HRIS & Payroll Excellence - February 2023

On the Cover

10 business heads share their stance on offering unlimited PTO

-

Brett Farmiloe, Founder and CEO, Terkel.io

Articles

14 Practical HR Tips For Small Business Owners

Hiring and retention best practices business owners can implement to build diverse teams and create an inclusive workplaceJessica Lambrecht, Co-Founder and CEO, The Rise Journey

22 Six HR Transformations For 2023

What’s the wisest way to approach transformation? - Jamie Aitken, VP, HR Transformation, Betterworks

27 How To Set Salary Ranges That Are Useful, Fair, And Explainable

Shifting mindset from pay management to pay explainability - Nancy Romanyshyn, Director, Pay Strategy & Partner Success, Syndio

34 How AI And Automation Are Evolving Talent Acquisition Roles

Technology plays a critical role as recruiters and companies look for ways to thrive in today’s economy - Anil Dharni, Co-founder and CEO, Sense

Enacting Pay Transparency In The Right Way

Ensuring transparency in pay will help employers set themselves up for success amid a difficult labor market

- Tanya Jansen, Co-Founder, Beqom

INDEX

Pay Transparency Laws Call For High Employer Due Diligence

What employers must consider

- Ruthie White, Partner, Spencer Fane

The Limits Of ‘Unlimited’ PTO

It is crucial to take a closer look at the benefits and costs of the policy

- Rob Whalen, Co-Founder and CEO, PTO Exchange

Top Picks 17 25 31 38

How HR Professionals Can Use Technology To Improve Workplace Safety

Managing safety and compliance at the workplace

- Yasmine Mustafa, CEO & Co-Founder, ROAR

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Unlimited PTO and Pay Transparency: What Awaits in the Future

UnlimitedPTO has become an increasingly popular tactic that companies are using to respond to employees’ demands for flexibility and a healthier work-life balance.

Major companies, such as Microsoft, Salesforce, and Netflix have implemented unlimited

PTO policies, and a significant proportion of employees are asking for these policies. There’s just one problem: Employees aren’t, in fact, getting greater flexibility with “unlimited” PTO.

Check out, The Limits Of ‘Unlimited’ PTO By Rob Whalen from PTO Exchange, as he delves into the pros and cons of this policy.

Also, read Terkel.io CEO Brett Farmiloe’s Unlimited PTO: Boon Or Bane?, where 10 business leaders share their stance on offering unlimited PTO.

In Enacting Pay Transparency In The Right Way, Beqom’s Tanya Jansen tells us how ensuring transparency in pay will help employers set themselves up for success amid a difficult labor market. And, in Pay Transparency Laws Call for High Employer Due Diligence, By Spencer Fane’s Ruthie White tells us what employers must consider.

Also, read How HR Professionals Can Use Technology To Improve Workplace Safety by Yasmine Mustafa.

That is not all! We have featured several other articles this month, and we hope this edition of HRIS & Payroll Excellence will help you achieve excellence in your core HR and payroll processes.

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Unlimited PTO: Boon Or Bane?

10 business heads share their stance on offering unlimited PTO

By Brett Farmiloe, Terkel.io

Fromworking with your team to see when they’d like PTO to keeping structure for vacation days, here are 10 answers to the question, “Do you have any helpful tips about offering unlimited PTO at your company?”

1. Offer Flexible Time Off Instead

2. Keep a Solid Structure

3. Remember, Managers and Teammates Bear the Burden

4. Provide a Fixed Amount of PTO Instead of Unlimited

5. Attract the Best Talent with Unlimited PTO

6. Experiment Before Deciding on a Policy

7. Ease the Burden on HR

8. Build Trust First

9. Examine the Organization’s Needs

10. Foster a Work-Life Balance with Guidelines

1. Offer Flexible Time Off Instead

The problem with PTO is employees’ pressure to use the time off or lose it if they don’t. Pressuring employees to take time off when it isn’t always convenient for them defeats the purpose and makes them feel like they have no control over their own free time.

Instead, we offer Flexible Time Off (FTO), which allows our employees to take time off when needed and not when it fits into the schedule of the rest of the office. FTO means our employees are more engaged and productive, and the burnout rate has decreased significantly.

Offering your team members control over their time off will allow them to take care of themselves on their own schedule when they feel they need it most.

2. Keep a Solid Structure

When we tried offering unlimited PTO at our company, we found, to our surprise, that some employees took less time off. Our employees like clearly defined policies, and the idea of unlimited PTO causes confusion and uncertainty. For example, an employee might be afraid of taking too much time off for fear of what others might think.

We also noticed that unlimited PTO was a source of tension in our workforce, with employees resenting those who appeared to be taking more time off than they did.

We have now returned to a fixed PTO policy which works much better for us because it ensures that every employee has the same number of paid vacation days, eliminating ambiguity and potential resentment.

Anthony Martin, Founder and CEO, Choice Mutual

Shawn Plummer, CEO, The Annuity Expert

3. Remember, Managers and Teammates Bear the Burden

We don’t offer unlimited PTO at our company. While unlimited PTO may seem like an attractive perk for employees, it can actually lead to increased stress, decreased efficiency, and reduced overall productivity in the workplace.

Managers no longer clearly understand when employees will be out of the office, making it difficult to plan and schedule necessary work tasks. This can cause last-minute absences, which can disrupt workflow and reduce productivity as team members scramble to cover the work of their absent colleagues.

Instead, we have a clear PTO policy that includes a set number of paid vacation days, as well as personal and sick days. This structured PTO policy allows our employees to have the time off they need while also ensuring that our company meets its goals in an orderly fashion.

So, unlimited PTO will make it harder for you to plan for absences and manage workflow, leading to potential disruptions and reduced productivity.

4. Provide a Fixed Amount of PTO Instead of Unlimited

American companies often offer little to no paid time off compared to European companies with very strict PTO policies. As an American company operating worldwide and with a majority of European employees, we found we had to set a specific amount of PTO to ensure that our employees didn’t feel the pressure of working endless hours and being uncomfortable with seemingly unlimited PTO.

Often, employees feel that they have to “prove themselves” by not taking any time off, and unlimited PTO was not the right choice for us for this exact reason.

With generous but limited PTO days, everyone knows they need to use up their 38 days every year, and it allows them to have four longer vacation stints rather than only taking a day or two off if they felt they had to prove that they were working hard in an unlimited time of the environment.

Maria Harutyunyan, Co-Founder, Loopex Digital

Gordana Sretenovic, Co-Founder, Workello

5. Attract the Best Talent with Unlimited PTO

We offer unlimited PTO at our company because we believe in creating a culture where employees are free to make their own choices about how they work and how much time they spend at work.

By offering unlimited PTO, we enable our employees to set their own schedules and work to their own abilities, rather than being tied down by the strictures of a traditional workplace.

This allows us to recruit the best talent by attracting them with the freedom that comes with a flexible schedule.

We’ve found that when people know they can take time off when they need it, or come in early if they’re feeling productive, they’re more likely to be happy at work and more productive overall.

6. Experiment Before Deciding on a Policy

We have been offering unlimited PTO in our health and wellness start-up for the past year. We started with a small experiment before deciding to adopt the policy fully. The main reason we do this is to enhance the overall employee experience.

The idea has helped us maintain strong morale, high engagement, and more productivity as well. We have also learned several lessons as well from our experience. For instance, for a PTO policy to work smoothly, there needs to be a well-coordinated, employee-led scheduling strategy.

Organizations must give employees much more leeway to work directly with HR to plan leave days and work schedules. It is also essential to empower employees to undertake tasks remotely as much as possible.

Some of our employees on PTO pop in once or twice a week to do small, urgent tasks remotely. So, they need to have the tools to make this happen while on vacation.

Rengie Wisper, Marketing Manager, Check CPS

Erik Pham, CEO, Health Canal

7. Ease the Burden on HR

We offer unlimited PTO at our company, but we don’t enforce it. There’s no policy that requires employees to take a set amount of vacation days each year.

Instead, we trust our employees to manage their time off responsibly. The benefits of unlimited PTO are obvious: it gives employees total freedom to manage their time however they see fit.

It also reduces the administrative burden of tracking employee vacation days and ensures that employees don’t feel restricted by a strict PTO policy. But unlimited PTO isn’t without its downsides.

Giving employees total freedom to take time off whenever they want can lead to scheduling problems and a backlog of vacation requests. This can lead to scheduling conflicts and delays in getting important projects finished on time.

8. Build Trust First

Being a relatively new small business, we are not offering unlimited PTO. This benefit is currently outside our budget range. We also have just enough employees at the moment to provide sufficient coverage during office hours, especially peak hours, so leaves need to be scheduled with thought and consideration.

Because we are new, we are still building a culture of trust between our employees and management, so employees become responsible and do not abuse an unlimited PTO policy should we implement it in the future.

Management must also learn to trust that employees will use their time off in a way that is in the best interest of both the company and the employee.

Luciano Colos, Founder and CEO, Pitchgrade Peter Hoopis, Owner and CEO, Peter Hoopis

Tawanda Johnson, HR and DEI Consultant, Sporting Smiles

9. Examine the Organization’s Needs

We believe that the decision to offer unlimited PTO is a very complex one, and depends on the specific needs of each organization. We offer unlimited PTO with a requirement for employees to take a minimum of three weeks off.

If you have a large hourly workforce, unlimited PTO may create additional challenges and things to consider.

10. Foster a Work-Life Balance with Guidelines

Unlimited PTO sounds great, but it’s a double-edged sword. It can create confusion and tension among employees. The lack of a simple structure can make employees feel unsure about what they consider an acceptable amount of time off, leading to anxiety about taking too much and potentially damaging their reputation within the company.

Without clear guidelines and usage policies, it becomes challenging to ensure that all employees can take the time they need to recharge and re-energize, leading to burnout and decreased productivity.

For these reasons, we have chosen not to implement an unlimited PTO policy at our company. By offering a structured approach to time off, we foster a positive work-life balance for our employees and maintain a productive and engaged workforce.

Brett Farmiloe is the Founder and CEO – and currently CHRO - of Terkel. io. Brett is an SHRM Influencer and has also been a keynote speaker at several state SHRM conferences around the topic of employee engagement.”

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Piotrek Sosnowski, Chief People and Culture Officer, HiJunior

Practical HR Tips For Small Business Owners

Hiring and retention best practices business owners can implement to build diverse teams and create an inclusive workplace

By Jessica Lambrecht, The Rise Journey

Small businesses make up 99.9% of U.S. companies, employing 46.4% of people across the country 1. These businesses face the same challenges as their larger counterparts: how to hire and retain the right people to build and sustain a prosperous business. While the impact of great employees on the business is clear, the impact of management’s HR practices on employees is often overlooked. And with labor ranking among the highest costs for businesses, accounting for upwards of 70% of spending 2 and costing approximately $4,700 for each new hire 3 , managing the employee experience is vitally important. Added to all of this is the impact of building a diverse team, engaging new generations, and fostering an inclusive workplace.

Managing the hiring and retention of talented employees is a large investment and no simple task. The employee experience encompasses everything from the moment a potential applicant views a job description all the way to someone leaving the company. The resources necessary (both internally and externally) to create equity and inclusion at every stage are often beyond the resources of small businesses. More often than not, these critical processes are informal, if they even exist.

Given current economic conditions and shifting market trends, getting the right people on your team and getting them to stay are two of the biggest challenges facing small—or any—businesses today. While you may not have the resources to do a complete overhaul of all of your HR practices, there are steps you can take today to make immediate improvements in your existing systems to increase the quality of your talent pipeline and create an inclusive workplace where employees will flourish.

Getting People on Your Team

Building a great team is often difficult under the best of circumstances. Casting a wide net, being transparent about role expectations, and maintaining good relationships throughout the process will ensure the right people apply and stay engaged with your company, even if they don’t get the job (this time around).

● Include a salary range

● Include a start date and other relevant details of the hiring process.

● Clearly and accurately describe the role’s responsibilities and expectations.

● Check your language. Guides can be found here, here, and here

● Determine which specific work, education, and certification requirements are necessary. It is very common for employers to use boilerplate language, which often includes a college degree as a requirement. Generic requirements can greatly reduce the number of qualified applicants from applying.

● Clearly detail existing policies. Do you have PTO or parental leave policies?

● When choosing where to post the job, consider numerous channels to ensure you’re reaching a diverse audience.

● Include any relevant details a potential applicant may need to know in order to apply. Is there a busy season, will there be on-call shifts?

● Ensure you’re in compliance with state and federal guidelines, including EEOC and ADA

● Standardizing the interview process is incredibly important. Determine the structure of the process, create a scorecard, develop a set

of questions, and train everyone involved in the process how to properly participate. There’s a lot of room for bias at this stage of the process; however, by standardizing each step and the interviewer’s feedback, you can take steps to ensure an equitable experience.

Keeping People on Your Team

Engaging employees to encourage commitment and productivity is challenging for organizations of any size and spans so many aspects of the workplace experience that each company will need to understand and leverage its own unique strengths.

● Set employees up to succeed. Schedule ample time to:

● Train new employees in their roles and standard operating norms.

● Get individuals comfortable using the everyday platforms necessary to do the job. Do not assume everyone is familiar with Slack or a specific POS system.

● Meet everyone on the team and get familiar with the structure of the company. At the very

least, ensure new employees meet everyone they will report to or work with directly.

● Create a career plan from the start. Clarify the frameworks and expectations for advancement and bonus opportunities, and provide realistic, actionable goals. For folks just starting out, this can and should include goals around getting acquainted with their role and the company.

● Set regular check-ins for the first 30-90 days. This might start with daily 1:1s for the first two weeks, and taper to bi-weekly.

● Identify regular opportunities to recognize employees and acknowledge high performance, values-aligned behavior, and efforts made toward company goals, regardless of the outcome.

● Performance reviews should be regularly scheduled These meetings should include sharing feedback, assessing progress toward goals, and if or when they are eligible for a promotion, raise, or bonus.

● If resources don’t allow for a raise or bonus, consider non-monetary rewards

Beyond achieving immediate business goals, small businesses can create change in their communities and serve as pillars of their industries by developing and implementing strong HR practices built on a

foundation of diversity, equity, and inclusion. What’s best for employees is ultimately what’s best for business.

Notes

1. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/ small-business-statistics/

2. https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/ closer-look-at-labor-costs/

3. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/pages/the-real-costs-of-recruitment.aspx

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Jessica Lambrecht is the Co-Founder and CEO of The Rise Journey, an HR and Workplace Culture consulting firm, and recently launched a new membership platform One Person Human Resources, OPHR, to support small teams in their People Operations.

Enacting Pay Transparency In The Right Way

Ensuring transparency in pay will help employers set themselves up for success amid a difficult labor market

By Tanya Jansen, Beqom

Pay transparency continues to gain traction across the country, as regulations in Washington State and California took effect on January 1. California and Washington join a cast of states and municipalities that require the majority of businesses to disclose salary information up front, including New York City, Colorado and Rhode Island. However, the new regulations have proved difficult for employers to enact properly. For example, some NYC employers responded to a municipal transparency mandate by providing wide, unrealistic salary ranges.

A likely reason behind many NYC employers opting for wide ranges is the fear that candidates will typically ask for the high end of a given range. Research supports this tendency, as a recent survey from Resume Builder found that if they knew the salary range for their role, 68% of candidates were likely to demand the top end.

As transparency regulations continue to sweep the nation, employers will be forced to contend with candidates likely asking for top dollar. However, with a solid pay transparency strategy under their belt, they can enact transparency effectively, attracting preferred candidates and retaining top talent while remaining within budget.

Leveraging Transparency to Attract Talent

The recent string of pay transparency legislation reflects the will of job seekers, who’ve long hoped for salary ranges to be included in job listings to drive an overall more ethical hiring process. In fact, our 2022 Compensation and Culture Report found nearly 80% of candidates were more likely to apply to roles that included salary ranges.

Additionally, organizations that don’t provide salary ranges raise suspicion among candidates, with an Adzuna survey finding that nearly a third of job seekers believe those who don’t include ranges are either “hiding something” or will underpay them. Not only should organizations provide a pay range, but sharing an accurate range is just as important.

Organizations that choose to enact pay transparency by adding wide, unrealistic ranges to their listings are likely making it more challenging to attract talent by increasing the level of uncertainty within the hiring process. For example, if a candidate applies to a role with a wide range, they may expect an offer near the top end of that range.

Should the candidate make it through the entire interview process and receive an offer, it is likely to fall well below what they had in mind, and the candidate may ultimately decline, wasting time for both the candidate and the interviewers. Providing accurate ranges will save hiring teams time, and help get desired candidates to sign on to offers. However, transparency goes beyond just an accurate salary range.

Explaining Total Compensation, Benefits, and Job Functions

As any HR expert will tell you, an employee’s paycheck or yearly salary does not comprise their total compensation, and many employees aren’t fully aware of the true value of their compensation. In fact, 48% of employees don’t know their total compensation, which comprises the value of their salary and their selected benefits and perks.

For starters, job listings should include a detailed overview of the full menu of benefits and perks an organization has to offer. Additionally, the interview process should include a discussion of these benefits, where candidates can ask questions and gather a better sense of whether the company’s benefits fit their financial, health, and lifestyle preferences.

According to our report, the number one reason why the vast majority (87%) of job seekers applied to a given role was the position itself and its tasks. To attract the right candidates, a job listing should include a comprehensive description of the role’s functions. This, combined with an accurate salary range and a detailed description of benefits and perks will paint a clear picture of what life is like for the given role, and help ensure employees are happy at the company over time.

Transparency for Retention

While employees may decide to resign for a myriad of reasons, 60% said they’d consider leaving for an employer that provides more pay transparency than their current workplace. A lack of clarity around compensation contributes to employee suspicion and lower morale, even if companies do pay fairly. For example, one in 10 employees doesn’t believe they’re paid fairly because their employer provides no insight into how salaries are determined. To help alleviate suspicion, employers should look to foster a more open culture around pay.

Employers can boost internal transparency by explaining to employees how their tenure, skillset, prior experience, performance, and education level came together to determine their current salary. Additionally, employers can provide clarity around the performance metrics an employee needs to meet to earn a promotion, pay raise, or a larger bonus.

Employees want to know where they stand (79% of employees want greater internal pay transparency), and what they need to do to earn more money. If the economic climate or the company’s financial situation makes salary increases unlikely for

employees, this should be communicated to them. While some organizations choose to accomplish this at a company-wide meeting or open memo, a better approach is to convey this information individually, to each employee during their annual reviews or regular check-ins with managers or HR.

Pay transparency is here to stay, and employers who embrace it accordingly will set themselves up for success amid a difficult labor market. By ensuring salary ranges are accurate, providing a comprehensive picture of what life is like at a given company, and instilling a more open culture around compensation internally, organizations can attract and retain more talent. Enacting transparency in the right way not only resonates well with prospective and current employees, but it can also help organizations do so within their budget.

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Tanya Jansen is the Co-Founder of Beqom.

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Six HR Transformations For 2023

What’s the wisest way to approach transformation?

By Jamie Aitken, Betterworks

Today’s organizations remain focused on digital transformation to enable “a digital-first business.” As part of that, the tools they use and skills necessary for success will change. Meanwhile, individual departments are undergoing their own transformations to improve operational efficiency and customer experience. One of the last departments to transform is HR because the traditional tools are familiar and, historically, HR processes have not changed much.

That inertia is becoming unacceptable as the pace of business continues to move toward real-time. More importantly, customers and employees expect HR to provide modern experiences irrespective of how much disruption it may cause to get there.

A best practice for HR transformation is the same as that for digital transformation: it’s best approached as an ongoing process, not an event.

Following are six HR transformations that will become more common in 2023:

#1: HR Will Become More Strategic

HR is rapidly moving from being operational to being strategic, which requires both business and financial acumen. More fundamentally, the CHRO needs to be an active member of the C-suite helping to realize business goals—not just HR goals. They must also understand the company’s risks, so they have a realistic view of how the business operates and why.

Traditional HR is also known to cause burnout because administrative work alone can be uninspiring. By transforming HR into a strategic asset, HR professionals can make a positive difference for their company, and their work is more challenging and exciting.

#2: HR Leaders Will Build a Network to Help Facilitate Transformation

For HR to become a more strategic asset of the business, HR leaders will need to  build alliances across the organization and take advantage of internal expertise that can help them accelerate transformation projects. It’s also necessary to leverage information silos with data-sharing capabilities that improve cross-functional efficiency.

Soft skills are always necessary for HR, but they need to be used outside the department since every project will require alignment, support, and investment.

#3: More HR Professionals Will Use Design Thinking

Many HR professionals don’t know what they don’t know, and one of those unknowns is how to understand the organization’s intended future state,

because everything, including HR practices and technology, needs to align with it. Not surprisingly, a lot of HR professionals struggle when designing a  future state, so they often pull in consultants to help.

I use design thinking to create a future state because the process allows me to understand a problem from the stakeholders’ points of view. According to the MIT Sloan School of Business, there are four steps to design thinking:

● Understand the problem

● Develop possible solutions

● Prototype, test and refine

● Implement

I find this process helpful because it fosters greater creativity and encourages brainstorming. It also allows me to understand the implications of any digital transformation that might be happening within the organization, including HR transformation.

#4: CHROs Will Strengthen Ties With the CFO

CHROs will actively pursue deeper relationships with their company’s CFO to sharpen their business and

financial acumen. It can take a bit of courage to ask for assistance in the first place, but the payoff is well worth it. Having the CFO in your corner can open your eyes to dynamics occurring in the company, among customers and in the industry that you may not have considered.

#5: HR Transformation Pressure Will Rise

HR can sometimes be risk averse as if it ain’t broke, why fix it? The most important reason to modernize HR is that the traditional business as usual tends not to align with the company’s more digital future state.

Companies have realized that becoming digital-first is no longer an option, so there’s a tremendous focus on that. It’s time-consuming and expensive, but it’s what customers and employees expect.

That digital-first mindset also applies to HR and is forcing HR transformation to the forefront.

For one thing, Millennials and Gen Z were born into a world that is more digital than their predecessors. Since technology is part of the younger generations’ DNA, they expect internal systems to be intuitive. They also have different preferences when it comes to compensation packages and perks.

These young and middle-aged professionals tend to surround themselves with technology in their personal lives, which is why they expect their employers’ software to operate as easily as Google. They’re also more likely to customize an app because they think the software should adapt to them versus the other way around.

The most mature organizations realize all this, and they’ve put HR technology in place to facilitate transformation. Because they were early adopters, they’re already familiar with modern software and how it differs from traditional tools. And, because they’re using intelligent automation to automate rote tasks, they have more time to innovate.

#6: Change Management Will Be Essential

Every time a business changes the way it operates, a fair number of employees may not be on board

because there was no change management process in place. According to Gartner’s Workforce Change Survey, 74% of employees were willing to change work behaviors to support organizational changes in 2016, but that number dropped to 38% in 2022.

Effective change management involves “customers” (stakeholders) from the beginning because individuals are more likely to participate in a program or practice that they helped design versus one that was forced upon them.

Some companies have appointed project managers in their HR departments who are change management certified. However, the flip side is that not enough HR professionals are practicing or getting certified in change management skills.

Bottom line

The dynamics of business constantly change as a result of many factors: a shifting competitive landscape, technological innovation and changing customer and employee expectations. To keep pace, HR must transform, and the wisest way to approach transformation is to map the current and future states of the company and adjust HR operations accordingly.

Jamie Aitken is VP of HR Transformation at Betterworks. Would you like to comment?

Pay Transparency Laws Call For High Employer Due Diligence

What employers must consider

By Ruthie White, Spencer Fane

An emerging issue employers should plan to address during the coming year involves pay transparency, a requirement for employers to disclose wage information to applicants or employees.

In 2022, major companies including Wells Fargo, IBM,

and American Express enacted policies around pay disclosure. Two states (California and Rhode Island) and Washington, D.C. adopted their own pay transparency laws, while other states and cities are working to adopt their own. Some require employers to provide the salary range to current employees who

are changing roles if they request the information (Washington, D.C.).

As of January 3, the following states or cities have passed pay transparency laws: California; Colorado; Connecticut; Ithaca, New York; Jersey City, New Jersey; Maryland; Nevada; New York City; Rhode Island; Toledo, Ohio; Washington, D.C.; and Westchester County, New York.

Employers with offices in different states now face the challenge to ensure they are up to date with each state’s laws (and some cities) regarding pay transparency. Some states, like Colorado, have very specific requirements and other states only require pay disclosure if an applicant or employee requests the information.

In addition to the various state law requirements around pay transparency, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) can protect discussions involving compensation as concerted activity at the federal level. For federal contractors, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) prohibits policies that discourage pay transparency, and employees and applicants should now feel free to openly discuss pay ranges.

Add in the increasingly common use of remote work, and employers have many mitigating factors to consider in what is and isn’t required.

When faced with this increasingly challenging regulatory environment, the best option for employers might be to take control of the situation and create policies and best practices instituting companywide transparency. This can be not

only proactive but also beneficial to company culture to take this step even if not currently required by law. In addition to showing support for pay equity and addressing often persistent and inherent wage gaps across gender and racial identities, this helps move toward compliance if and when a law does take effect requiring the practice.

Specific to job postings, pay ranges included should always be in good faith for what an employer could reasonably expect to pay the designated position.

Based on the current trends, employers should consider:

● Implementing or updating internal salary transparency policies or protocols by providing existing employees the same access to the pay data as new hires or applicants.

● Conducting salary market research to support a company’s compensation model.

● Conducting a pay equity analysis to ensure current salaries are in line with applicable law.

● Ensuring that documentation justifying pay exists, as well as explanations for deviations for pay protocols.

● Training managers and supervisors on pay protocols, including a section on implicit bias.

Employers have a unique opportunity to assess both current compliance needs and proactive opportunities to address this important issue. Attracting and retaining top talent remains a high priority, and the expectations of job candidates continues to shift toward pay transparency as a requirement and not a perk.

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Spencer Fane Partner Ruthie White helps employers resolve labor and employment disputes in and out of court.

How To Set Salary Ranges That Are Useful, Fair, And Explainable

Shifting mindset from pay management to pay explainability

By Nancy Romanyshyn, Syndio

Companieshave been sharing pay ranges with the public as new pay range transparency laws go into effect (most recently California and Washington State at the beginning of 2023). The goal of pay range transparency laws is to reduce pay gaps. For example, new research shows that the accountability from pay transparency incentivizes institutions to compensate women more fairly.  We also know that pay transparency is becoming table stakes for the employee value proposition, as employees want greater visibility into rewards and it has a demonstrable impact on employee intent to stay, which is critical in the continued tight labor market.

However, some companies are posting salary ranges so wide that they fail to be useful for job candidates (and worse, give the impression to candidates and current employees that they’re hiding something). Ideally, salary ranges should be externally competitive, internally equitable, and based on factors that are easily explained to employees who might question them — but it’s not easy to achieve the right balance.

“It’s really a scenario almost like a Goldilocks: the range can’t be too big. It can’t be too narrow. It can’t be too high, it can’t be too low.” -

Christine Hendrickson, Syndio VP of Strategic Initiatives in The Wall Street Journal

Below, we discuss why so many companies have been relying on wide salary ranges and how compensation professionals can modernize their approach to compensation management to set salary ranges that are useful, fair, and explainable for today’s era of pay transparency.

Shifting Mindset from Pay Management to Pay Explainability

Attention-grabbing headlines about wildly broad pay ranges that vary by hundreds of thousands of dollars are confusing. It can seem like companies are purposefully setting ranges so broad that they become utterly meaningless to job seekers and the employees already in those jobs. However, as a former compensation professional, I can tell you that most of these wide ranges were not created with bad intentions. Instead, it’s likely that many compensation professionals are still taking a traditional approach that was meant for managing pay — not talking about pay.

As “pay explainability” — the ability to clearly articulate how pay is determined and ensure it is fair and consistent with a transparent compensation philosophy — becomes increasingly important, compensation teams must evolve their approach pay management.

A compensation history lesson: For many years, compensation professionals haven’t had a lot of resources or technology with which to manage pay. The traditional approach has been to tie compensation to the job architecture. Typically, job structures have broad bands because each level represents multiple sets of jobs across job functions/ families that have been evaluated in the same way based on job evaluation methodology factors. To create a salary range for each level, you typically compile market data for the benchmark jobs at each level and aggregate it to create a midpoint.  You then build a broad range around the midpoint to accommodate the different jobs and salaries associated with those jobs, while managing pay to the midpoint of the range.

From the perspective of managing compensation, this is an efficient approach. Traditional market data sources were compensation surveys published once a year, so the data didn’t change often. Benchmark jobs across different job families often had similar market data, and aggregating the data made it easier to manage pay to what was considered “competitive,” usually the midpoint of the range.

However, we’ve moved to a world where market data is accessible to everyone much more “real-time” than annual surveys. Employees are doing their own research to uncover what their jobs are paid. Companies that continue to use a traditional broad grade structure won’t be able to easily translate it for employees, job seekers, and the general public, who want to know the range for a single job.

Moving to job-based salary ranges: In today’s era of pay transparency, “pay explainability” must be built into the compensation design.  You’ve got to be able to explain how you created the ranges you’re using to set pay. A Gartner press release stated that “When organizations educate employees about how pay is determined, employee trust in the organization increases by 10% and pay equity perceptions increase by 11%.”  Pay explainability is essential to retaining and engaging employees in the era of transparency.

For more concise, clearer explanations of pay, we believe that we will continue to see a narrowing of salary ranges to more job function/family or job-based, a move away from the broad grade range.  This will be a big change — and it won’t happen

overnight. This will require you to reexamine your compensation philosophy and design and shift from a one-size-fits-all approach to something that makes more sense for how employees think of their jobs and their pay.

To accomplish this, companies need to go back to the basics in better defining and honing their rewards approaches. This includes foundational things like being crisp and clear about what each reward element — base salary, short-term incentives, and long-term incentives — represents (e.g., “Your base salary is based on what is competitive for the work you do, your skills, and your performance”).  You need to be prepared to explain in detail how, for example, you differentiate performance in base salary.  It will all be out in the open and your employees will be asking.  Learn more about the steps you can take to prepare for pay transparency in our article here

Demonstrating salaries are equitable: Additionally, as pay ranges are posted, more employees are talking to one another about what they are paid. So being able to prove that salaries are equitable is also fundamental for pay explainability. A Gartner press release stated, “The Gartner survey of 3,523 employees in 2Q22 also found that employees who perceive their pay as unequitable have a 15% lower intent to stay with

their employer and are 13% less engaged at work than employees who perceive their pay as equitable.” It’s crucial for compensation professionals setting salary ranges to be able to take into account what is internally equitable for each role. This requires the ability to integrate data from your pay equity analyses.

How to Set Salary Ranges in the Era of Pay Transparency

When it comes to specifically creating salary ranges appropriate for the era of pay transparency, companies should take a step-by-step approach so they can make incremental progress as they transition to compensation programs better suited for pay explainability.

Step 1: Assess and leverage what you have

Your first step should be to conduct assessments across different dimensions of pay to determine your starting point. For example, we recommend running pay equity analyses to show how pay is being delivered and then cross-referencing that with position-in-range analyses to show how employee pay is managed within the ranges. You should also assess the jobs you are posting and where. By combining the findings from these assessments,  you can better prioritize the changes you need to make to meet your immediate job posting needs.

The above assessments are helping companies then map out the transition from what exists to what they may need to refine or build.  For example, some employers are still using their wide ranges, but they are leveraging the market reference ranges within the broader ranges they may already be using for their at-market and above-market job functions and families.

Speaking of job functions and families, many companies that have job architectures also have function-based frameworks that overlay the enterprise-level architecture. Opportunities and career growth are integral to employee retention, and we believe that companies that build on these more job-specific frameworks will more effectively engage their employees.  When linked to job function/ family-based salary ranges, these become tools that can be used by Total Rewards and Talent Management together in telling the story of how employees can grow with the organization.

Step 2: Consider new approaches to data sourcing

Compensation professionals should also rethink how they approach market data. Leading companies are pulling more data on skills premiums in addition to using standard market data sources. Real-time compensation tools are emerging, such as Squirrel from Comp Tool, that scrape web data from millions of job postings with employer-reported pay to create a current and detailed look at what is happening in the local labor market. Companies should also carefully watch the many other sites (e.g., levels. fyi) that their employees regularly access for compensation data as well as create a regular feedback loop with Talent Acquisition regarding offers and what they’re seeing.

Step 3: Combine market data with internal equity data

Finally, companies must determine how to best bring market data sources and established ranges together with the results of their internal pay equity analyses to arrive at ranges that truly represent what they pay for jobs.

An Evolving Opportunity, Not an Overnight Fix

Adopting a new compensation philosophy is a transition, not flipping a switch. Companies’ approaches to setting salary ranges will continue to evolve and take shape as the market adjusts to new requirements and employees weigh in. The scale has certainly tipped in favor of job-based salary ranges — there are simply too many out there now to put the genie back in the bottle.

Employees are a crucial part of the conversation now around pay — they want to know why they’re being paid what they’re paid, how their pay is being determined, and they want to know they’re being paid fairly. It’s time to manage pay in a way meant for prime time, rather than something analyzed behind closed doors.

As Syndio CEO Maria Colacurcio shares in this New York Times article, for forward-thinking companies, the pay transparency era is an opportunity to get good at proactively addressing and communicating compensation policies. This can ultimately improve trust between employees and job candidates.

Nancy Romanyshyn is Director, Pay Strategy & Partner Success at Syndio

The Limits Of ‘Unlimited’ PTO

It is crucial to take a closer look at the benefits and costs of the policy

By Rob Whalen, PTO Exchange

UnlimitedPTO has become an increasingly popular tactic that companies are using to respond to employees’ demands for flexibility and a healthier work-life balance. Major companies such as Microsoft, Salesforce, and Netflix have implemented unlimited PTO policies, and a significant proportion of employees are asking for these policies. There’s just one problem: Employees

aren’t, in fact, getting greater flexibility with “unlimited” PTO.

When Microsoft announced its unlimited PTO policy, chief people officer Kathleen Hogan said the decision was an effort to “modernize” the company’s approach to vacation and establish a more “flexible model.” But the flexibility offered by unlimited PTO is illusory. It leads to stress and burnout because

employees aren’t clear on how much time is approved and the decision is no longer theirs—it’s their managers’.

It often forces employees to take less time away or return back into the office earlier because of the clarity and understanding of what is appropriate. And despite the misleading word “unlimited,” it imposes emotional limits on how much time employees can take without giving them a clear idea of what those limits are.

But the most serious problem with unlimited PTO is the fact that it allows companies to avoid accountability by refusing to track the hours employees have earned and compensating them accordingly. This creates an unequal benefit for employees, as some will see how far they can push the policy and others will take a more conservative approach. These discrepancies will guarantee that some employees aren’t treated fairly and undermine your company culture.

Why Is Unlimited PTO Gaining Popularity?

Over the past several years, employees have experienced sweeping shifts in how and where they work. According to Glassdoor, employee reviews that mention unlimited PTO have spiked by 75 percent since before the COVID-19 pandemic. Microsoft claims that adopting unlimited PTO is part of an effort to meet employees’ evolving needs, and this is how many companies will continue to position their transitions to unlimited PTO.

These companies neglect to mention that unlimited PTO cuts into employees’ compensation, as they will no longer receive payouts when there’s a reduction in force or they depart the company for some other reason. It’s true that employees are demanding greater flexibility, and proponents of unlimited PTO are advertising the policy as a way to meet this demand. But employees already struggle to use all their vacation time, which means unlimited PTO is solving a “problem” that doesn’t exist. And it’s creating a new set of problems in the process.

It’s easy to see why unlimited PTO would appeal to employees at first glance: a policy that allows you to “take what you need” sounds like a genuine effort to put your interests first. However, it’s even easier to see why companies prefer unlimited PTO: It relieves them of the responsibility to track employees’ hours, sounds generous and attracts candidates,

and doesn’t require them to deliver the benefit employees think they’re receiving.

Unlimited PTO Creates and Perpetuates Inequality

When companies transition to unlimited PTO, they’re implementing an ill-defined policy that will be interpreted and used in many ways. This can lead to confusion, tension, and even discrimination, as diverse employees with different circumstances and priorities will behave in different ways. Meanwhile, managers and company leaders will draw conclusions about employees’ work ethic and commitment to the company on the basis of the vacation time they take, which could be skewed by bias and favoritism.

Diverse employees already feel like they’re under more intense scrutiny at work, and unlimited PTO will exacerbate this anxiety

and create suspicion between colleagues. A survey conducted by PTO Exchange found that nonwhite employees, women, and those in lower income brackets are significantly less likely to use all their vacation time, which is likely a consequence of the unique challenges they face. This gap becomes even more pronounced for diverse employees at companies that have adopted unlimited PTO, as these employees will be warier of how their time off is perceived.

Employees vary in terms of temperament, personal financial goals, and a wide range of other variables. This is why companies should offer flexible benefits such as convertible PTO, which allows employees to put the value of their accrued time off toward an array of financial priorities. Unlike unlimited PTO, convertible PTO helps companies meet the needs of all their employees while building a healthier company culture.

How Companies Take Advantage of Employees with Unlimited PTO

Immediately after Microsoft declared that it’s providing employees with unlimited PTO, the company announced plans to lay off 10,000 workers as part of a broader effort to cut costs. This is no surprise, as unlimited PTO is a cost-cutting measure. It lets companies avoid paying out the accrued vacation time employees have earned. States such as California and Colorado require companies to treat accrued vacation time as wages that have to be paid out when an employee leaves, but unlimited PTO allows companies to shirk this responsibility.

Companies can reduce their total expenditures when they no longer

have to account for PTO and give employees the full compensation they’ve earned. Microsoft employees with unused vacation time will receive a one-time payout in April, a reminder that employees don’t always use the time they’ve earned. If anything, employees have become even more reluctant to use PTO in recent years – a much larger proportion of PTO went unused in 2022 than in 2019. This is yet another reason why employees aren’t the beneficiaries of unlimited PTO policies. Instead of earning vacation time that they will eventually be paid for (or put toward other financial goals), they’re losing that time altogether.

With so many companies offering unlimited PTO, it has never been more important to take a close look at the real benefits and costs

of the policy. While the word “unlimited” may sound enticing to employees, they should remember that it’s just a word. The policy itself strictly limits how much time they can take, how they’ll be compensated, and how they can put their hard-earned money to use.

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Rob Whalen is the Co-Founder and CEO of PTO Exchange

How AI And Automation Are Evolving Talent Acquisition Roles

By Anil Dharni, Sense

as teams are operating leaner while simultaneously expected to do more than ever. While many of the changes in TA right now are being attributed to economic uncertainty, these changes are a bit different from three years ago, as teams scrambled to stay afloat in the early days of the pandemic. Rather, companies are looking for increased ways to keep every area of their business as lean and productive as possible – talent acquisition is no exception.

Particularly for recruiters, there is tremendous opportunity right now to maximize efficiency while enhancing productivity. As noted, their roles are shifting, and not simply because of a drive for efficiency or economic uncertainty. Rather, candidate expectations have permanently changed. Today, recruiters are expected to do fewer of those “traditional” tasks that tend to be manual or administrative. Rather, the focus is on high-impact work, like “selling” roles to job seekers, answering questions and alleviating concerns, focusing on closing candidates quickly, and more.

Technology plays a critical role as recruiters and companies look for ways to thrive in today’s economy. We do not know how the current economic situation will play out. But, we do know that companies wanting

to thrive on the other side of it need to acknowledge evolving roles and invest in ways to keep their TA teams at their most productive.

Why AI and Automation Have Reached such an Impactful Point for TA Right Now Improved technology

Of course, the most obvious reason that AI and automation are having such a powerful impact on talent acquisition teams is that technology has simply advanced and become more sophisticated. Platforms like ChatGPT and Google-backed Anthropic have suddenly taken over many HR headlines, and showcase there is so much potential for TA teams to leverage these powerful technologies.

Aside from the headline-grabbing technology, real-world talent acquisition tools like job matching and recruiting chatbots are currently being used by top organizations across the globe to deliver better candidate and recruiter experiences at scale.

Economic uncertainty

But while incredible advances in technology receive much of the attention (and rightfully so - it has progressed tremendously in the past several years), the economy also plays a large role in opening doors for AI and automation within talent acquisition.

Theneedle is moving for talent acquisition

Technology plays a critical role as recruiters and companies look for ways to thrive in today’s economy

TA teams are more open to leveraging AI and automation technologies due to increasing economic uncertainty. Many talent acquisition teams have been reduced to the bare minimum, which means your TA team members are tasked with doing more work than ever.

Although many organizations are subsequently making fewer new hires, the demand for stellar talent experiences is consistent whether your business is hiring for 10 roles or 1,000 roles. And your TA team must be able to deliver consistent experiences regardless of resources or openings.

This means that in addition to operating leaner than in the past few years, your TA team also needs to run at its most efficient. Efficiency and productivity have seemingly never been more important for talent acquisition teams. And to empower their TA teams with what they need to achieve those goals,

organizations are equipping them with the right technology to augment human interaction rather than replace it.

Changing talent expectations

The past three years have brought a seismic shift in talent expectations from employers and prospective employers. Talent is increasingly looking to recruiters as career counselors and advocates, rather than stepping stones to a particular job.

What does that look like, exactly? Candidates are looking for recruiters not to help them find a job, but to find the right job within your organization. There are benefits to this for both talent and organizations. For talent, of course, they build stronger relationships with your organization from the first touchpoint, which makes them more likely to accept your job offer, be a productive employee, and even refer more talent to your organization.

For organizations, you are less likely to lose out on silver medalists, the talent who is not a fit for the job they applied to, but would be great in another role. You are getting in front of the “you’re great but not the best fit for this role” instead of finding the right fit from Day 1. And with talent today applying to 12 jobs at a time, on average, the TA teams that can rise to meet this new expectation from talent are the ones most likely to land their most desirable candidates.

How Are AI and Automation Contributing to the Evolution of TA Roles Today?

Back when Sense first launched our B2B platform in 2017, the introduction of automation and AI into the recruiting processes for our early customers was transformative. Automating recruiter communications made nearly instantaneous, dramatic improvements to core metrics like time to hire, cost per hire, NPS, and more.

As I have touched upon, we have come so far in the years since our launch. AI and automation are truly at the forefront, and their impact on talent acquisition is being felt at seismic levels today. The core benefits of AI and automation in those earliest days are still critical fundamentals – database integrity/cleanup, database reactivation, candidate engagement through automated touchpoints, reduced candidate dropoff through automated reminders, and more.

But with today’s AI and automation, talent technology companies are layering on more sophisticated and powerful capabilities that deliver on the talent expectations outlined above, and the increased demands on TA teams. These applications of AI and automation are particularly impactful right now in the evolution of TA:

Chatbot

Chatbots have seen some of the most significant progress in recent years. It is important to note; however, that not all chatbots are created equally. Most of us have had frustrating interactions with customer service and other chatbots.

But today’s most sophisticated recruiting chatbots create natural, seamless experiences for talent and allow your recruiters to be “available” 24/7. This is particularly important in high-demand industries like healthcare, transportation, and manufacturing, where talent isn’t necessarily applying or available between 9 and 5.

Chatbots do so much more than answer questions today. When leveraging the most powerful technology, they can answer questions, help candidates find the best jobs, prescreen, provide insight into company mission and culture FAQs, and even schedule time on your recruiters’ calendars. The combined impact on candidate experience and recruiter productivity is truly transformational. And with our research showing that one in three TA leaders feel their organizations aren’t communicating successfully with talent, leveraging chatbots can lead to dramatic improvements.

Job matching

I mentioned the desire for recruiters to serve more like career counselors, helping candidates find the right jobs within your organization. Powerful AI today is helping your TA team to serve as those career counselors, effectively matching job preferences and professional backgrounds to specific roles within your organization. This technology can be deployed after a candidate applies, suggesting additional roles that may be a fit (which can be combined with automation to send a confirmation email along with those recommendations), it can also be deployed with chatbot to ask questions and match to specific jobs during a “conversation.” We’re just scratching the surface of how this powerful technology can be applied, but it’s transforming candidate experiences and TA roles in exciting ways.

Talent engagement platforms

To date, many talent acquisition technology solutions have been one-off point solutions. They work independently of one another and do an okay job on their own; however, they can be a source of frustration for your team, requiring multiple logins, user experiences, and customer support requests. Their costs can also add up.

Today’s most efficient and productive talent acquisition teams are moving away from duct tape, and point solutions and are embracing robust talent engagement platforms that include chatbots, job matching, and other solutions. Rather than working independently of one another, they work together, with robust functionality and analytics, oftentimes integrating with your ATS. The result is more robust impacts on your core metrics, along with extremely detailed and sophisticated analytics that help you make more informed decisions and seamless candidate experiences. Less time remembering logins, which tool does what, and dealing with multiple customer support teams.

What’s Next?

We are in a game-changing time for talent acquisition teams. Recruiters now have powerful AI assistants at their fingertips, giving them superpowers: The ability to have conversations with hundreds of job seekers at a time, versus a handful (at best), doubled (or better) job seeker selection speed, and so much more. At the same time, your recruiters have also become (or soon will become) AI operators. With no-code recruiting technologies like what I mentioned above, end users (that’s recruiters) can build and launch their own personal AI assistants to be more efficient, engage and find better talent, and more. The power is in the user.

But, it’s essential for organizations to invest in these game-changing technologies now. Whether you’re hiring for 100 roles or 10,000 roles, meeting talent needs now is essential. Adding more talent to your pipeline, and nurturing that talent, remains critical. Giving your recruiting team the technology they need to be most successful is essential to maximizing your resources in the evolving arena of talent acquisition.

Anil Dharni is the Co-founder and CEO of Sense, the leading AI-powered talent engagement and communication platform. Before founding Sense, Anil was co-founder and COO at Funzio, which was acquired by GREE in 2012 for $210M. Prior to Funzio, Anil led product and design at the third-largest Social Networking company, hi5. He is an international speaker and thought leader known for developing the best candidate engagement tools in recruiting.

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How HR Professionals Can Use Technology To Improve Workplace Safety

Managing safety and compliance at the workplace

By Yasmine Mustafa, ROAR

Oneof the HR department’s key functions is ensuring safety measures are adhered to, if not because of an appreciation of employees, then because it is legally mandated. However, ensuring every workplace is safe can be a monumental task if HR employees do not have some help.

Fortunately, several technology tools make monitoring and managing the workspace possible, no matter how large a business the HR rep works.

Here are a few ways technology has made HR pros’ jobs easier regarding safety and compliance management

Finding the Right Candidates

HR will usually oversee at least the “gatekeeper” phase of hiring. Making sure the right employees get brought in for interviews and those that should not get interviewed do not is the entire purpose of that role. It also can be daunting when faced with dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of employees.

Sortable databases, quick background checks, training, and education verification online are all technology tools

available to HR employees. Most can quickly knock out those that do not qualify while highlighting those prospective employees that deserve an interview.

Hiring technology also helps companies avoid lawsuits. A database of applicants and their resumes or applications takes the emotion out of the hiring process. All an HR pro and those making the hiring decision see are the credentials.

That provides cover legally for those that are rejected for an interview. The rejected prospects cannot claim bias or discrimination because the entire decision was fact-based.

Training Existing and New Employees

Most workplace accidents come down to a lack of training or carelessness. That said, there are a lot of training requirements for the average workplace, especially if part of the workplace has machinery or other ways employees can hurt themselves. Busy supervisors and managers rarely have the time to train employees personally, especially in safety protocols.

E-training takes the task of training employees away from supervisors and managers. Learning online places the responsibility of training on HR and the employee(s) in question. Additionally, HR representatives do not have to spend much time in the classroom overseeing training sessions.

All e-training courses can be designed to test employee knowledge of workplace safety and other job requirements via quizzes and assignments. Most training sessions only require hands-on training for specific activities, like administering CPR or following shutdown procedures. By streamlining the entire training process, managers can focus on specific procedures.

E-training also provides cover to a business legally. An employer can prove an employee was trained before they were injured, did not follow procedures, or was careless in following work processes. It also can document an environment that focuses on workplace safety overall.

Emergency Notifications

Providing staff with emergency panic buttons makes getting the word out about an unsafe environment or threat to safety much simpler. A panic button (sometimes called a Bluetooth alert button, or Bluetooth emergency button,) allows employees to instantly alert security or management of a crisis.

The old process was cumbersome and relied on word of mouth when an emergency was developing. A lot of time was wasted. Giving employees the ability to alert management of a situation quickly saves those vital minutes as an alert works its way through the facility. In some industries, a few minutes can mean employees avoid injury or stay alive.

Another benefit of a Bluetooth emergency system is that your employees can activate it anywhere in a facility. With cell services plus the business’ WiFi systems, most workspaces have almost no dead zones. That helps employees get an alert out instantly versus having to find and travel to a panic button or phone.

Monitoring Systems

Technology has allowed employers to monitor their employees visually and physically and work progress online. Multiple types of wearable technology let HR personnel and managers track employees and their activities. Those include several types of monitoring systems.

Vital signs monitoring

Vital sign monitoring devices detect and track heart rate, oxygen levels, etc., which are vital in high-stress situations. Not only can a manager or supervisor track how a person is performing, but they can also tell if they are experiencing environmental or situational factors that might affect their safety. Knowing when an employee is about to be in trouble can save lives in some industries.

Environmental monitors

Environmental monitors track gasses in the workplace, temperatures, particulate presence, etc. In many factories and jobs, being able to tell when a workplace has become dangerous is key to keeping employees safe and avoiding accidents. Additionally, most workplace monitors log data, so an employee’s exposure is documented, which can help with treatment.

Tech improved clothing and equipment

Technology has provided many benefits in machine, equipment, and clothing safety. Machines have guards and automated processes. Clothes can help with tasks, such as lifting or regulating body temperature. In both cases, previously or potentially dangerous scenarios can now be avoided.

New technology has not only helped avoid machine-caused injuries, but also reduce repetitive-motion injuries, muscle pulls, strains and tears, and impact-related injuries. Employees can work with confidence because of technology without having to be alert to a potentially hazardous situation.

AI and Automation

Some people complain about automation or AI taking over the workplace and replacing workers, but in most cases, it is a benefit, at least regarding safety and workplace accidents

Automation might replace some workers, but it also can take on duties that pose safety risks to employees. Having robots perform tasks like lifting heavy objects, welding, or activating machinery

has undoubtedly helped avoid certain injuries. HR personnel can relegate risky tasks to robots in some cases and reduce the risk to employees.

AI has provided employees with interactive instruction, training, and oversight, reducing workplace issues. By guiding employees, AI has alleviated the need for HR to micro-manage training processes.

Final Thoughts

These are just a few ways technology has made the work of HR professionals not only easier to perform but easier to manage. Technology is not always the answer, but in HR, for many, it allows personnel to do their jobs effectively.

Yasmine Mustafa is the CEO & Co-Founder of ROAR

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