Hiring Seasonal Employees
Businesses may need to hire employees as seasonal help during peak business periods. The holiday season is often the busiest time of year for many companies when demand is high for their goods and services. Seasonal hiring, such as retail sales and customer service positions, can be cost-effective for the employer by allowing greater flexibility in work scheduling, more responsive handling of customer and client needs, and increased productivity.
While some employers may choose to use outside staffing agencies to source applicants, handle placement, payroll, and termination of seasonal workers, the employers preferring to direct hire and manage seasonal employees have duties and responsibilities in the hiring and placement process.
The employers’ duties and responsibilities for seasonal help are no different than their duties and responsibilities for permanent staffing. The organization’s stated business policies and practices in the employment process apply to all types of employee categorizations. By firmly adhering to the organization’s standard employment policies, the employer can help reduce risks of claims of negligent hiring, liability, and discrimination. Seasonal hiring is not casual hiring, conducted informally, and bypassing customary application and screening processes. The formal hiring process as defined in company policies is required to fully support the business and comply with applicable legal requirements.
A good hire begins with good preparation for additional staffing. Time is of the essence to fully realize the employer’s return on investment for seasonal hiring. Employees must be hired, trained, and ready to go before the peak season gets underway. While it can be tempting to utilize a practice of just in time hiring, waiting too late in the busy season to engage seasonal employees could be costly in terms of the size and availability of the applicant pool, less time to adequately train employees to satisfactorily meet customer demands, and reduced productivity. Additionally when there is an urgency to fill a job vacancy, the rush to hire and bypass the company’s hiring policies and standards creates great risk to the organization. Not only does an employer risk non-compliance with legal requirements by not following standard practices but such actions subjects the organization to claims of negligent hiring. The harm done by a bad hiring, even if the employment period was of short duration, affects the organization’s bottom line, its brand and reputation. There are additional costs in the lost time required to recruit, hire and train a new employee.
There is no shortcut to a good hire. The length of the employment term does not change how business policies are implemented. Job positions should be based on business needs and built upon detailed job descriptions for duties, responsibilities, and standards. The employer must allow sufficient time to hire to fulfill duties for sourcing, engagement, onboarding, and training. An employer should commit resources for supervision and evaluation of seasonal employees as are required for permanent employees.
Screening Practices
Interview
Although there can be many important issues to cover during a job interview with a potential employee, as examples, job requirements and the nature and scope of job duties, key issues for recruitment of seasonal workers include accurate, current job descriptions to attract and advance interested candidates and the express acknowledgment by the candidate that the offered employment is seasonal and will be terminated at a specified time period. There should be no promises made regarding transition to permanent employee status.
Seasonal type of work may attract more interest from entry level job seekers. An interview conducted to fill seasonal positions should use standardized, basic questions that can quickly determine an applicant’s interest, experience and skills.
When seasonal employees suddenly quit before the end of the employment period, all too often the employees did not understand the actual job duties and requirements, required work schedules, had too little training on critical items, and lacked commitment to the organization’s needs. The initial interview should cover the employment expectations, standards, and code of conduct issues required for the position and as well as job requirements that are non-negotiable such as availability for week-end work.
Background Checks
Applicants for seasonal employment must be qualified and screened to the standards set by the company employment policies. Most employment screenings include candidate interviews, written applications, verification of identity, social security verification, past employment history and references. If applicable under state laws and local ordinances, or as a bona fide job requirement, applicants may be screened for credit history, driving record history, education, credentialing or professional licensure, or other legally allowed background reports. At a minimum the employer should conduct adequate screenings to help reduce risk of negligent hiring or potential risk to the organization. The type and timing of background screenings must be compliant with applicable laws.
Employers who use consumer reports for employment purposes have specific obligations under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). An employer is required to disclose to an applicant that the employer may obtain the applicant’s consumer report for employment purposes. The employer must obtain the applicant’s written consent prior to obtaining the report. The FCRA disclosure notification must consist solely of disclosure and cannot contain any extraneous information that might confuse the consumer or detract from the notice of disclosure.
The background report contains consumer information obtained from various reporting sources. Information in the report could potentially qualify or disqualify an applicant from a proposed employment action. The process of dealing with potentially disqualifying information in a background report as part of an employment decision is referred to as adverse action under the FCRA.
The adverse action process requires three steps: a pre-adverse action notification, a reasonable period of time for consumer review and response to the consumer report, and a final adverse action decision notification.
If criminal background information may potentially exclude an applicant, the employer should review adverse action requirements including Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines for individualized assessments of the circumstances of the event. Applicants/employees may only excluded on the basis of a criminal background report for reasons that are relevant to the job in question and for which the employer has a legitimate business necessity to exclude them.
It is important that employers and their consumer reporting partners are compliant to federal FCRA requirements and applicable state and local legal requirements for employment actions. State and local jurisdictions may have additional regulations regarding the use of consumer reports for employment purposes including employer adverse action requirements.
Returning Seasonal Employees
Many companies have former employees hired for previous seasonal employment who return each season to help out. Some employers have questioned the need to screen/rescreen returning seasonal employees. Since it’s only for holiday help and the employees are already familiar with the company, products and services, and customer base, are trained, and now experienced, employers feel they can reduce costs and gain time by immediately putting the returning seasonal employees to work. This works against the employer many times, instead of gaining a ready work force, they have increased their risks of liability.
While returning seasonal employees may have been trustworthy during the previous engagement, significant time may have elapsed since that employment. Circumstances in the former employee’s life may have changed considerably that could have caused financial difficulties. This could lead to inappropriate behaviors or criminal actions of theft or damage.
An employer does not disrespect a former employee’s contribution to the company by conducting employee screening. Instead by screening the employer is conducting his best practices in a non-discriminatory manner according to his business policies. The employer does not differentiate between permanent and seasonal employment status.
A returning seasonal employee may be moving into a more responsible job position and require certain screening by industry standards and regulations.
Onboarding
A critical component to a good hire is new hire training on the company, its brand, marketplace, policies, products, and services. Seasonal new hires should receive the same company training furnished to permanent employees. With a shortened employment period, training should focus on the critical items needed to start performing at day one. Too much information at one time however can overwhelm a seasonal employee. It is a better business practice to schedule training as an ongoing part of the work routine and have employee supervision available to monitor and reinforce the employee’s learning and application of information on the job.
Continuation of the Employment Process
Once the initial phases of the hiring process have transitioned the seasonal employee through orientation and training to active on-job status, the employer follows his standard employment/personnel policies and practices until the employee separates from the company.
It is the employer’s duty to protect his company, brand, and reputation by due diligence measures, particularly seasonal employee screenings to protect his entire workforce, customers, clients, and general public from harm from negligent hiring.