With the compliance landscape constantly changing, it’s no wonder that 33% of employers find keeping up with state regulations across states extremely challenging. Whether you’re an HR leader in a small business or one that employs hundreds of workers, compliance responsibilities fall on your shoulders. Herein lies the challenge for many HR departments (or teams of one): you just don’t have the budget or the resources to manage compliance alone. That’s why finding the right partner who can offer technology that ensures compliance will set your business up for long-term success.
5 ways the right HR partner can help you manage compliance effectively
1. Recruiting & Hiring
Recruiting and hiring, in today’s business environment, is a difficult, fast-paced game. There’s a lot of information you’re required to collect and report on, and one slight misstep can have significant consequences. Ultimately, the best way to protect your business is to automate the process with an applicant tracking system and onboarding tool that captures and stores all compliance data and enables new hires to electronically complete documents before their first day on the job. Not only will the right system eliminate you from capturing data by hand and storing paper files, but it will allow you to capture reasons for not hiring a candidate so you’re covered in case of an audit and offer a single place within the employee record to maintain critical employee documents.
2. Employees and Litigation
People management compliance is challenging for businesses, because at any moment, an employee could sue you. And if you’re faced with potential litigation, one of the most useful documents you can provide to defend your actions or policies is a copy of your employee handbook. But with so much already on your plate, maintaining an updated handbook can quickly fall to the bottom of your to-do list. Instead of taking on the burden alone, look for an HR provider that can help you develop, update and review your employee handbook so you don’t waste your time searching the internet for laws or policies that could be out of date or have to create important documents on your own.
3. Wage Violations
Improperly classifying employees is one of the most common mistakes organizations make – and the impact can be costly. In 2017 alone, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division collected more than $270 million in back wages for 240,000+ workers, and they’re not backing down. Enforcement efforts continue to rise, and with today’s workforce now comprised of more freelancers and contractors than ever, keeping up is no easy feat. An HR provider can make labor management less challenging by offering a time and attendance solution that accurately tracks employee hours and offers real-time reports on labor distribution and overtime.
4. Proper Training and Ongoing Education
According to the Brandon Hall Group, only one-third of companies consider their compliance training effective.
Mandatory compliance training is a requirement organization can’t take lightly but often struggle to manage. Compliance training and ongoing education ensures that your employees are in-the-know on the latest rules and regulations. But compliance training shouldn’t just be part of onboarding. It offers you an on-going opportunity to continuously educate and train employees to help avoid costly missteps. For this reason, finding a partner that offers a learning management tool that can deliver and manage compliance training is a must-have. Without a system that tracks course completions by date and time and produces comprehensive reporting, it’s difficult to actually prove course completions should you ever be audited.
5. Certification Tracking
Training is only half the battle. In order to maintain compliance throughout the entire employee lifecycle, tracking certifications and their expiration dates is key to ensuring employees are qualified for their roles. Take the healthcare industry for example. An HR tool can help you ensure compliance by setting automatic reminders for important dates, such as deadlines for I-9 documentation and expiring employee certifications, licenses and training courses completed.
Take the Next Step
If you’re just beginning your search or have decided it’s time to find a new HR partner who can help make managing compliance easier, Paycor can help.
For nearly 30 years, we’ve maintained a core expertise in HR and payroll compliance. We established our expertise in the Cincinnati tri-state area, one of the most challenging tax jurisdictions in the country, so we’re able to provide clients with usable, accurate recruiting, onboarding HR, time and attendance, learning management and payroll solutions that ensure compliance and help HR and business leaders accomplish their goals.
View our post on for more information on how HR teams can reduce risk.
