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"Hiring is a Crapshoot"
A few of the late-night newsroom wiseacres left their calling cards as a protest to a new management policy requiring all new hires to submit to drug testing.
For many of us, it was a funny stunt.
Today, I have a great appreciation for that policy - and wish that we had had it in force at our little company, The Longboat Observer, a weekly newspaper in Sarasota County.
In a three-week period last November and December, the cocaine habit of one of our staffers cost our company several thousand dollars and damaged our reputation among advertising customers.
Our company has recovered, and, hopefully, we are the wiser. We learned a lot of lessons.
Mary Jones (not her real name) came across well in her interview - likable, eager to get the job. On paper, her graphic artist and computer skills fit perfectly with what we needed. She received high marks from a reference listed on her resume, including an unprovoked endorsement: "I wish I could get her back."
We had an enthusiastic beginning. Jones' work was accurate, even creative. She met deadlines. She was enthusiastic, eager to please her co-workers, good sense of humor. Everyone felt good about her presence.
But the honeymoon didn't last long. A few weeks into the job, she started showing up two hours late on Saturdays, a crucial day for her position. On another Saturday, she didn't show up and never called.
We had a friendly chat: Don't leave us in the dark, I told her. At least let us know what's going on so we can take appropriate action. She offered no apologies, no excuses. She said she'd call next time.
The following weekend, she missed work again and called no one.
Jones came in that Monday and lay low, doing her work diligently. She told a few of her co-workers that the reason she missed work was a family member had been in an auto accident.
I wanted to wait until Monday afternoon - after our big deadline crunch - to have a detailed talk with her. In the interim, we received an eye-opening telephone call - from Jones' probation officer.
Turns out Jones in June had been arrested and charged with grand theft auto. She apparently borrowed her roommate's car, with the promise of returning it the next day. One day turned to two, two to three - and then the police caught up with Jones.
In lieu of adjudication, Jones had been given one-year probation, during which she was to report weekly to the probation officer, perform community service - and inform her employer of her probationary status.
"Has she mentioned any of this?" the probation officer asked.
Not a word.
Not surprised, the probation officer went on to say: "I'm not supposed to mention this, but she has a substance abuse problem, too."
"Alcohol?"
"That and other things," she said. I knew what she meant. "She's a classic case," the probation officer said. "Unreliable, excuses that are lies, binges."
I was stunned. That afternoon, Jones and I had our talk. I told her I had heard from her probation officer. I thought it odd she didn't seem embarrassed or remorseful. And being a trusting fool, I delivered a stern, but compassionate warning: Don't throw your talent and career out the window. You do good work. We want to trust you and would like to keep you. But you have to show us you deserve that trust. Don't let us down, I pleaded.
Seven days later her streak of good behavior came to a screeching halt.
Jones missed another Saturday and Sunday - and made no attempt to call anyone at the newspaper. Monday morning came and still no Jones.
In the meantime, our office was in a panic. Since her job was to prepare ads sold by our most productive advertising rep, we were at least a day behind schedule. We began parceling out work to others in the office, a move that in a small shop inevitably compounds problems.
Late Monday morning, we heard from Jones. She informed one of our staffers she had been in an auto accident over the weekend and wouldn't be coming in.
I called her probation officer to let her know we were firing Jones as of that moment. The probation officer said Jones had been in Sarasota's crack cocaine district over the weekend, on another drug and drinking binge, and had lent her car to a crack dealer. The dealer, not Jones, was later in an auto accident and the car was impounded.
Meanwhile, our office spent the rest of Monday and Tuesday in a frantic rush to complete Jones' work and get the paper to the printer by the usual 6 p.m. Tuesday deadline. We missed it by two hours.
Then, the other shoe began to drop. When the paper came out, we began hearing from several advertisers about mix-ups in their ads - telephone numbers left off, incorrect photographs published, misspelled words, lost advertising material. Over the next two days, we tallied about $2,500 worth of credits and free ads we had to give to customers because of mistakes we made in the rush to cover for Jones.
Lessons learned? I can tell you we hire with a more skeptical eye. I can tell you we ask more personal questions during interviews to watch and listen for quirks and obvious red flags. And I can tell you we check more references (although these days I put less and less stock in references; they're afraid to be honest for fear of legal retribution).
But no matter what, I've concluded hiring is a crapshoot. We try to be fair and honest and hope we get that in return. But you never know. Just a month ago, we hired a woman who had worked for 20 years at the Boston Globe. She had received glowing recommendations, was enthusiastic about the position we offered and came across as a first-rate professional. She quit after three days, offering a vague explanation about her mother-in-law.
I have concluded this, too: My faith and trust in people has diminished. Yet, when we get a good employee, we see the value in paying a higher wage than we might otherwise. Besides, the cost of turnover is extraordinarily high.
As a small business owner, I have seen close up that the hackneyed cliche is so true: Good help is indeed hard to find.
Matt Walsh is a former editor of Florida Trend.
Employee Leasing
Working For Whom?
For small businesses, employee leasing is hot. The idea is to relieve business owners of the details of payroll, employee benefits, worker's compensation and other regulatory issues. "Did you get into the business to be a payroll expert or to build your widget," quips Anthony Lowe, who as Orlando district manager for Administaff sells employee leasing services.
Here's how it works: Leasing companies contract with small and medium-sized businesses to hire all or part of the company's permanent work force in a co-employment arrangement. These are NOT temporary workers. For a fee of 1% to 4% of the business' payroll, the leasing company assumes human resource responsibilities for writing checks, keeping employee records, negotiating with employee benefits vendors and complying with state and federal regulations. The client business retains day-to-day management control over its workers (FT, June 1995).
"Most employers don't understand and aren't current on the laws," says Steven Esrick, president of St. Petersburg-based National Business Solutions. Ira Smith, financial manager for Orlando's Trace Investigations, agrees. A year ago, Trace began leasing its 12 employees, in part to make sure the company was in compliance with legal and regulatory requirements. He declares, "You look at one discrimination suit or one wrongful firing suit, it can put a small employer out of business."
Regulation
Small-Biz Relief
President Clinton recently signed the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996, legislation designed to reduce the federal regulatory burden on small businesses. Some of the changes:
Small businesses may challenge federal agency regulatory actions through a judicial review process, which in most cases can be initiated during the one-year period after an agency's final action.
In the early stages of an agency's development of new regulations, small business advocacy review panels will solicit advice and recommendations from small business representatives.
Agencies must set up programs to answer small businesses' questions and give specific advice on how they should interpret and apply laws and regulations. They also must prepare regulatory compliance guides, written in plain English specifically for small businesses.
Each federal agency that regulates small businesses must provide a policy or program for the reduction, and in some cases the waiver, of civil penalties for small businesses that violate statutory or regulatory requirements. Also, an agency may consider the ability to pay in determining penalty assessments.
The Administrator of the Small Business Administration will appoint an ombudsman and ten regional Small Business Regulatory Fairness Boards, comprised of small business owners and operators, who will evaluate and report on federal agencies' enforcement of rules.
Small Business Development Centers must provide information and develop publications on regulatory compliance.
Jack Of All Trades
For work-force flexibility, Florida small businesses turn to temporary employees.
"The name of the game is getting your overhead down," says Martha Roe Burke, president and general manager of Ceres 2000, a Winter Haven citrus research and development company with about 10 full-time employees. So Burke's company, which diagnoses plant diseases and works to develop a seedless tangerine, uses temporary workers to collect leaf and pollen samples in citrus groves and to help run laboratory tests. During two- to four-week sample collection periods spread throughout the year, Burke hires four to eight temps. She hires who she wants, when she wants, without worrying about her company's drug-free workplace requirements or the expense of offering benefits. "We need some high-skill and some basic-skill employees," says Burke. "We pull from people who have been in the medical field."
In today's workplace, temporary staffing companies provide more than just the fill-in secretary for a day or two. In addition to doing traditional clerical tasks, temps pass out sample products in stores and at trade shows, do legal research, cook, tend bar, assist in hospitals and nursing homes and move furniture. They expertly use Microsoft Word, dBASE and Quark Express and may speak Spanish, Creole or Thai. Ann Machado, president and founder of Creative Staffing in Miami, says her company's database includes 12,000 people who, among other things, are quality assurance nurses, computer aided design (CAD) operators and linguists.
On any one day, more than 115,000 Florida jobs are filled by temps. They help businesses cope with special short-term projects as well as longer-term seasonal and peak period demands. And there are special circumstances. Passage of the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, which allows workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for family medical emergencies, also generates demands for temporary replacement workers, says Susan Clayton, district manager for Kelly Services in Lakeland.
A temp's hourly wage generally is 20% to 30% higher than a permanent worker's, but a business owner doesn't have to pay benefits or incur recruiting costs. Jim Moyer, vice president and general manager of Trakker Maps Inc. in Kendall, says you might pay $8 an hour to a temp service for a type of worker who could be hired for $6 an hour through a newspaper ad, but the temporary often comes with better skills. Moreover, Moyer adds that because his temps often work for up to a month, he's been successful in negotiating less expensive hourly wages.
Increasingly, businesses also use temporary staffing services to fill permanent positions. Creative Staffing's Machado says her company recruits and screens candidates before giving business owners three or so qualified candidates from which to choose. The business typically pays the employee as a temp for 90 days, then the worker becomes permanent. Says Machado, "If I can't do it faster, better and cheaper than you, you shouldn't use me."
Enough is Enough
This spring, while Republican and Democratic members of Congress shifted back and forth on the issue of raising the $4.25 minimum wage, small business owners presented a united front. A staggering 82% oppose an increase, according to a National Federation of Independent Business membership survey. "The record is clear: government-mandated wage hikes force small business owners to eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs," says NFIB President Jack Faris.
Indeed, in an NFIB-Florida survey two years ago, more than 35% of Florida small business owners said they'd phase out one or more jobs if the minimum wage was raised to $5.38 an hour (the figure then under discussion as a proposed state minimum wage).
Cyber-Players
Small and home businesses with fewer than 100 employees operate 65% of World Wide Web sites on the Internet, a total of about 51,850 sites, according to The Yankee Group, a high-tech marketing consulting firm in Boston. On average, home businesses with Web sites budget $260 to $500 annually for operations; small businesses with less than 50 employees budget $4,000 to $6,000 for sites; and those with 50 to 99 employees have average annual Web budgets of $15,000 to $25,000.
