Human Resources

Tips on Finding Good Employees

By Sandra Wimbish

Back when Barney Fife was deputy sheriff, a good job meant having time off from work to drive over to Raleigh for a little R&R — that's rest and relaxation, not recruitment and retention. Today, however, things are more complicated and it takes more than a corner room at the YMCA to keep a good man like Barney happy at work.

Just ask Ann J. Willson, president of Human Resource Directions, a Raleigh consulting firm that works with mom-and-pops, high-tech start ups and global giants. She says there are some trends affecting companies of all sizes.

“Everybody throughout the country, large and small, government and private, is having trouble finding good employees because it is a tight job market,” says Willson. “There's low unemployment and lots of jobs to be had. That's not to say there are not lots of people looking — there are — and there are all kinds of reasons for that, but businesses are still having trouble filling positions, especially when looking for people with IT (information technology) skills.”

To deal with this situation, most companies no longer recruit to fill vacancies; they recruit continuously. Carolina Power and Light Co., for example, views recruitment as a full-time commitment. Brenda Castonguay, vice president of human resources at CP&L, says “We are now always courting key people, and we're not content to find just any talent in the marketplace. We are looking for the best of the best. We want the top guns. To find them, we have to be full-time talent scouts.”

CP&L says the payoff to such diligence is handsome. “People drive our success; there's a direct correlation,” Castonguay says, noting also that the ethos is modeled by CEO Bill Cavanaugh. “He walks the talk,” she says, “He spends half his time in small group meetings learning how to improve the business.”

To capture the attention of their top candidates, companies are strengthening and diversifying their benefit packages. Observers say the newest crop of talent, the 18- to 24-year-old labor market entrants labeled Generation X, is interested in more than salary and traditional benefits. They're looking for ways to enhance their personal lives and develop their potential. They want mentoring programs. They want flexible schedules. As Willson says, “They want to know that they work for an employer that will cherish them, nurture them, and give them career opportunities in return for their contributions.”

CP&L and many other companies have begun responding to the call. To create a corporate culture that interests Gen Xers, CP&L altered its work environment. Employees are given every other Friday off from work. They can work flexible hours. They can spend time out of the office doing volunteer work to benefit the community. In years gone by, when CP&L had a special project on the board, managers might look outside to consultants or temporary employees to fill a niche. Today they look in-house to see if there is anyone who might enjoy building new skills and having a change of pace.

“We help people increase their skill sets so that when they go someplace else they have something additional in their toolbox. We try to provide employees with something here that they cannot get someplace else, and our employees love it,” says Castonguay.

Small companies also recognize that people today are attracted to benefits that allow them to better balance their work and personal lives. Yet the cost of big benefits hits small companies hard in the pocketbook. “Some small companies believe it is worth it to be right up there with the big boys providing what people want,” says Willson, “but most cannot afford it.” Sometimes excitement and challenge have to be part of the package.

When Deven Spear and Michael Worthington were building their Cary-based multimedia consultancy firm, VisionFactory Inc., they focused on creating a special corporate culture. With very definite ideas distilled from earlier experiences working with Fortune 100 companies, Spear and Worthington wanted to make VisionFactory a place that would nurture the creativity of its staff.

“When we started to build our company we were always mindful of what we could do that would be different from the big corporate bureaucracies but that would still be affordable to a start-up,” says CEO Spear. To nurture staff and create an innovative environment, Spear made team-building a priority. Toward that end the company instituted what it calls The Tour.

“The Tour 1999 is a lot like a PGA tour or a rock `n' roll tour,” says Spear. “Each month the entire staff goes off site and spends a couple hours going over business issues and corporate issues, and then we spend another hour doing team-building exercises so the new people can get to know the people who've been on staff for a while. Then we play arcade games and simulation games, and for our staff that's about as fun as anything.”

According to Spear, The Tour — which had its last stop at a sports pub in downtown Raleigh — is one way staff know that the company is about more than just long hours.

Aware that people with the specialized skills VisionFactory needs for its high-tech work are expensive, Spear also has been keen on growing company benefits. “For a year we had no benefits. Then in 1997 we had major medical, but in the past year we've been able to add dental, life and disability insurance, a 401(K) plan and some smaller perks like membership at the local YMCA,” says Spear.

Sometimes people choose not to work for large corporations — where the salaries and benefits are attractive — or for small companies — where there is excitement and opportunity. Eleven percent of the workforce has found its niche in the nonprofit sector. According to Jane Kendall, president of the N.C. Center for Nonprofits, the nonprofit sector has grown 300 percent over the last 20 years, far exceeding the overall 74 percent growth rate of the U.S. economy. Accordingly, it is expected that nonprofit employees as a portion of all employees in North Carolina will continue to grow.

Nonprofits require a broader perspective on human resource management than their partners in business and government. “About 7 percent of the U.S. paid workforce are in nonprofits, and another 4 percent are full-time volunteers. So the equivalent of 11 percent work in nonprofits,” Kendall explains. “Additionally, 53 percent of adults volunteer through nonprofits, so when we talk about human resources there are really two parts to it. There are the paid employees and they garner the efforts of more than half the adults in the state. So how we recruit, motivate, and reinforce volunteers is an important part of our human resources issue.”

Like businesses, nonprofits include large institutions like Charlotte's Presbyterian Hospital and small groups even without staff — groups like local PTAs — and they, too, are challenged by the low unemployment rate. The recruitment problem is somewhat compounded by the fact that qualifications for nonprofit jobs are higher than they are for the other sectors; 31 percent of nonprofit jobs in North Carolina require a college degree. Only 13 percent of the nation's business employees and 21 percent of the government's employees have a college degree. So overall, nonprofit employees are better educated yet earn less.

Nevertheless, people leave business and government positions to join nonprofits, and they do so because it makes them feel good. “Working in nonprofits brings a different kind of satisfaction, particularly the satisfaction of knowing that all your talents and skills are going to improving the community, people's lives, or the environment. So there is an intrinsic satisfaction that people seek by working in nonprofits. That doesn't pay the light bill, of course, but it is one of the reasons we hear from people wanting to move into nonprofits,” says Kendall.

The business connection with nonprofits is growing. According to Castonguay, CP&L encourages its employees to become involved in volunteer activities in the community. “We want to benefit the community as well as draw from the community. We seek lots of collaboration,” she comments.

The trend toward volunteering is strong among Generation X employees. While adult North Carolinians volunteer at 53 percent, those aged 18 to 24 volunteer at 66 percent. Additionally, nonprofits provide some of the goodies that Generation X wants: job sharing and flex time are stock and trade in nonprofits, and usually they are more family-friendly than businesses.

In addition to recruitment and retention issues, businesses and nonprofits share other human resource challenges. Willson sees compliance with federal and state regulations as one of those challenges.

One of Willson's biggest concerns is the tendency of federal agencies to write regulations that become entangled with the regulations of other agencies. For example, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is not usually associated with employment law, recently issued an opinion on the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) that has great implications for business owners and nonprofits, especially small operations.

In essence, the FCRA says that if a business owner wants to hire an outside agency to conduct a background check on a current or potential employee, the business owner must have the written consent of the person being investigated. If the background check then results in adverse action toward that person (such as failure to hire), then the business owner must disclose the information to the person affected.

Recently the FTC issued an opinion saying that sexual harassment investigations should be handled in the same way. “What this means,” says Willson, “is that people who hire attorneys or consultants to investigate matters of sexual harassment must go into that investigation with the written consent of the alleged harasser, and with the understanding that all the witness testimony will not be confidential. Everything will be disclosed if the findings are that the person needs to be disciplined or even fired.” This example illustrates how two federal regulations — the FRCA and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act — can conflict with one another.

Emerging legislation, too, is a bugaboo. According to Willson, many employment laws are written with a degree of vagueness, with the assumption that the enforcing agencies will fill in the details when they write the guidance employers will use in applying them. “That is pie in the sky kind of stuff,” muses Willson, “In truth it works some of the time, but the vagueness of some of the laws leaves them open to interpretations that have nothing to do with the original intent of the law.”

Example: In May, President Clinton directed the Department of Labor to write regulations that would allow states to use unemployment funds to pay for people who take time off under the Family Medical Leave Act. (Currently that time off is unpaid.) While using unemployment funds would make it easier for people to enjoy that benefit, at what cost? Unemployment taxes would go up, and small business owners with fewer than 50 employees — who are not affected by the FMLA — would have to ante up too because it is a general fund.

To strengthen the understanding among business owners and human resource professionals regarding compliance issues like these — as well as other pertinent issues — NCCBI is instituting a human resources forum this fall. Rosemary Wyche, director of development for NCCBI, says the human resources forum has been in development since last November when then-Chairman Steve Zelnak first identified the need. Leadership for the forum is being provided by CP&L's Brenda Castonguay, chair for the forum, and Rich Novak, vice president of H.R. at Guilford Mills in Greensboro, vice-chair.

“From early signs,” Wyche says, “it looks like this forum will be just as successful as our others.” NCCBI launched a young executives forum and a financial managers forum about two years ago.

To date, Wyche has received over 300 responses from NCCBI members who are interested in the human resources forum. “Many of them have offered suggestions about topics they'd like to see addressed,” she reported.

COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. This article first appeared in the August 1999 issue of North Carolina magazine.