Keeping the Right People - Exit Interviews

When an employee leaves your organization, an exit interview is a helpful tool to:

·         Identify what your organization is doing well

·         Pinpoint areas where you can improve in your organization

·         Confirm the skill sets, experience, and attributes needed for the job

·         Capture useful knowledge, contacts, tips, etc. from the exiting employee

·         Understand why the employee is leaving

·         Say good-bye on good terms

If your organization is large enough to have an HR staff person, he/she would typically hold the exit interview. Otherwise, the supervisor of the exiting employee would conduct the interview.

Exit interviews can be conducted face-to-face, be in the form of a written survey (hard-copy or electronic), or held over the phone. Only face-to-face and telephone interviews allow you to explore responses and gain even more insight. You can help the exiting employee feel more comfortable by starting with friendly discussion and then easing into the more probing questions. Always start by explaining the purpose of the exit interview. However, some exiting employees may be more forthcoming with information if they can write, rather than say, their feelings.

Exit interviews are an important HR tool and the option should be available to all exiting employees; however, participation in an exit interview must be voluntary.

Potential exit interview questions

1.       Reason for leaving

2.       Why have you decided to leave the organization?

3.       Did anything trigger your decision to leave?

4.       Was a single event responsible for your decision to leave?

5.       Have you shared your concerns with anyone in the company prior to deciding to leave?

6.       Did anyone in this organization discriminate against you, harass you, or cause hostile working conditions?

Job satisfaction

1.       What was most satisfying about your job? What was least satisfying about your job?

2.       What would you change about your job?

3.       What did you like most about this organization? What did you like least about this organization?

4.       What would you improve to make our workplace better?

5.       Did your job duties turn out to be as you expected?

6.       Were your job responsibilities characterized correctly during the interview process and orientation?

7.       Did this organization help you to fulfill your career goals?

8.       Were you happy with your pay, benefits and other incentives?

9.       Did any organization policies or procedures (or any other obstacles) make your job more difficult?

Supervision and support

1.       Do you feel you had the resources and support necessary to accomplish your job? If not, what was missing?

2.       The quality of supervision is important to most people at work. How was your relationship with your manager? What could your supervisor do to improve his or her management style and skill?

3.       Did you have clear goals and know what was expected of you in your job?

4.       Did you receive enough training to do your job effectively?

5.       Did you receive adequate support to do your job?

6.       Did you receive adequate feedback about your performance day-to-day and in the performance development planning process?

Other

1.       Do you have any tips to help us find your replacement?

2.       Based on your experience with us, what do you think it takes to succeed at this organization?

3.       Would you consider working again for this organization in the future?

4.       Would you recommend working for this organization to your family and friends?

5.       What is your experience of employee morale and motivation in the company?

6.       What does your new company offer that encouraged you to accept their offer and leave this company?

7.       Can this organization do anything to encourage you to stay?

8.       Any other comments?

An in-person exit interview can be a good time to collect keys, identification badges, equipment, etc. from the exiting employee.  End the meeting on a positive note. Thank the exiting employee for their service to your organization. Let them know that the exit interview information is helpful and wish them the best in their new venture.

Need Human Resource help, please feel free to contact us at www.hotlinetohr.com or info@hotlinetohr.com

Canada Work Share Program

Canada Work-Sharing

Facing difficult times?

When employers face difficulties beyond their control and are forced to reduce their company’s activity, they may have only two courses of action:

·        to lay off employees; or

·        to make an agreement with affected employees to participate in a Work-Sharing arrangement.

What is Work-Sharing?

The Work-Sharing Program enables employers to deal with business cutbacks and still avoid laying off employees. Under a Work-Sharing agreement, employers can shorten their employees’ work week by one half day to three days and pay those employees reduced wages. For the hours, days, or shifts that employees do not work, Service Canada arranges for those employees who are eligible for Employment Insurance (EI) to receive benefits, which helps to compensate for the lower wages they receive from the employer.

Win-Win situation

Employees who participate in a Work-Sharing agreement:

·        avoid the hardship of being laid off; and

·        keep their jobs and maintain their work skills.

Employers who participate in a Work-Sharing agreement:

·        retain valued, skilled employees; and

·        avoid the expense of hiring and training new employees when work activity returns to normal.

Working together

The employer and the employees must agree to participate in a Work-Sharing agreement and must apply together.

Both the employer and the employees must sign the application and the resulting agreement with Service Canada. All parties must sign the agreement before its start date.

During the period of the Work-Sharing agreement, the employer, the employees, and Service Canada have the right to terminate the agreement at any time.

Duration

Work-Sharing agreements must have a minimum duration of six weeks.

For new agreements beginning on or after April 3, 2011, the maximum initial Work-Sharing agreement duration is twenty-six weeks with a possible extension up to twelve weeks. 

Additional Temporary Work-Sharing Extension:

A temporary Work-Sharing measure has been put in place providing an additional sixteen weeks to employers with an agreement that began prior to April 3, 2011 and is either currently active or has recently ended.  These extensions must end no later than October 29, 2011.

Work-Sharing agreements generally do not affect employees’ rights to regular EI benefits if they happen to be laid off after the agreement ends.

No waiting period for benefits

Participants do not have to serve a two-week waiting period to receive Work-Sharing benefits; however, it may take a few weeks for the first cheque to arrive.

Who can participate?

Permanent full-time or part-time employees of a company are eligible to participate in the Work-Sharing Program. To receive Work-Sharing benefits, employees must be eligible to receive regular EI benefits. To set up a Work-Sharing agreement, there must be at least two participating employees.

How can employers qualify?

To be eligible, employers must have been in business in Canada year-round for at least two years. They must also be able to show that the need to reduce hours is temporary and unavoidable, and is not a seasonal situation.

As part of the application process, the employer must also submit a recovery plan which includes the activities the employer will undertake to recover within the period of the agreement.

Service Canada cannot approve a Work-Sharing application for an employer involved in a labour dispute.

ROE Web

The easiest way for employers to submit Records of Employment (ROE) once a Work-Sharing application is approved is through ROE Web.

Using ROE Web, employers can:

·        complete one or hundreds of ROEs in minutes at the touch of a button;

·        view, retrieve, and amend ROEs anytime;

·        eliminate mailing costs;

·        save time and increase productivity; and

·        reduce calls and requests for payroll information from Service Canada.

For more information about the Work-Sharing Program visit:

Our HR service is convenient and easily accessible website, 24 hours, 7 day a week therefore allowing us to serve small, medium, and large businesses and individuals all over Ontario (ON),Quebec (QC), Nova Scotia (NS),New Brunswick (NB),Manitoba (MB), British Columbia (BC), Prince Edward Island (PE),Saskatchewan (SK),Alberta (AB),Newfoundland & Labrador (NL), Northwest Territories (NW),Yukon (YK), Nunavut (NU).

www.hotlinetohr.com

CNSX - New Listing - Hotline to HR Inc. (HTH)

Bulletin: 2011-0501

TORONTO, May 9 /CNW/ - The common shares of Hotline to HR Inc. have been approved for listing on CNSX.  The Company has 23,466,333 common shares outstanding with a public float of approximately 14 million shares.

Hotline to HR is a human resources marketing company whose principal business will be the development of a niche market in outsourcing of human resources services in areas such as recruitment and staffing, compensation and payroll, employee benefits, talent management and employee relations, training and development, compliance, consulting services, and ERP/ATS solutions.

Listing and disclosure documents for Hotline to HR Inc. will be available in the CNSX Listings Disclosure Hall.

Trading Date: Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Symbol: HTH
CUSIP: 441476 10 8
ISIN: CA 441476 10 8 6

VOTING LEGISLATION

Voting in any type of election, from local elections to Federal elections, provides an important way to voice your opinions regarding elected leaders and overall policies; voting also helps you decide your own future by electing a person who might reflect your own views. The ability to vote exists as one of the most cherished Rights that many fought for, and died for over the centuries.

The federal election will take place on May 2, 2011.

The following summarizes an employer’s obligation to provide an employee time off, under the Canada Elections Act

·         Any employee eligible to vote is entitled to three consecutive hours from work on election day

•        Time off provided is at the convenience of the employer

·         Time off provided must be paid. An employer cannot make a deduction from wages or impose a penalty on an employee for time taken off to vote

•        There is no obligation to provide paid time off if an employee has three consecutive hours free from work within voting hours. For example an employee employed in Ontario (eastern Time Zone) scheduled to start work no earlier than 12:30 p.m. or who will finish work by 6:30 p.m. is not entitled to additional time off to vote.

If the right to vote no longer existed, the country would no longer survive as a democratic nation, but completely totalitarian. By not voting, you give away your right to influence the government overall.

•        An employer is not required to provide three consecutive hours off during the middle of the day. To satisfy three consecutive hours, an employer may allow an employee to arrive at work later then the usual or to leave earlier.

Polling Stations will open and close ay the following local times:

TIME ZONE VOTING TIMES

Central Atlantic and Newfoundland 8:30 a.m. – 8:30 p.m.

Eastern 9:30 a.m. – 9:30 p.m.

Pacific 7:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Mountain 7:30 a.m. – 7:30 p.m.

If you need assistance or further information, do not hesitate to contact one of our Human Resources Professionals at HOTLINE TO HR, to assist you.

HEALTH AND SAFETY TRAINING

HEALTH AND SAFETY TRAINING

Employers must have an overall safety program including relative site specific safety information where applicable. The safety training program should cover topics such as, but not limited to:

• Accident Prevention and Safety Promotion
• Safety Compliance
• Accident and Emergency Response
• Personal Protective Equipment
• Safety Practices
• Equipment and Machinery
• Chemical and Hazardous Materials Safety
• Workplace Hazards
• Employee Involvement
• Legislation

Employers must document all training. Creating a training matrix will help keep track of who has been trained, when they were trained, the training topic, and when it is time for refresher training. Employees must also sign an official sign-in sheet provided by the employer that can serve as proof that employees received proper training. The sign in sheet must have a broad description of what is being covered in the training. Tests or quizzes on the presented material can help gauge employee understanding of the material and highlight topics that need to be reviewed.

The non-English speaking population is consistently growing in many industries and it is important that employers provide training for those workers, as legislation requires that all employees be properly trained. The training program can also help a trainer keep the required mandated safety training courses organized and up-to-date.

Safety training classes help establish a safety culture in which employees themselves help promote proper safety procedures while on the job. It is important that new employees be properly trained and embrace the importance of workplace safety as it is easy for seasoned workers to negatively influence the new hires. That negative influence however, can be purged with the establishment of new, hands-on, innovative effective safety training which will ultimately lead to an effective safety culture. A 1998 NIOSH study concluded that the role of training in developing and maintaining effective hazard control activities is a proven and successful method of intervention.

Proper training will also show due diligence with the Ministry of Labour, and can be the difference between jail time or no jail time.

Do not hesitate to contact one of our Human Resources Professionals at HOTLINE TO HR, to assist in the following:
• safety policy templates
• health and safety forms
• task analysis
• job description templates
• training information
• legislation information
• training matrix
• sign off sheets

Disobedience

Disobedience

Workplace disobedience refers to an employee not following the rules and regulations of their employer. It may also include any laws or acts whose rules may govern the employee’s conduct.

Disobedience is, in most cases, best dealt but through progressive discipline. The only way that a single act of misconduct can be seen as immediate grounds for termination is if it meets all of the following criteria:

·         It is deliberate

·         The employee fully understood what they were doing

·         As a result, there is substantial harm to the employer

Courts are reluctant to find just cause in dismissing an employee whose disobedience is an isolated occurrence. If the court finds that the act of disobedience may have reflected poor judgment rather than true intention to disobey, it will be reluctant to side with the employer (Dooley vs. Philippine Airlines Inc.).

Additionally, if the instructions that an employee is given are vague or unreasonable, breaking them does not constitute grounds for termination nor does it signal the presence of just cause (Cheba v. ED Inc.).

A successful progressive discipline method includes the following steps:

1.       Verbal Warning

2.       Written warning

3.       Suspension

4.       Termination

If after suspension the employee continues conducting themselves in a manner deemed inappropriate, the employer has now built up a record of disciplinary measures leading up to, and may proceed with the next step therein; termination.

Cheba v. Ensign Drilling Inc. (2002) AJ no. 1052; 116 ACWS 93d) 382 (Prov. Ct.).

Dooley v. Philippine Airlines Inc. (1985), 10 OAC 217 (CA).

Meaning Is the New Money (Harvard Business Review)

Meaning Is the New Money (Harvard Business Review)

Over the last year, I've been doing a lot of research on how organizations will need to evolve to meet the demands of the 21st century. The central premise of this work is that new technologies, most of which have appeared only within the last decade, greatly amplify our abilities to interact simultaneously with large numbers of people. The frontier of human productive capacity today is the power of extended collaboration — the ability to work together beyond the scope of small groups.

But doing this successfully turns out to rub up against a number of assumptions that are deeply embedded in the ways most organizations still operate today — assumptions that are no longer valid, but are so deeply buried that we fail to question whether or not it makes sense to do things the same way.

Here's one assumption many organizations live by: “If you can see your employees working, they're productive. If you pay them more, they'll work harder.”

Working in a world of extended collaboration asks individuals to contribute through a different and, in many ways, more complex set of activities. Workers must deal with rich content that flows through infinite links. Individuals must make intelligent, well-informed decisions about what to share with whom (and what not to) with less guidance from the hierarchy to simplify the patterns of interaction. And they must dig deep within themselves to form innovative ideas and put their best thinking forward.

To a large extent, the conduct of these activities is not something managers can prescribe or even monitor. Unlike process-based work, in which the goal is to perform synchronized tasks consistently and reliably, extended collaboration occurs asynchronously and is often aimed at discovering or developing something new. Rather than requiring everyone to be in the same place at the same time, extended collaboration can occur virtually. In process-based work, quality can be assured through in-process inspection and performance judged on conformity to process specifications, while the quality of collaborative work can typically be assessed only by the results achieved.

Perhaps most significantly, extended collaboration requires high levels of discretionary effort. People have to choose to do it and have to want to do it well. Leaders can create a context in which that is likely to happen, but collaboration cannot be mandated. It requires high levels of employee engagement.

My research has clearly shown that high levels of engagement, and the associated discretionary effort, occur when our work experiences reflect a clear set of values that we share. For many today, meaning is the new money. It's what people are looking for at work. Clear company values, translated into the day-to-day work experience, are one of the strongest drivers of an engaged workforce, one primed for successful collaboration.

When employees are engaged, they are excited and enthusiastic about what they're doing and enjoy pondering current challenges. They invite others in and are emotionally contagious. Engaged employees identify proudly with the organization and their work. These are the conditions that drive individuals' desires to collaborate in business.

As the old assumption that managers can "oversee" the quality of people's work and pay more to motivate more falls away, the role of leadership shifts from adopting and enforcing best practices to crafting unique experiences that reinforce the organization's values. It becomes less important to be all things to all people and more important to attract and retain people who value what you have to offer. Rather than offering a little of everything, companies must shift to excelling in specific areas that align with their unique values.

By strengthening meaning and increasing engagement, firms can connect with and motivate employees whenever and wherever they work.

Do not hesitate to contact one of our Human Resources

Professionals at HOTLINE TO HR, for assistance in getting more information regarding:

HOW TO MOTIVATE

HOW TO ENGAGE EMPLOYEES

SUPERVISOR TRAINING

SALARY INFROMATION

COMPENSATION PLANS

REWARD PLANS