As businesses grow, their increasing demands require an expanding workforce. With an expanding staff comes HR compliance issues. As a result, it is important to outline the essential HR requirements that businesses must follow to ensure recruitment compliance. Failure to comply with federal, state, and local recruiting requirements may have significant legal consequences.
To help take the guesswork out of recruitment compliance, we’ve created an easy-to-follow checklist that aims to help companies ensure they meet compliance requirements.
Main Takeaways:
• Employers must ensure compliance with Federal, State, and local recruitment requirements. Failure to do may lead to severe legal and financial consequences.
• A recruitment compliance review is crucial to ensuring that recruitment processes comply with regulations.
• Creating a recruitment requirement checklist is a helpful way of streamlining hiring procedures. In particular, hiring processes should focus on proper documentation, non-discriminatory practices, and appropriate information security measures.
• Employers are encouraged to seek external counsel to ensure compliance with hiring, payroll, and legal practices.
What is Recruitment Compliance?
In essence, recruitment compliance pertains to the process where companies attract, vet, hire, and retain workers within the applicable regulatory framework. This framework consists of the following:
• Federal, state, and local recruitment regulations.
• Internal company policies and practices.
• Industry best hiring practices.
At first glance, following the bevy of regulations may seem overwhelming. Nevertheless, the task becomes much easier when companies set up a helpful checklist they can use to streamline their overall hiring processes.
Why Is Recruitment Compliance Important?
Companies and staffing professionals must become adept at juggling the various regulations that apply to their companies. After all, failure to comply may lead to costly penalties and lawsuits. Since most companies do not have an abundant budget for lawyers and legal fees, it is essential to follow recruitment regulations accordingly.
Additionally, following requirements appropriately establishes a good corporate image. In turn, qualified candidates can rest assured they will receive fair treatment throughout the recruitment process.
How to Build a Recruitment Compliance Checklist
Building a recruitment compliance checklist consists of establishing a well-organized step-by-step process. The following section outlines five steps any company can follow t ensure they remain compliant.
1. Getting started with an HR compliance checkup
The first place to start is with an HR compliance checkup. These are some of the regulations to which companies are subject:
• Fair Labor Standards Act. This Act establishes important regulatory matters such as minimum wage, overtime payment, appropriate recordkeeping, and youth employment standards across the private sector and Federal, State, and local government agencies. It is crucial to follow the standards in this Act to avoid penalties stemming from inadequate payment and scheduling practices.
• Affordable Care Act. The ACA establishes the guidelines employers must follow to ensure that their employees access healthcare insurance. In short, employers have to offer affordable healthcare alternatives or face penalties.
• Americans with Disabilities Act. This Act establishes that regulations companies must follow to ensure non-discrimination against individuals with disabilities. This regulation applies to employees and candidates.
• Occupational Safety and Health Act. The OSHA establishes the standards that companies must follow to ensure proper workplace safety. Failure to comply can lead to severe penalties and possible criminal prosecution.
• Family and Medical Leave Act. This regulation ensures that eligible employees of participating employers can take unpaid leave, with job protection, due to specific family and medical reasons. Companies cannot dismiss employees covered by this regulation without facing serious legal consequences.
• The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. This organization enforces rules and regulations on all matters related to hiring, dismissals, promotions, harassment, training, salaries, and benefits. This commission also provides helpful assistance and guidance, so organizations remain compliant with applicable regulations.
In addition to federal regulations, there are local and state regulations such as minimum wage, taxes, mandatory sick pay, and others to consider. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure that current HR and payroll practices match these local regulations.
2. Recruitment and Hiring Compliance
Next, it is essential to review hiring and recruitment practices. In particular, it is worth looking into the following (among other issues):
Non-discriminatory job postings and descriptions.
Job descriptions and advertisements should strive to utilize inclusive language sensitive to gender, race, social status, etc. Particularly, companies must manifest their commitment to equality and diversity. This approach is conducive to attracting top talent. This University of Michigan document provides clear guidelines for non-discriminatory job postings and descriptions.
Background checks.
It is important to avoid raising questions about criminal history or background checks before presenting candidates with a job offer. Nevertheless, a background check can be part of a conditional job offer. Companies must, therefore, first extend a job offer before conducting a background check. Candidates must also consent to a background check as part of their employment offer. Please ensure that recruitment processes incorporate background checks following a conditional job offer.
During interviews, avoid discriminatory questions.
Recruitment professionals must be careful to avoid questions about age, religious affiliation, marital status, or citizenship during interviews. While this information is pivotal, it can be part of a background check once a conditional job offer has been extended. Ultimately, it is crucial to create an interview model that ensures no discriminatory questions arise. Then, employee training should focus on asking the right question during interviews.
Ensure to document hiring and recruitment processes and decisions.
Documenting the entire recruitment process is key. In particular, documenting processes and decisions can help the company avoid legal consequences if there is a complaint from a candidate. Documenting the recruitment process also helps provide useful feedback during a process review. This helpful checklist from UC Berkely is a great model to follow.
Record keeping.
Please note that Federal regulations require companies to track all candidates interviewed for a position. Moreover, employers must document reasons for hiring candidates or not. More often than not, companies keep electronic records of this information. It is, therefore, pivotal to ensure proper cybersecurity measures to avoid data breaches. A data breach could prove costly if sensitive personal information becomes compromised.
3. Employee Onboarding
Once applicants receive a formal job offer, they must submit the requisite information and documentation to complete the hiring process formally. Conducting a review of company onboarding processes is important to ensure that all employees comply with the requisite documentation. Above all, it is essential to ensure that the company obtains the proper consent for drug testing, credit, and background checks.
While electronic recordkeeping is the general standard, companies must strive to keep physical copies of paperwork. Like electronic records, employers must ensure that employees’ physical paperwork is duly safeguarded.
4. Payroll, Timekeeping, and Leave
Staffing processes must be aligned with local, state, and federal policies, especially concerning work schedules and salaries. It is critical to have standards and procedures to address discrimination and harassment issues within the workplace. Proper reporting and documenting procedures will ensure the company’s compliance. This point is critical as companies may be found legally liable for instances of harassment or discrimination.
If the company has issues with understanding salary and tax compliance issues, an external consultant may be needed – perhaps an HR consultant or employment attorney. External payroll companies include access to subject matter experts as a part of their service. Furthermore, the company must ensure that employees are classified correctly according to state, local, and federal (e.g., IRS) requirements.
5. Record Keeping and Cyber Security
Lastly, the company must review its recordkeeping processes and consider measures to safeguard digital and online records. In particular, the company must ensure it stores documentation appropriately and safely. The help of an external IT consultant may be needed to ensure that digital records are not vulnerable to a cyberattack. An IT safety audit is a great way to ensure that electronic recordkeeping meets appropriate cybersecurity standards. Additionally, companies may consider purchasing cybersecurity insurance to protect themselves in case of an untimely data breach.
Conclusion
Complying with recruitment requirements is an essential part of running a smooth operation. Thus, creating a recruitment requirement checklist is a great way of streamlining the hiring process. Ultimately, following recruitment regulations accordingly minimizes the risk of a costly lawsuit or penalties for non-compliance.
How Can TalentZök Help your Business with Recruitment?
TalentZök is an industry leader in matching the right people with the right positions. TalentZök’s experienced staff knows what it takes to run hiring practices successfully. Let TalentZök help your organization find the right people. Together, we can build a smooth hiring process to ensure the best talent available for your organization’s needs.
This post is made available for informational purposes only to provide a general understanding of the topics discussed herein. It is not intended to provide specific business, legal, or professional advice and should not be relied on as such. TalentZök is not liable or responsible for any damage or loss arising from any reliance placed on such materials
