How to Utilize Automation to Better Your Hiring Process

The implementation of automation helps streamline your hiring process. The benefits include:

  • Time savings: You can automate tasks such as sharing job postings, sourcing candidates, scheduling interviews, and generating job offer letters. These actions free up time to build candidate relationships, conduct interviews, and fulfill other core activities.
  • Reduced biases: Automation in your screening process focuses on a candidate’s credentials rather than ethnicity, gender, age, and other personal identifiers. This process helps reduce unconscious biases that can influence hiring decisions.
  • Shorter time to hire: Automation of repetitive tasks helps speed up your hiring process. Filling jobs with the right candidates in less time helps save time and money.
  • Better candidate experience: Maintaining communication throughout your hiring process encourages candidate engagement. This process increases the odds of hiring the best candidates and receiving positive employer reviews.

As a result, you should start implementing automation in your hiring process today.

Discover how to utilize automation to better your hiring process.

Share Job Postings

You can use automation to share job postings with both the public and your employees. Letting your employees know which openings you are hiring for encourages them to provide referrals.

Employee referrals typically fit the job requirements and blend with your culture. As a result, you can fast-track referrals through your hiring process.

The sooner you begin onboarding and training employee referrals, the quicker they can begin producing. Even better, referrals are likely to remain long-term because they already know employees within your organization.

Streamline Your Resume Screening Process

A chatbot can evaluate resumes based on the criteria you set. Then, the bot can post on your chat platform the resumes of qualified candidates and mark them in your applicant tracking system (ATS) the rejected resumes. This process significantly reduces the time needed to screen resumes.

Schedule Interviews

Automation of the interview scheduling process lets qualified candidates decide when to meet for job interviews. The interviews get scheduled both in your ATS and on your scheduling platform.

The chatbot sends the interviewers and candidates reminders of the dates and times of the interviews. The bot also sends interviewers a link to each candidate’s profile in your ATS to prepare for the interview.

Sharing the interviewers’ availability lets candidates schedule or reschedule the times that work best for everyone. This process simplifies the ability to coordinate interviewer and candidate schedules.

Support Candidate Evaluations

Evaluating candidates soon after interviews helps provide performance feedback:

  • When a candidate moves to the interview stage in your ATS, a channel on your communication platform is created for the interviewers.
  • After the discussion, the interviewers receive a scorecard to fill out.
  • The responses populate the candidate’s ATS profile.
  • An HR chatbot schedules an interviewer videoconference to share thoughts on the candidate and determine the next step.

Deliver Job Offer Letters

Sending job offer letters soon after making hiring decisions increases the odds of candidate acceptance. Then, you can add the best candidates to your team.

The following process can create a job offer letter:

  • When a candidate in your ATS moves to the offer stage, a chatbot shares the offer details with the appropriate stakeholders through your communication platform.
  • The stakeholders approve or reject the candidate.
  • Approved job offer details are included in a letter created on your electronic signature platform.
  • A chatbot shares the job offer letter with the stakeholders to review and approve or reject it.
  • An approved letter is sent to the candidate through your electronic signature platform.
  • The signed letter is uploaded to your ATS.
  • The candidate’s status changes to hired.

Would You Like Help to Hire Accounting and Finance Professionals?

Casey Accounting & Finance Resources can provide you with qualified accounting and finance professionals to benefit your team. Contact us to learn more today.

Why Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Are So Vital in Your Organization!

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are vital in your organization. These initiatives help create a positive workplace focused on innovation and growth:

  • Prioritization of diversity shows investment in employees at all levels regardless of their culture, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, abilities, and other personal characteristics.
  • Creating equitable opportunities for advancement demonstrates dedication to every employee’s career development.
  • Providing an inclusive work environment helps employees feel welcome, valued, and respected for their contributions and results.

Emphasizing DEI in your organization increases employee engagement, performance, and productivity. The results include elevated job satisfaction, employee morale, and attraction and retention rates. These factors help strengthen your bottom line.

Discover why DEI is so Vital in your Organization.

More Attractive Company Culture

Emphasizing DEI helps create a company culture that attracts and retains employees:

  • Diversity means employees of all backgrounds are welcome, valued, and respected within your company.
  • Equity means employees at all levels have access to the unique resources and support they need to advance within your organization.
  • Inclusion means every employee has access to the benefits and support needed to help them feel like valued, respected members of your organization.

Greater Problem-Solving

Prioritizing DEI throughout your organization encourages employees to share their unique ideas and perspectives. This diverse information helps develop and implement creative solutions to complex problems. The results include elevated innovation and a stronger competitive advantage.

Elevated Employee Retention

Employees want to work for organizations that honor and reward diversity, actively help them reach their career goals, and provide effective resources and support to help them feel welcome and respected. Therefore, prioritization of DEI encourages employees to take pride in their work and remain long-term. The results include lower hiring, onboarding, and training costs.

Clearer Customer Understanding

Hiring diverse employees helps clarify what your targeted customers are looking for in the products and services they purchase. Gaining additional insight into your customer base helps fill their needs and increase sales.

Stronger Customer Base

Customers who see themselves represented in your diverse workforce are likely to do business with your organization. For instance, hiring diverse employees provides a sense of authenticity and support for customers of all backgrounds. Also, providing a voice for diverse customers’ concerns helps build better customer relationships and strengthen the bottom line.

Would You Like Help to Increase DEI in Your Accounting and Finance Team?

Casey Accounting & Finance Resources can provide you with diverse accounting and finance professionals to help increase DEI in your team. Contact us to learn more today.

Four Tips for Managing a Hybrid Work Model

Managing a hybrid work model can be challenging. Because every organization has different needs, their approaches to managing hybrid employees differ.

Having guidelines for managing a hybrid work model lets leaders know what to expect and suggested steps to take. These ideas can help.

Choose among these four tips for managing a hybrid work model.

1. Emphasize Outcomes Rather Than Output

Define success in terms of seeing specific changes within your organization and stakeholder behavior rather than how your work is proceeding. Focusing on outcomes rather than output helps your team reach the desired change with the smallest amount of initial and ongoing work.

Emphasizing outcomes rather than outputs provides many results:

  • Your definition of success is more meaningful. For instance, if you prioritize increasing your team’s number of new and renewing clients, you can tie your team’s efforts to something valuable for your organization and customers.
  • You are encouraged to learn through feedback. For instance, you can establish a metric you want to attain, decide which action should drive the desired results, take the action, and measure the results.
  • You gain flexibility. Focusing on outcomes means your main definition of scope is reaching the target value of your outcome-based metric. Therefore, you must act within the budget and timeframe to reach the intended outcome.

2. Be Deliberate About Team Interactions

A hybrid work model requires purposeful interactions between leaders and their teams when working remotely. More frequent interactions help build stronger work relationships.

For instance, leaders should allow remote employees time between virtual meetings for casual conversations as they would have if working at the office. Also, leaders should have check-in times throughout the day to monitor the well-being of their remote employees and offer support when needed.

3. Strategize Teamwork

Leaders should evaluate which tasks and projects require individual work and which require teamwork. For instance, projects with standardized metrics and routine tasks are typically suited for individual work. Conversely, creative tasks typically require team interaction.

4.  Prioritize Autonomy and Alignment

Managing a hybrid work model requires leaders to encourage autonomy and alignment within their teams. These leaders also must support their teams’ diverse ideas, thoughts, and viewpoints to improve the organization.

For instance, employees at all levels should be involved in making decisions that align with the culture. Encouraging open communication throughout the decision-making process supports innovation and company growth.

Do You Need to Add to Your Hybrid Accounting and Finance Team?

Casey Accounting & Finance Resources can provide you with experienced accounting and finance professionals to help your hybrid team reach company goals. Find out more today.

How You Can Make the Most of Employee Performance Reviews

Making the most of employee performance reviews can be challenging. Many companies do not have an effective process to provide constructive feedback in a structured manner to improve employee performance.

The purpose of performance reviews is to create an accurate, actionable evaluation of an employee’s performance and develop their skills in line with their job duties and responsibilities. The goal is to identify areas in which employees can improve, practice their skills, and develop into high performers.

Fortunately, you can follow these best practices to help streamline the process of planning and conducting employee performance reviews. Following these recommendations provides structure to have these important conversations.

Follow these steps to make the most of employee performance reviews.

Clarify the Employee Performance Standards

Let employees know well in advance the standards and expectations for their performance reviews. Then, they can understand what they working toward and can perform accordingly.

Clarifying which employee activities are most important helps show the impact of on-the-job behaviors. Demonstrating the causal relationships helps show which behaviors led to positive outcomes and which behaviors led to bad outcomes. Then, employees can focus on the relevant behaviors to reach the desired outcomes.

Describe Specific Observations of Employee Performance

Share specific, descriptive feedback about the employee’s strengths and weaknesses and concrete suggestions to improve their performance. Include examples of behaviors that led to positive outcomes during the review period.

Support Open Discussion About the Employee’s Performance

Encourage the employee to respond to your feedback. They can provide additional insight into why they behaved a certain way or how they can improve in specific areas.

Perhaps the employee requires training and coaching to develop certain skills and improve their performance. Or, the employee might need additional incentives to increase motivation.

Develop an Employee Performance Improvement Plan

Discuss specific steps the employee can take to improve their performance. Include relevant resources, deadlines for improvement, and measurements of success. Then, schedule a time to follow up.

Follow Up on the Employee Performance Improvement Plan

Meet with the employee at the scheduled time to review their performance improvement plan. Evaluate whether the employee reached their key performance indicators (KPIs) for successful change.

If the employee reached their KPIs, discuss the improved performance and provide a relevant reward. Conversely, if the employee did not reach their KPIs, talk about the behaviors you observed and how they impacted performance. Uncover the causes of the underlying issues and how you can help resolve them. Create another performance improvement plan with a timeline to follow up.

Do You Need to Add Accounting and Finance Employees to Your Team?

Casey Accounting & Finance Resources can provide you with accounting and finance professionals to help improve your team’s performance. Find out more today.

5 Workplace Trends Set to Impact 2024

As companies wrap up 2023 and set their 2024 budgets, at Casey Accounting and Finance Resources we’ve scoured the internet for the top workplace trends. This article is a compilation of our research on the categories that are expected to further develop or emerge next year. They are reasonable assumptions from the likes of HR Executive, EY, Gartner, Staffing Industry Analysts, IBM, LinkedIn, and Recruiterflow.

  1. Generative and Predictive AI

AI has received lots of buzz in 2023. From what we read, it will become more of a modern staple, not just in recruiting but across the organization and all industries.

According to Jill Barth, HR Executive tech editor, “Job market pressures …have some executives evaluating … recruiting technology infused with artificial intelligence. Madeline Laurano of Aptitude Research Partners and Tim Sackett of HRUTech.com report that 63% of companies are currently investing or have plans to invest in AI solutions for talent acquisition problems.”

According to EY’s recently released “Work Reimagined Survey,” GenAI is “expected to have an outsized impact on the labor market, on career and learning pathways, and on the realities of work.”

Emi Chiba,  a principal analyst in Gartner’s human resources practice, said the “hype around generative AI has served as a ‘tipping point’ for vendor roadmaps, sparking attention to ‘regular AI’ and how it can produce value for hiring teams.” Yet, as AI interest grows, Chiba also stated that employers will tread cautiously into the AI space until regulatory activity catches up with innovation.

  1. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Sustainable Hiring Practices

The topics of DEI and sustainable hiring practices make the top prediction lists again as they continue to grow in importance for many candidates and employees, too. The goal of sustainable recruiting is to ensure that the recruitment process benefits not only the organization but also the broader environment and society. With a workforce comprised of tech-savvy, environmentally-conscious Gen Z candidates to Baby Boomers, companies need to prepare AI strategies that target and attract both sets of candidates.

According to research by Eagle Hill Consulting, fifty-three percent of U.S. workers say DEI is a key factor when considering a company for employment: Gen Z at 77 percent and Millennials at 63 percent. However, Recruiterflow states that currently, only one in three recruiters track the diversity of candidates.

If employers already haven’t included the following value propositions for employees and candidates, they should consider them: a bias-free hiring process, transparent and equitable wages, corporate social responsibility and community engagement, environmentally friendly practices, and prioritizing employee well-being.

This leads us to segue into the topics of employer branding and employee satisfaction, as much of the logic around DEI also applies to employer branding.

  1. Employer Branding / Employee Satisfaction

Recruiterflow notes that employer branding continues to be extremely important. Even if you have a team of 3-4 people, it’s time to make it a priority. It’s vital that you position yourself as a company that cares about its recruiters’ and other employees’ well-being and development.

Furthermore, the company states that “only a fraction of workers are currently fully engaged in their roles. Fostering a harmonious corporate culture that values collaboration and communication is essential in this new dynamic, where both parties hold significant sway in shaping the work environment. By embracing these shifts, employers and employees can forge a stronger, mutually beneficial relationship that celebrates and rewards their contributions.”

  1. Pay Transparency

Yes, we’re still talking about pay transparency, too, and in 2024, it will continue to gain traction. The gender pay gap has been a persistent issue despite equal pay legislation being in place for over 50 years, according to Recruiterflow.

A recent research report by Staffing Industry Analysts identified nine different legislative measures related to pay transparency, including access to pay information, advertising salary information in job postings, prohibiting employers from requesting salary history, creating an independent body to provide equal pay certification, obliging enterprises to publish gender and pay information, regular audits, pay assessments, and promoting equal pay discussions during collective bargaining.

This trend will surely change hiring processes, making job talks more open and pushing companies to share the pay they’re offering to create a job market that is fair and equal with a culture where companies have earned the trust of current employees.

  1. Reskilling

In a recent IBM report based on a survey of 3,000 global C-suite executives, the transformative impact of generative AI and automation on the workforce emerges as a dominant theme. The report underscores that 40% of executives believe a significant portion of the global workforce (approximately 1.4 billion individuals) will require reskilling within the next three years. This highlights the increasing importance of reskilling programs as a strategic recruitment and talent development approach.

To prepare for this transformative landscape, IBM recommends a future-focused approach involving redesigning work processes, substantial investment in talent development alongside technology adoption, a skills-centric workforce strategy, and empowering employees to pursue meaningful and skill-enhancing tasks as automation becomes prevalent.

Conclusion

Of course, we can’t predict changes in 2024, and nobody knows exactly what’s to come in the new year. However, we’ll keep an eye on these top 5 trends and check back in six months. What we do know is that the workplace will continue to evolve, and embracing these trends while adjusting accordingly may provide the value proposition needed for recruiting and retaining a multi-generational and cultural workforce. Let us know how we can assist you with your workplace strategies.

From our families to yours, we wish you a very joyous and restful holiday season. We look forward to collaborating with you in 2024. And if you need to hire talent over the holidays, we’ll be in the office to assist you. Happy Holidays!

Thanksgiving Inspo, and Gratitude From Our Homes to Yours

Just about everyone is pretty pumped to plan their Thanksgiving celebrations. The preparations, cooking, table settings, decorating your home, matching outfits, and more. In advance of the upcoming holiday, we want to provide some valuable advice and inspiration so that you can whip up a great time – whether you go big or keep it on the light side. We’ve got your back!

The Food

Just Google search “best Thanksgiving food sites 2023,” and you’ll receive a myriad of ideas from the traditional to the trendy, homecooked or ordering meal kits online, restaurants that are open, or food trucks for a more casual affair. And, if turkey isn’t your jam, try alternatives like steak or prime rib, brisket, lamb, or a pot roast. Maybe this year, it’s a charcuterie Thanksgiving. Or breakfast/brunch becomes a new tradition for you and your friends and family. Whatever you decide, you’ll find plenty of ideas on the Internet.

Finally, if you have a cooking question on Thanksgiving Day, here is a list of several hotlines to help you with your needs.

The Decorations

Not all of us have a Martha Stewart gene in our family tree. Here are some easy DIY decorations that won’t require a glue gun and YouTube videos.

Don’t forget about your table settings. Find more dreamy inspiration at this website.

What We’re Thankful For

“I am very thankful for my family, friends, and co-workers who have always been supportive, nurturing, and loving to me. They are always there for me when I  need them.” – Eileen Renk, Casey Accounting & Finance Resources Director of Recruiting and Sales

“I’m thankful for the traveling I got to do this year! Aside from Midwest travel, I got to visit Colorado, Maine, Italy, and Mexico for Christmas.” – Julie Jurek, Arlington Resources Sourcing Specialist

“This season, I am thankful for joining a caring and thriving team. I’m grateful for the opportunity to be challenged every day by learning a new industry, interviewing top HR professionals, and serving our clients with top quality.” –  Courtney Thome, Arlington Resources Talent Acquisition Consultant

“I am most Thankful for my Good Health & Family. I am blessed to have my 92 year old grandfather on this earth still. Especially around the holidays is when I cherish making memories with him the most.” – Nina Salgado, HR Administrative Assistant

“So much to think about here, I am thankful for incredible friendships that I have built over many years now that I don’t have family anymore. The opportunity to be in a career for the past 26 years that allows me to change peoples’ lives every day and make an impact in our working world is very rewarding.  I am also thankful for the opportunities I have been presented in life that have helped me to grow and become a better person” – Denise Young, Arlington Resources Director of Recruiting and Sales

“I am thankful for my loving family, who are always there for me when I need them, and for having a hobby that brings me joy. Reading is a great escape from everyday life!”  Elizabeth Lanaghan, Arlington Resources Senior Recruiter & Sales Consultant

“Family is the most important to me always and for what I am most thankful. God has blessed me with an amazing husband and two daughters that have forever changed my life. I love my job and what I do on a daily basis, and I put my heart into it for my family.” – Cheryl Reinwald, Arlington Resources Director of Recruiting and Sales

Sending you a Harvest of Blessings

We hope Thanksgiving brings you reasons to be grateful, as we are so grateful for you. May your hearts be as warm as your kitchens, and we wish you good health and good times.

And remember, if you have a last-minute staffing need, we are here to fill your open positions so you can focus on filling your hearts and tummies.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Is Your Hiring Process Too Long? Six Strategies to Speed it Up.

Is your hiring process getting in the way of hiring the best candidates? Sometimes, we get into a hiring rut, and those bad habits may be preventing you from making a great hire.

How can you shorten your hiring process? “One of the first lessons I learned as a young recruiter was, ‘Time kills all deals,’” according to Mary Newgard, a senior search consultant. “Rarely do candidates or hiring managers mean to slow down the process, but it happens.”

Newgard offers these six ways to “push the pace in the hiring process.”

  1. Give Permission to Abandon Your Process. If you find a great candidate and the hiring manager believes the candidate is a great fit, go ahead and make an offer. Don’t lose good people because they haven’t gone through two or three rounds of interviews.
  2. Write Simple, Easy to Update Job Ads. You want your job ads to deliver qualified candidates. Keep the ads short. Make sure to add specific job qualifications and then post it. This more condensed version of the job ad can be quickly updated or refined during the search or for the next similar position.
  3. Deputize One Person to Screen Resumes. Having one person screen resumes provides consistency in selecting candidates for interviews.
  4. Automate Information Gathering. Consider what processes in the hiring process can be automated – correspondence emails, critical screening information, and some interview questions. Don’t let more than 24 hours pass between communications with ideal candidates.
  5. Scripting Interviews. Your hiring managers aren’t HR generalists, too. They may not know all the interview rules. Providing a script or list of Do’s and Don’ts prepares hiring managers, keeps interviews on track, and avoids EEO issues.
  6. Combine Hiring Teams for Similar Positions. For similar job openings, combine job ads and interview activity as much as possible.

Be prepared to move quickly with hiring decisions by having salary ranges, optional benefits, and other negotiating points at the ready. This will prevent more time wasted.

If you don’t want the hiring process to linger on and on, review your hiring processes and see where you can abbreviate steps. In this era of “instant gratification,” job seekers crave constant communication and a quicker process. Look for opportunities that will improve your hiring process.

We Can Help With Your Open Positions

Slowing down the hiring process costs time and money, and you might lose out on top talent.

If you want better results, talk with a Casey Accounting & Finance Resources team member today.

4 Tips For Mining Your Employee Alumni Database to Fill Open Positions

The need for skilled talent remains high, yet recruiters struggle to find candidates to fill their open jobs. With more companies requiring employees back to the office, economic challenges, fewer opportunities for remote work, and “the Great Resignation” waning, where are recruiters finding talent? It might surprise you that employers are communicating with their former employees – those who left for so-called “greener pastures” and those who retired –  to see if they’ll “boomerang back” to their former company.

According to an article in ALM Benefits Pro, “4 out of 10 employees who quit their jobs during the pandemic now admit they were better off at their old job, according to a multi-country survey by workforce solutions company UKG.” Harvard Business Review also recently noted that “statistics around the prevalence of boomerang employees vary by industry, but a hot-off-the-press study conducted by HR analytics firm Visier between 2019 and 2022 found that 28% of “new” hires were actually boomerang employees who couldn’t stay away more than three years.”

Wooing Back Former Employees With These 4 Strategies

Here are some things to win back former employees. Oftentimes, a conversation with the former employee on why they left and how they’re doing may shed some light on what it will take to rehire them:

  1. Employee Culture: If you already have an awesome culture, congratulations! Many boomerang employees return because they miss the caring culture and work/life balance. If your culture needs improvement, work on the “low-hanging fruit” and move forward from there. Perhaps the former employee would like to be part of the team to enhance the company culture.
  2. Alignment of Mission and Values: ALM Benefits Pro notes that the “the advancement of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives, employers are really being compelled to take a look at their own DNA — who they are as a company, what they stand for, whether they have the right talent on board.” Employees want to feel respected and valued for their contributions.
  3. Colleague Experience: If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it thousands of times – employees oftentimes love the people they work with but find the environment intolerable. When evaluating your employee culture, reassess benefits and perks, professional development and growth opportunities, and peer resource groups as options to improve the environment.
  4. Considering Retirees/Mature Employees: While some of your former employees may have retired, there are also many mature employees who would be valuable assets to your employee diversity. ALM Benefits Pro urges company executives to “rethink stereotypes of older employees as being less capable, less able to adapt and learn, and unwilling to roll up their sleeves and dig in. Organizations that eliminate age bias from their cultures and hiring practices understand and appreciate the merits of hiring mature candidates. A recent Deloitte study shows that age brings a sense of security and wisdom to teams that can be used to their advantage.” ALM Benefits Pro asserts that organizations with a “more collaborative spirit and the benefits of diverse teams that integrate youthful vitality with the insights of experience” may “become more innovative, profitable, and likely to reach its full potential.”

It’s a good sign that employers can tap into their alumni database for recruitment purposes, not only to rehire them but to seek referrals. By the way, these tips are important for all employers and could prevent employees from leaving in the first place.

Casey Accounting and Finance Resources is ready to help you with your labor shortages. Contact us today to see how we can solve your workforce challenges.

Taking Vacations Improves Employee Well-Being and Productivity

Even though we’re approaching the end of summer and the beginning of the school year, it doesn’t mean that opportunities for vacation or paid time off (PTO) are over. In fact, there are several studies that indicate the importance of finding opportunities throughout the year to relax and recharge. Rebecca Zucker, executive coach and a founding partner at Next Step Partners, recently wrote in a Harvard Business Review (HBR) article that “Making sure your employees regularly take time off is key to creating a more sustainable workplace.”

Zucker continues – “every year more than half of Americans give up paid time off. According to the U.S. Travel Association, in 2018, this amounted to 768 million days of unused vacation time, with more than 30% of it forfeited completely. Add to this, the fact that over 50% of managers feel burned out, taking vacation (and actually unplugging) has never been more important.”

Employers need to look at the statistics that outline the benefits of taking time off and encouraging employees to plan regular breaks away from work.

Restoring the Mind, Body, and Soul

Zucker outlined research that points to three areas that benefit from restorative breaks.

1) Mentally. Taking a vacation provides greater opportunity for rest and better sleep (both quantity and quality), which can help employees unclutter their minds to boost creativity. The cognitive impact when people are overwhelmed with work can include cognitive fatigue, difficulty concentrating, forgetfulness, and impaired problem-solving ability, among several other effects.

2) Body. Relaxing on vacation can reduce the levels of stress hormones and allow the immune system to recover, making employees less prone to get sick. Vacation also allows people to reset sleep patterns that can improve mood and cognition beyond vacation.

3) Soul. While it sounds hokey, answers to life’s big questions — like “What do I really want?” or “What’s most important to me?” — are more likely to come to us when there is some space and stillness. An Ernst & Young study showed that for every additional 10 hours of vacation time that employees took, their year-end performance improved 8%, and another study showed that using all of their vacation time increases an employee’s chances of getting a promotion or a raise. Further, according to the EY study, those who took vacations more frequently were less likely to look for employment elsewhere and leave the company.

A key to creating a more sustainable workplace with healthier, happier employees is to discourage the warrior mentality. Employees might be tempted not to take vacation time and show off how hard they work. Many of the studies noted in this article refute this type of culture. “We’re losing out on crucial recovery time that our bodies and brains need — which is why vacations are so very important,” stated Shawn Achor, New York Times bestselling author of Big Potential, The Happiness Advantage, and Before Happiness.

Vacations are a Necessity.

Achor emphasizes the importance of taking vacations to improve overall well-being and productivity. He advocates that vacations are not just a luxury but a necessity for maintaining good mental health and enhancing happiness. He also found that if you plan ahead, create social connections on the trip, go far from your work, and feel safe, 94% of vacations have a good ROI in terms of your energy and outlook upon returning to work.

Taking time off allows employees to recharge and return with enhanced creativity, improved mood and greater productivity, and an increased ability to demonstrate greater value to the company. Encourage employees to fully disconnect from work while on PTO. Not to sound rude, but, Just Go (Get) Away!

Here is the cherry on top. If you need workers to fill in for employees on vacation, contact Casey Accounting and Finance Resources to assist you with those needs.

I-9 Verification Is Changing: What You Need to Know

The temporary COVID-19 accommodations for Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) created in March 2020 expire on July 31, 2023. As a result, employers who have been remotely inspecting the identity and employment authorization documents of employees who work remotely have up to 30 days to inspect these documents after the accommodation period ends physically.

Employers have until August 30, 2023, to physically inspect the original I-9 documents that were inspected remotely under the temporary policy. Exceptions include if a physical inspection was triggered earlier under the temporary accommodations.

Find out what you need to know about the changes to I-9 verification.

Information About the Temporary I-9 Verification Policy

Due to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing requirements, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) let ICE provide temporary accommodations to remotely verify the identity and employment authorization documents of employees who were working remotely:

  • I-9 documents could be remotely verified through video, video link, fax, or email until the employee stopped working remotely or until July 31, 2023, whichever came sooner.
  • These accommodations end on July 31, 2023.
  • I-9 documents that were inspected remotely under the temporary policy must be inspected in person by August 30, 2023.

Alternative Procedures to Verify I-9 Documents in Person

DHS plans to develop a regulation that allows alternative procedures to verify I-9 documents:

  • An employer with employees working remotely can have an authorized representative complete the in-person verification of the identity and employment documents.
  • This verification must be consistently done in a non-discriminatory manner.
  • DHS will establish a regulation regarding these alternative procedures for I-9 verification.
  • A proposed regulation was published in August 2022.
  • The public comment period for the regulation closed on October 17, 2022.
  • DHS is reviewing the feedback and will publish a final regulation later in 2023.

Do the I-9 Verification Requirements Impact Your Accounting and Finance Team?

The temporary COVID-19 accommodations for Form I-9 that ICE issued in March 2020 expire on July 31, 2023. Employers who have been performing remote I-9 inspections have until August 30, 2023, to physically inspect the identity and employment authorization documents of employees who were hired to work remotely. DHS will provide a regulation in 2023 that lets employers have an authorized representative complete the in-person verification process for employees who continue to work remotely.

When you need to add qualified professionals to your team, turn to Casey Accounting & Finance Resources for assistance. Learn more today.