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An executive summary of Pre-Employment Screening and Human Resource trends from Selection.com. |
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| In Fact Issue 62 -- March 17, 2008 |
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| Here We Grow |  |  | | Thanks to the trust that all of you have placed in us, we have grown to the point that we need to relocate our office! Within the next 45 days, Selection.com will be moving to our new facilities in the Tri-County area; the target date is April 15th. This move will give us the additional space and efficiency necessary to continue to meet all your needs effectively. There will be more upcoming about our transition.
Once again, thank you for trusting Selection.com! | | | | Coming In April: I-9 Verification/Work Authorization Through Fastrax Online |  |  | | Our proprietary system and software integration with the federal government’s Employment Verification Program (E-Verify), allows employers to quickly and accurately verify new employees’ legal right to work. We are able to check the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Social Security Administration (SSA) databases and provide a unique DHS-issued verification number.
Our secure and accurate Form I-9 services will:
• Help you ensure that your workforce is legally authorized to work in the United States.
• Simplify and improve the efficiency of your Form I-9 employment verification process.
• Substantially decrease human errors in completing I-9 Forms.
• Improve the accuracy of your payroll and tax reporting and virtually eliminate SSA inquiries concerning unmatched Social Security accounts.
• Cost-effectively reduce your exposure to government audits, financial penalties and negative publicity resulting from non-compliance. | | | | Important Search America Notice |  |  | | Effective Tuesday, March 11, 2008, Search America no longer includes records from the Nevada state sex offender registry. The state of Nevada has adopted specific limitations restricting the use of information from their state sex offender registry and, based on these limitations, we are currently unable to include this information in our Search America report.
We at Selection.com work diligently to protect your business interests, as well as our own, and attempt to stay abreast of any changes or restrictions which may affect the use of any data; we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Please feel free to contact us at (800) 325-3609 if you have any further questions. | | | | Health Care Benefits Outrank Salary |  |  | | According to a new survey sponsored by the Center for State and Local Government Excellence, workers are placing an, “extremely high value on health care coverage.” In fact, 84% said that health insurance has become a “very important” characteristic when choosing a new job and outranked all other 14 benefits…including salary, which ranked 10th. The corporate pension plan ranked 4th in the survey, referenced by 76% of respondents as being the most important when evaluating a job.
“Increasingly, people are becoming aware of the severe consequences of not having either health care or retirement benefits,” says Elizabeth Kellar, executive director for the center. “The responses likely speak to people’s growing insecurities, to the point where many people now say that they won’t even consider a job that doesn’t offer health insurance.”
The cost of providing health care has seen staggering increases in recent years and, according to consulting firm Towers Perrin, has increased 63% over the past five years. As a result, many companies are reducing fixed health-care costs.
On the retirement side, Kellar points out that corporations are cutting back on traditional defined-benefit pension plans to better manage expenses; employees are then becoming more dependent on contribution plans, such as 401(k)s. | | | | Teenagers and Retirees |  |  | | According to estimates by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, the rate of growth within the labor market will begin to decline over the next decade. The projected economic trends about what would happen when baby boomers start retiring is starting to happen.
This slowdown in the rate of growth speaks to a potential decline in American’s standard of living with fewer workers generating goods, services and income. Coupling the fact that there will also be a decline in the number of working teenagers with the baby boomers exit suggests that , “…successive generations will be unable to compensate.” | | | | Boredom Is the Enemy of Productivity |  |  | | Employees who don’t take interest in their work are more disgruntled than others, even those who are overworked, says a survey by Sirota Survey Intelligence. Although being overworked may lead to employee burnout, boredom due to poor job design or other factors actually may have more serious consequences.
The survey of over 1 million employees said that those who express boredom reported, “…far lower levels of job satisfaction, sense of accomplishment and pride” in their companies when compared with other groups of workers. The boredom may have nothing to do with employees not having enough work. Rather, it stems mostly from two causes: employees occupying jobs for which they are not suited or trained, or jobs that are poorly designed.
In another Sirota survey, employees who experience a reasonable work / life balance are more likely to recommend their company to others and have higher levels of engagement. Of those who have a positive view, nearly 90% have a favorable view of their employers, compared with 58% who are negative about their work / life balance, according to Sirota’s survey of more than 300,000 employees. | | | | Working After Retirement |  |  | | There’s no question more people are continuing to work after retirement. According to a December, 2007, report from the Employee Benefit Research Institute, job-related earnings accounted for 23.7% of annual income for Americans over 65 in 2006, with the balance coming from pensions, annuities, Social Security and assets.
Younger retirees are even more likely to rely on a paycheck to boost their annual income. In 2006, job earnings accounted for 39.1% of annual income of retirees ages 65 to 69, a 69% increase from two decades ago, according to the EBRI report.
The Pension Preservation Act of 2006 sought to help more people retire, work if they wanted and collect their pensions by allowing companies to offer a phased retirement program to employees at 62.
In reality, many companies offer some type of early retirement option to employees at age 55, a policy held over from the days when they needed then-older employees to retire early to make room for baby boomers, according to retirement experts, industry analysts and consultants.
That’s no help for employees between 55 and 62 who want to start receiving pension benefits in order to supplement decreased hours, says Tonya Manning, chief actuary with Aon Consulting’s U.S. retirement practice. Because of that catch, some employees would be better off leaving their current employer, starting to collect pension benefits and going back to work at a competitor, Manning and other experts say. | | |
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For more information on any articles in this newsletter, contact
Selection.com at (800) 325-3609 or info@selection.com.
Learn more about Selection.com by visiting our website.
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