Do You Know About PreVisor Training?

Do you know if you use Ryan Staffing, you have access to PreVisor clerical training? And it’s not just for our temps, you can use this for all of your employees.

Check out their site by clicking the logo

You can enhance your employees' skills is the following applications:

· Access

· Basic Computer Literacy

· Excel

· Project 2000

· Outlook

· MS Office

· PowerPoint

· Word

This training is available online and all you need to do is contact your Ryan Staffing office. You can e-mail newseditor@ryanstaffing.com or post a comment on this post.

Win Cheech And Chong Tickets By Answering This Month's Poll Question

Go to this link for a chance to win two tickets to see Cheech and Chong in Cleveland. If you answer through the blog (as opposed to the newsletter), you will need to e-mail newseditor@ryanstaffing.com your name so we know you've responded. Or you could post a comment to this post notifying us of your entry.

With the e-mailed newsletters, when you respond to the poll question, we get a list of your name and e-mail address. But with the blog, we can only give you the link, so you'll have to let us know that you want the tickets.

Here's a link to the event. It's on January 30. The winner will be notified via e-mail and announced via the next newsletter and a future post.

Good luck!

Are You Using the Best Background Check Method?

Background checks are a common request among our customers. While other companies rely on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), Ryan Staffing uses a local company to run what we believe to be the most efficient background check.

Sure, the FBI fingerprint cards are a national collection of criminal convictions. However, there is a big hole in that system. For the IAFIDS to be complete, every police station needs to use those fingerprint cards, police need to be regularly submitting cards to the FBI and someone at the FBI needs to enter the cards into their system. Relying on the FBI to enter the cards alone can take months.

Keith Lampe runs his company Infolynx Systems in Northeast Ohio and that's who Ryan Staffing trusts. What Lampe's program does is it searches the 120 different Ohio courts that have online public access, the Ohio sexual offenders database and the Ohio Departement of Corrections database. Because court systems make their records available online in order to meet open record laws, these are the most up-to-date, efficient records of criminal history.

"If you were in county court yesterday, and somebody did a search on you today, then you're going to find that record with our search," Lampe said.

Background checks are never 100 percent because to be that accurate, an employer would need to search every court system in the world, Lampe said. That's just not practical.

Lampe runs his program, which will come up with a list of every hit a query gets. He then pulls that information so that users can view it on Infolynx, and he provides the link to the court database where the record can be found.

"When businesses hear 'nationwide record search,' they think that is going to be every record that there is. The reality is, the best way to get the most information from the primary source, which is the individual court systems," Lampe said.

Sure, you could go to the Trumbull County Clerk of Courts Web site or the Portage County Clerk of Courts Web site or where ever it is you want to look. But if you embark on that task alone, without the resources that Lampe has with his search engine, it will take a significant amount of time. Lampe searches hundreds of these databases in minutes, or about the amount of time it would take an individual to search one court.

Legality is another thing to consider when deciding what background check method is best. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Federal Bankruptcy Act, it is illegal to discriminate against a prospective employee based on bad credit.

It is also illegal to to base an employment decision on age, race, sex, religion, national origin or a disability.

Check out this link for more information on federal background check laws.

Ryan Staffing President Weighs in on Overtime; How To Save You Some Bucks; And a Discrimination Lawsuit

At Ryan Alternative Staffing, we use a 1.4 times rate for all conventional overtime rates invoiced. The savings can add up as the example shows:

Example 1: Pay rate = $8/hour
Mark up -= 40%
Straight time bill rate = $11.20/hour
Overtime bill rate at 1.5% = $16.80

Example 2: Pay rate = $8/hour
Mark up = 40%
Straight time bill rate = $11.20/hour
Overtime bill rate at 1.4% = $15.68/hour

The savings amounts to $1.12/hour or $44.80 per 40 hour work week. If you include the sales tax savings, you are even farther ahead.

Staying Out of Trouble
Last year Ryan Alternative Staffing found itself as a defendant in a lawsuit involving alleged discrimination of an employee that filed a workers compensation claim. The person alleged she was not given her job back at our client after she was released for full duty.

As a reminder to all of our clients Section 4123.90 of the Workers Compensation Code prohibits "Discriminatory acts against those employees that file claims. Specifically, "No Employeer shall discharge, demote, reassign, or take any punitive action against any employee because the employee filed a claim or instituted, pursued or testified in any proceedings under the Workers Compensation Act for any injury or occupational disease which occurred in the course of and arising out of his employment with the Employer".

You may be asking yourself how would a Workers Comp claim filed by a Ryan Alternative Staffing employee impact us? The scenario that we found ourselves defending happened when our client decided they no longer had an opening at their facility after our employee was released to full duty status.

While other circumstances existed, and the matter was settled, the point is that you risk a similar legal challenge if you routinely end assignments of temporary's that file a Workers Comp Claim. You may want to re-visit your policy the next time this comes up.

Staffing Tip of the Month
Does your Staffing Company lower bill rates after a temporary has worked a certain number of hours?

If you answer this question "No", you have a real opportunity here to save some bucks and be a hero to your Boss.

The profit level a Staffing Company makes on the placement of a temporary increases the longer that temporary remains on the same assignment. This happens because the supplier has covered their fixed costs and they don't have the additional expenses of filling replacement orders.

At Ryan Alternative Staffing we recognize how this benefits our margins and we reduce our hourly rate on conventional temporaries after 600 hours on the job. While the reduction varies with each client it is not uncommon for the mark up to go down by 5 to 10 percentage points. On an $8.00 pay rate this can mean a savings or $.40/hr to $ .80/hr plus sales tax.

The important point here is to negotiate. Most Staffing Companies will not volunteer to pass this along unless you ask!