opportunity to correct erroneous information with the government and may not take any adverse action against the employee until they have been given the opportunity to correct that information. The employer must allow the employee to continue to work until the TNC has been resolved. So why would an individual need to run a “self-check” before applying for a job? While some people may want to use E-Verify Self Check to satisfy their own curiosity, the only “real” reason I can think of is to check one’s FAKE or STOLEN DOCUMENTS to see if E-Verify will verify work authorization before taking the chance of presenting those fraudulent documents to an employer – which constitutes a felony! To date, one of the most common objections to E-Verify is it encourages document fraud. In the case of identity theft, E-Verify often cannot discern if the documents presented by a new hire actually belong to that individual. This is a loop-hole that is getting smaller but is still a valid concern for employer’s who are using E-Verify. From my perspective Self-Check creates many more problems than the “enhancement” it is designed to resolve.  If an unauthorized worker wants to check to see if the fake documents he purchased are going to pass muster with an E-Verify employer, all he needs to do is use Self-Check. We already know based on past performance that E-Verify is not an effective tool in recognizing cases of identity theft so again, I ask the question – who does this benefit? For me, the answer is obvious. W. Garnett & Associates Human Capital Management 1-303-658-9342

The Form I-9 and Upper Level Management

How Do You Know?

• What if your hiring managers aren’t taking the Form I-9 seriously?
• What if the I-9 is just one more thing on their “to do” list?
• Worse yet, what if they are purposefully circumventing the I-9 process in order to hire illegal workers?

When Will You Find Out? If you are like Howard Industries, a manufacturing company in Mississippi, you find out when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigates your business and you ultimately pay $2.5 million dollars in fines as a result of the actions of one human resources manager. According to court records this one “rogue” HR manager routinely hired unauthorized workers who presented fake documents and completed the Form I-9 with the false information. The same HR manager was also accused of ignoring notices from the Social Security Administration that SS numbers submitted for some employees were invalid. ICE claimed the HR manager regularly instructed employees to obtain fake IDs. He plead guilty and faces a maximum of 5 years imprisonment on the conspiracy charge and on each employee verification fraud count. He also faces a minimum of 2 years of imprisonment for the aggravated identity theft charge and a possible fine up to $250,000. As a result of the actions of this one “rogue” employee, Howard Industries was charged with knowingly and willfully conspiring to encourage and induce undocumented workers to reside in the U.S. and knowingly conspiring to conceal, harbor and shield from detection such workers. The company agreed to plead guilty to the one-count felony of “Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States” which called for a term of not less than one and not more than 5 years of probation and a fine of up to $500,000. The fine was substantially enhanced to $2.5 million due to the nature of the crime, the number of workers involved and the size of the company. What’s the Message Here? Failure to comply with Form I-9 requirements can lead to huge fines, criminal indictments, and even prison sentences! The impact on your company’s image due to negative press as well as the enormous legal cost of defending yourself must also be considered. To protect your business I urge you to order a full 3rd party audit of your I-9 records by a qualified expert. Sure you can audit your own I-9 forms, but an in-house audit is a case of “the fox watching the hen house” and offers little if any protection against I-9 abuse. You should also develop a comprehensive Form I-9 policy and procedure plan to address such issues as document fraud. Order training for all your hiring managers so they fully understand the entire I-9 process and the risk of non-compliance. ICE investigations continue to increase by the day. Now is the time to take a good look at your Form I-9 compliance program and get the help you need to protect your business from financial ruin.     W. Garnett & Associates Human Capital Management 1-303-658-9342

The Serious Nature of Form I-9 Compliance

A Subway franchisee in North Carolina with 11 employees is probably wishing he had proper I-9 procedures in place before ICE visited him and cost him a lengthy legal battle and over $27,000 in fines.  Macy’s department stores in Florida are licking their wounds after answering allegations of document abuse and paying stiff penalties concerning the Form I-9.  Chipotle is reeling after its Minneapolis restaurants were audited by ICE and is now facing more scrutiny in Virginia and DC.  As a result of the audit they have fired hundreds of employees and are facing a public relations nightmare. How Will Your Company Fair When ICE Comes Knocking? Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is on a mission and your business is in their crosshairs.  This week, ICE issued 1000 Notices of Inspection to companies just like yours requesting Form I-9 documentation for all current employees plus the I-9 records of all employees terminated within the last 3 years. Statistically, over 80% of those employers will pay civil money penalties for errors and omissions on the I-9.  An ICE document inspection is a full audit of your company’s I-9 documents and EVERYTHING counts!  It is not enough to have a Form I-9 on file for all employees.  It must be 100% complete and accurate or you will pay significant fines.  The more employees you have, the higher your risk. It is a Costly Misconception that ICE is Only Looking for Illegal Workers The above referenced Subway in North Carolina paid fines averaging over $2000 per employee.  If your company has 100 employees, you could be facing fines of a quarter of a million dollars or more!  Are you willing and/or able to take that chance? As a proactive, prudent employer you should address your Form I-9 processes today.  Focus on Best Practices such as:

• Train hiring managers to properly complete the Form I-9
• Develop a Company Compliance Plan concerning I-9 procedures
• Conduct an independent 3^rd party audit to assess your risk BEFORE ICE visits

Aggressive worksite enforcement by ICE is here to stay and there is no excuse for ignoring your responsibility to the Form I-9 any longer.  Taking affordable proactive steps now can save you time, money, and your corporate image in the future. W. Garnett & Associates Human Capital Management 1-303-658-9342

Form I-9 compliance a priority for Obama Administration

The Wall Street Journal is reporting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials announced they are ramping up their existing crackdowns on employers who hire illegal workers by creating a new employment compliance inspection center in Virginia. The new office will scrutinize Form I-9 employee data from employers selected for I-9 audits and immigration investigations. During the past fiscal year, ICE conducted audits of more than 2,740 companies — nearly twice as many as it completed the year before. In the wake of these audits, Immigration officials handed companies a record-breaking $7 million in civil fines. According to ICE officials, Form I-9 audits are “one of the most powerful tools the federal government has to ensure that businesses are complying” with the law. “Ultimately, it is in a company’s best financial interest to proactively comply with the law now rather than to face potential fines or criminal prosecution for noncompliance in the future,” an ICE spokeswoman said. The Virginia center is expected to have 15 auditors who will support ICE’s immigration enforcement strategy field audits. According to John Morton, chief of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement the new center will “address a need to conduct audits even of the largest employers with a very large number of employees.” Learn why it is a good strategy to have an independent 3rd party audit of your Forms I-9 procedures and policies before ICE comes knocking at your door.

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