Below is a information to guide you in your year-end cleaning as relates to proper discard of documents.

How do we get rid of it?

Please be careful when disposing of documents. Imagine the outcry if you simply put in the dumpster documents listing employees’ social security numbers, addresses, or private medical information. Many states have laws requiring organizations to carefully maintain security and confidentiality when disposing of files – generally requiring that you render the information unreadable or undecipherable.

Office shredders are appropriate for daily use but not very efficient for large volumes or documents. A better solution is to utilize a document management company.

Whether you are still working on your end of the year file purges or are anticipating office spring cleaning, we hope you will refer to these guidelines. If you need further assistance on this or any other Human Resource issue, call on Forté Human Resources.

Below is information to guide you in your year-end cleaning as relates to investigations and electronic documents. Remember that many federal and state laws include provisions related to record retention.

Documents Related to Enforcement Actions: If your company is being investigated for some reason, you should retain everything until the action is completely finalized. For example, if you are audited for alleged wage and hour violations, you must not discard wage information related to the time period being audited. If you are responding to an EEOC complaint, you must retain all the documentation related to that complaint and employee.

What about electronic documents?
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) were recently revised to address issues of discovery as they relate to electronically stored information. (Basically, the FRCP are the court rules and procedures attorneys follow when conducting civil suits.) The FRCP always included rules related to the retention and discovery of documents relevant to litigation. However, because so many documents are now stored electronically, the rules needed to be updated.

•Talk with your IT department to determine what your company policy or practice is related to data storage and retention.
•If not done already, draft a Document Storage and Retention policy. This policy will set out procedures for scheduled destruction of documents and electronically stored information. Have your attorney review your policy.
•Draft a policy to address document preservation should litigation be threatened. The rules change if you think you will be sued.
•Communicate your policies to all employees who may create or have access to electronic data.

If you are like most businesses, you create and save an enormous amount of data – both electronically and hardcopy. This is a good opportunity to review and update your policies related to retention; it is a good preventative measure to save time and expense should your company ever, unfortunately, be named in a lawsuit.

Every year at this time, our phones ring with questions such as “How long do I have to keep these personnel files?” Or “Do we really need to hang on to these time cards?

Below is a short list to guide you in your year-end cleaning. Remember that many federal and state laws include provisions related to record retention. While the following does not anticipate every piece of paper, these general, and usually generous, guidelines anticipate the most common record retention questions.

The government has also provided a carrot to those employers who hire veterans. Under the Work Opportunity Tax Credit program (WOTC) an employer may receive a significant tax credit when hiring certain veterans. The tax credit can be worth up to $2400 if you hire a veteran who has been out of work for at least one month and up to $5600 if he or she has been unemployed for more than six months. The credit can be worth up to $9600 if you hire a veteran with a service-related disability. Be sure and understand the particulars of these programs before trying to take advantage of them.

So, don’t be shy. Veterans deserve our support. A little effort on our part will go a long way toward helping them successfully reenter the civilian workforce.

Forte Human Resources can help with your recruiting needs as part of our total HR solution.

P.S. This month Eric Shinseki a retired four-star Army General and Secretary of Veterans Affairs wrote an article worth reading in the Wall Street Journal. It can be found at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204224604577028422920213512.html

There are many job sites where you can post your jobs. Here are a couple of job board sites targeting veterans that we at Forte Human Resources have used:

www.hirepatriots.com

www.recruitmilitary.com

Of course, you can reach out to your local military base directly. Contact (800) 226-0841 to find an ACAP contact near you.

Again, a little creativity and resourcefulness on the part of the hiring manager and recruiter will bring excellent results.

The best answer is a little creativity and research on the part of the hiring manager and/or recruiter. For example, if you see “Quartermaster” on an Army veteran’s resume, you should know that this person was responsible for logistics support of soldiers and operations. This person was probably responsible for providing support for thousands of soldiers and equipment around the world! If he could do that, he could probably handle your warehouse in Denver! If you are a civilian employer, translate “Quartermaster” or “Supply” to jobs like Warehouse Manager. (By the way, Quartermaster has a different definition if the person was in the Navy.)

Simply do an internet search for “military job titles” to find lots of handy sites that will help you translate military job titles to the more common civilian job titles.

Hundreds of thousands of Military Veterans will be soon be reentering the civilian workforce. It’s time for the private sector, companies both big and small, to step up and provide this group with employment opportunities. Military veterans are well disciplined, trained, dedicated and hard working. They deserve our support.

However, hiring military veterans can pose some challenges for employers. For example, how do you translate military experience to the civilian job market? How do you reach out to the veteran workforce? What about the special needs veteran – those with injuries or disabilities? All good questions and ones that sometimes cause employers to unfortunately shy away from actively recruiting and hiring veterans.

Remember, fads don’t last. Solid management and leadership practices do.
Republication permission: Carl Robinson, Ph.D., Advanced Leadership Consulting, Seattle, Washington. www.leadershipconsulting.com carl@leadershipconsulting.com (206) 545-1990.

But don’t be fooled by appearances. Satisfied employees don’t necessarily equate to productive employees. Oftentimes managers are asked to “boost morale” in an effort to increase productivity – but that is putting the cart before the horse. Focus should be on increasing productivity which has a much better track record of showing itself to be a precursor of increasing morale. Take steps to ensure that your own efforts are focused on employee production, not employee satisfaction – done properly this will leave you with increases across both spectrums.

Republication permission: Carl Robinson, Ph.D., Advanced Leadership Consulting, Seattle, Washington. www.leadershipconsulting.com carl@leadershipconsulting.com (206) 545-1990.