Message from the Editor

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Written by Andrea Allen

Inside This Issue:

Human Resource Articles of Interest:

• Transforming HR for Business
• HR Becoming A Key Strategic Partner

Background Screening Articles:

• Pre-employment Screening and Social Media
• Report: E-Verify Accuracy Improving

HUMAN RESOURCE ARTICLES OF INTEREST

Transforming HR for Business

When asked about their HR function, many CEOs cringe - often for the reason that the HR function is unable to contribute strategically, remaining fairly administratively or operational.

So what does it take to transform and be in the space of business-focused, strategic HR? How do we know when we are there? A business-focused HR professional knows the business inside-out. They ask the following questions:

About the Company:

• How does the company earn money and are these sources of revenue sustainable?
• How can we improve our quality of revenue (i.e. with every dollar earned, how can we earn it with less investment or effort?)

• Who are our clients? How is our relationship with them? Which are the top three clients we want to go after?
• Who are our vendors and business partners? How is our relationship with them?
• Who are our direct competitors and indirect competitors?

• What are the leadership success factors in our business?
• How do we know an employee is ready to take on a senior leadership role?

• Who are our key talents and what are the retention risks?
• Which jobs are critical to the business?
• What industry trends do we need to acknowledge and what are the business implications in the next three years?

HR Becoming A Key Strategic Partner

It is widely accepted among business leaders that innovation is vital to both competitive advantage and long-term success. In fact this year, business leaders cited innovation as one of the top three global challenges they faced. And for most companies, the ability to innovate is the single most important predictor of future growth. It is hardly surprising that investment decisions now tend to be tied closely to how focused companies are on transformational innovation.

So, when it comes to innovation, what do successful corporate innovators have in common? Contrary to popular perception, success does not appear to be determined by a company's R&D budget. Nor does technology appear to play the most important role. Instead, studies strongly show that the most successful corporate innovation strategies are the ones that predominantly focus on people and human capital. These include finding, engaging and incentivizing key talent for innovation, creating a culture of innovation by promoting and rewarding entrepreneurship and risk taking and developing innovation skills for all employees.

Culture is king

One overriding theme emerges from studies of successful innovation strategies: winning companies first and foremost have developed cultures where innovation is seen as everyone's responsibility .

HR's big opportunity

Because HR is responsible for many of the levers required to bring about cultural transformation it is uniquely positioned to develop and sustain a transformation effort.

Time to step up

HR must rise to this challenge. Robert Bolton, the co-leader of KPMG's Global HR Transformation Center of Excellence, provides practitioners and advisors of HR with a guide for bringing about the cultural change needed to build innovation into the way people at all levels think and work every day

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BACKGROUND SCREENING NEWS

Pre-employment Screening and Social Media

While it's not a standard practice to consider potential employees' social media presence during the application process, it might become so in the future as technology continues to improve and people spend more time interacting online. This was the focus of an ASIS International Information Asset Protection and Pre-Employment Screening Council (IAPPES) conference call. "It's a reality that that data trail is going to start to be crunched and munched by computers and people are going to start making decisions on those things," says Dr. Charles Handler, executive scientist for Logi-Serve, LLC. Handler says it's only a matter of time until people in charge of making hiring decisions begin to use applicants' LinkedIn and Facebook profiles to evaluate them, which could lead to legal consequences. And while thirty six states have introduced laws, or have legislation pending that prevent employers from requiring employees to provide them with their social media account passwords after they're hired, there is still a lack of legislation about using social media in the hiring process, specifically when using it as a hiring disqualifier. Handler says that companies need to hold all of their employment screening tools to a higher standard and ensure that applicants are being evaluated in a standardized way that tests the skills that are critical to successful job performance.

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Report: E-Verify Accuracy Improving

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) have released the results of the most recent Westat Survey conducted on the accuracy of E-Verify, providing further validation that E-Verify is an accurate and robust tool. Though the survey was completed in July 2012, the results are finally being released to the public. Westat conducted the accuracy survey on E-Verify by evaluating the E-Verify Transaction Database. It's worth highlighting that employer activity while logged into the E-Verify system is tracked and monitored by USCIS. The survey found that E-Verify accuracy is improving since the last survey released in 2009, which evaluated the tentative nonconfirmation (TNC) rates. The TNC rate in this report declined from 0.7% to 0.3%. Where a secondary review of a TNC is conducted by USCIS, the accuracy rate is 90% effective compared to a 58% effective rate in the absence of secondary reviews. A substantial portion of the survey was devoted to providing USCIS with recommendations on how to increase E-Verify's accuracy moving forward, and other recommendations that would streamline the employment eligibility verification process. Some of Westat's recommendations have already been implemented by USCIS, which potentially explains why this survey wasn't made publicly available until now.

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