HR Compliance Failures and Solutions at ABC Company

Introduction

Lack of compliance with company policies and procedures is very costly and time consuming for any organization. Recent problems discovered at ABC Company reveal that it has significant issues with the execution of its own policies and procedures. A recruiter was hired to help recruit and train new employees and was very successful in his hiring efforts, bringing in fifteen new trainees within his first six months. He scheduled a new-hire orientation for June 15, hoping to have all new hires working by July.

In mid-May, the operations supervisor contacted the recruiter regarding the arrangements for orientation, and he assured her that everything would be arranged in time. However, less than two weeks before the orientation date, the following problems were uncovered: incomplete applications, missing transcripts, drug screenings not completed, training materials not prepared, and a scheduling conflict for the training room.

Background and Risk Assessment

These discoveries should not be viewed as mere administrative oversights — they pose serious threats to ABC for a variety of reasons. For adequate pre-screening, it is important for ABC to have complete applications and transcripts. Studies show that five percent of applicants are not who they claim to be, having supplied false Social Security numbers (Tips on how to avoid hiring a crook). Furthermore, twenty-four percent of applicants misrepresent their prior employment history, and twenty-eight percent misrepresent their educational history. Given the high incidence of deceit and fraud, ABC needs complete records to perform thorough checks on all applicants. A company can be held liable for the actions of its employees if it can be proven that it did not have adequate policies and procedures in place to prevent those actions from occurring.

Once candidates are selected, they must be adequately screened for drugs. Substance abuse in the workplace is a serious issue. Employees who are under the influence of a drug on the job compromise an employer's interests, endanger their own health and safety as well as the health and safety of others, and can cause a number of other work-related problems, including absenteeism and tardiness, substandard job performance, increased workloads for co-workers, behavior that disrupts other employees, delays in the completion of jobs, inferior quality in products or services, and disruption of customer relations (Drug-free workplace policy, 2004).

Finally, the double-booking of rooms costs time and money to resolve the unanticipated resource conflict, as well as resulting in the underutilization of group members waiting for the scheduling issue to be addressed.

Alternative Solutions

ABC should dedicate an HR job function to ensure that all applications are complete, all transcripts are included, all drug screenings are performed, and all training materials are properly prepared. To resolve the issue of the scheduling conflict for the training room, ABC should automate its booking of training rooms, allowing rooms to be booked only when they are available.

Although there is some room for deception and fraud, the risk for ABC is minimal, especially since it recruits mostly from colleges. Therefore, ABC should not invest in new resources to resolve its problems. Instead, existing recruiters should make every effort to identify application, transcript, drug screening, training material, and training schedule issues and resolve these with the help of human resources.

ABC cannot afford to hire new staff, nor can it afford to do nothing about its current employment issues. Alternative 3 recommends a process audit to identify employees who are not currently following their job procedures, along with corrective actions to make the process run more smoothly in the future. Although ABC cannot afford to automate training room booking at this time, it can streamline its booking procedures through one individual to prevent conflicts.