Employee engagement is beneficial for companies of all sizes and industries. Unfortunately most Dallas TX Human Resources departments have difficulty implementing an effective plan since it has to be tailored to fit all the company’s nuances such as their culture and employees. Follow these 5 steps to increase employee engagement in your Dallas TX workplace.

Involve Employees in the Mission
Make sure the employees are aware of the company’s long and short-term goals and how they will affect the daily workplace. Employees who are aware of the “big picture” are more likely to work harder as their involvement becomes more meaningful. Developing a context for each employee’s workload will help them engage more meaningfully with their projects.

Promote Teamwork
Invest in fostering a sense of camaraderie. Developing a team-based work environment where employees regularly collaborate will allow social bonds to develop between coworkers. This in turn will improve your workforce by boosting team performance and employee engagement.

Reward Employees
Motivate employees to go above and beyond what is generally expected of them by recognizing and rewarding those who do. While there is no “one size fits all” strategy to this task, it should be simple to implement if it is genuine and heartfelt. Whether through monetary gifts or simple acts of gratitude and recognition, rewards are a great way to incentivize your workforce.

Provide Opportunities to Grow
Offering learning and growth opportunities for your employees can be a great way to foster employee engagement while also strengthening their skills and abilities. Additionally, it can have long term beneficial effects for your business as your workforce becomes more educated and skilled.

Promote Communication
Establish and maintain a two-way conversation with your employees. While sharing ideas such as high-level company plans can keep employees involved, it is also important to gather feedback from them as well.  Employees whose opinions are taken into consideration often feel valued and consequently become more engaged.

Although larger Dallas TX companies might boast about their official perks and benefits, these aren’t always a guaranteed solution to employee engagement. Simple steps like personal recognition and honest discussion can help smaller companies with fewer resources for their Human Resources teams remain competitive in the marketplace.

About HumCap
HumCap is a Human Resources fractional outsourcing and Recruiting agency. Located in Dallas TX, our team of professional HR generalists have a wide range of expertise and can help companies of all sizes with their Human Resources issues. If you manage a small to mid-size business that requires assistance increasing the level of employee engagement or with any other Human Resources issue, contact us for more information!

Most business owners only see safety and risk management as a concern for human resources departments in industrial and manufacturing environments. Unfortunately, safety awareness can have far-reaching effects in all work environments – including offices, where illness and injury account for lost days and reduced productivity. Additionally many Dallas TX businesses with insufficient human resources personnel and resources find themselves non-complaint and liable in regards to OSHA regulations.

Among the few companies which do take precautions and create reward programs to foster a safer workplace, most unfortunately incentivize the wrong actions. Rewards to the team for reaching “no safety incidents” milestones often cause managers and other employees to ignore safety incidents rather than report them.

Follow these 4 tips to learn how to setup and promote a safer workplace in your Dallas TX business.

Identify core principles to guide workplace safety program
Begin by determining the most important human resources values that you seek to motivate within the workforce. This step can help define the details of your safety program and the behaviors that will be ultimately rewarded.

Develop a strategic recognition program
Based on the chosen principles, create a comprehensive recognition program that rewards behaviors which fosters a safety-focused work environment. The goal is to target behaviors that proactively promote a culture of safety.

Communicate the new processes and train employees
Share the new safety strategy with your Dallas TX human resources team and other employees and reinforce the plan throughout the first few weeks. A few methods you can use to remind the workforce of the safety plans are signs in high-traffic areas, reviews by direct managers and regularly rewarding good behavior. The goal is to emphasize and foster constructive behaviors instead of just incidence avoidance.

Maintain interest by regularly sharing stories of employee contributions
Keep up a two-way conversation throughout the implementation process by gathering feedback about what works and doesn’t work. With the information, you will be able to tailor the program to fit the specific needs of your company. By gathering safety information, you will also be able to recognize more involved members of your company and reward them for aiding the implementation process.

For additional assistance, Dallas TX Human Resources outsourcing firms like HumCap can take care of the entire setup, customization and implementation process of a safety risk program at your company. With a team of human resources experts, HumCap offers fractional assistance to companies lacking the HR personnel necessary to help them stay compliant with legal obligations – including their safety and risk needs.

Contact us for more information regarding our services!

Employee engagement is a valuable process for Dallas TX businesses of all sizes. It ensures that the management and the rest of the company remain on the same page throughout the year. This has a multitude of benefits, including higher productivity, efficiency and morale.

The key to utilizing employee engagement to its greatest effect is to accurately measure it and to constantly improve the organizational factors that affect it. By making routine employee engagement surveys a part of the company culture, Dallas TX business owners can ensure that employee feedback has an active role in defining the workplace experience.

In order to develop a great process of soliciting, analyzing and implementing employee feedback to boost Dallas TX employee engagement, you should follow these tips.

Before the Survey

• Make the survey relevant – Certain issues affect people differently. Make sure that the employees aren’t being forced to answer questions about a topic that isn’t important to them. A bored employee who has to answer dozens of questions unrelated to his job or duties will quickly experience response fatigue and might abandon the questionnaire altogether.
  
• Keep the survey concise – While designing the survey, keep it as succinct as possible while still being long enough to get all the necessary information. The recommended length for an average survey is 25-50 questions. This can vary, however, depending on the size of the Dallas TX company and other related factors.
  
• Keep participation simple – Don’t make it difficult for employees to access and answer the employee engagement questionnaire. The feedback they have to offer can be extremely valuable to the company so you want to make the process as streamlined as possible. This includes accommodating employees who might not always be in the office or might work an odd shift.
  

After the Survey

• Share the data – The easiest way to communicate to employees that their responses are being considered is to publicly share the information with them after it has been processed. This step assures the employees that the company has read their responses and actually cares about the feedback.
  
• Reveal actions plans – Communicate to employees at all levels the concrete steps that you plan to implement as a result of their responses. By sharing the details of your strategy, you can make sure that everyone is aware of the implementation process. To keep the momentum high throughout the process, include regular milestones that re-energize the team as they gradually complete each step.
  
• Involve managers – Train your managers on the benefits of employee engagement and how they can develop it within their individual units. Since they engage their team on a more frequent basis, they can take a more active role in implementing new policies. To ensure effectiveness, include each manager’s implementation progress as one of the considerations for their yearly performance review. 
  

By following these tips, you can begin developing a positive and engaging Dallas TX workplace for your employees. Although the actions won’t have immediate consequences in redefining the work environment, their effects become increasingly apparent as more and more employees adopt the new practices. By soliciting feedback and using it to guide workplace improvements, you can guarantee a happier and more productive workforce.

For more assistance with Dallas TX employee engagement services, contact us today!

By Azim Sookoor
August 21, 2013

Dallas, TX – Several HumCap clients were among the top 35 nominees announced at the Fast Tech Reveal at the Communities Foundation of Texas on Tuesday, August 13, 2013. The event was organized to recognize the fastest growing technology companies in the DFW Metroplex and identify the finalists who will be moving onto the next round. Notable HumCap clients honored at the event were:

• Distribion Inc.
  
• Geoforce
  
• IntelliCentrics, Inc.
  
• Lumenate
  
• One Technologies, LP
  
• OneSource Virtual
  
• Optimal Solutions Integration, Inc.
  
• Plexon Inc.
  
• Vertical Nerve, Inc.
  

The Tech Titans awards recognize local companies and individuals for accomplishments in a variety of categories. The Fast Tech category in particular highlights the fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, and clean technology companies in the DFW Metroplex. Nominees are ranked based on a calculation using the percentage fiscal year revenue growth from 2010 to 2012.

HumCap’s recruiting team works closely alongside its client’s hiring managers to build their award-worthy teams. Its account managers and recruiters ensure that candidates are great fits in terms of skill and personality. The attention to detail allows clients to make new hires with confidence that they can quickly acclimate to the company culture and become a productive and beneficial part of the team.

Additionally, HumCap provides its clients with various human resources services. With the company’s help, businesses are able to develop effective policies that keep them compliant with federal obligations while cultivating their talent and increasing workforce productivity. Utilizing HumCap’s HR service offerings allows managers to focus on developing and improving their core business processes.

About HumCap, Inc.

HumCap, Inc. is a technical recruiting and HR services firm with clients spanning a wide range of industries and market sizes. Formed in 2001 by Tad McIntosh, HumCap provides services to clients ranging from startups to midmarket and Fortune 1000 corporations. Their diverse focus accommodates businesses in a range of sectors including IT, Finance, Law and Marketing.  As a premier HR and recruiting company, HumCap helps its clients build and develop their most important assets – their human capital.  

For more information about HumCap and its services, visit www.humcapinc.com and www.humcaphr.com.

The employment background check is a great tool small business managers can use to sift through candidates and find the best talent. By including it in the hiring process, companies can greatly improve hires by achieving:

• Greater assurance of a hire’s compatibility with the company
  
• Less legal and financial liability in case of a dishonest applicant
  
• Higher workforce productivity and ROI
  

Unfortunately for managers who might not have specialized experience with the procedure, the process of implementing and maintaining an employment background check policy can be a daunting task. Follow these four best practices to ensure an effective execution of a screening program.

Create Standardized Policy
In order to create a robust employment background check strategy, first create an official written set of rules and standards. By doing this, the company creates a clear standardized set of rules for human resources personnel to follow. It also protects the company from any claims of discrimination and can help during regulatory audits.

While creating the policy, the company should alter search criteria to fit the needs of specific job roles. For example, examining a candidate’s credit history might only be applicable for positions with access to the company’s finances. Requiring credit checks for all applicants can be susceptible to discrimination suits.

Use Checks with Expanded Criteria
Managers need to consider several factors regarding the employment background check program to ensure that it is as effective as possible. Factors such as the search time period, location and frequency can greatly affect the results. Based on the search criteria, the examination might have several gaps and loopholes that can miss potential red flags.

Additionally, many managers often opt to use an employment background check for full-time employees only, leaving the company liable to part-time employees with criminal backgrounds. By using searches with expanded criteria such as county, state and federal criminal searches in all jurisdictions where the applicant has lived in or worked, employers can cast a wider neat and as consequentially be more protected.

Don’t Limit the Search
The majority of small business owners only use an employment background check for basic criteria such as criminal and identity checks. By limiting the search, employers are prone to missing critical red flags or information that could otherwise play an important role in the hiring decision. Information such as employment and education history among other things can be verified to gain a better understanding of the candidate’s skills and character. By implementing multiple types of criteria into a single search, the procedure becomes much easier for the candidate to complete and the company to process.

Regularly Update Your Program
According to a recent small business survey, over 50% of respondents don’t regularly assess their screening standards. This indicates a massive source of liability for companies. Industry best practices and government regulations are constantly evolving and employers who do not update their policies to comply with these shifting rules can expose themselves to great legal and financial risks.

The most robust employment background check policies are generally reviewed about once a year. This, in addition to regular monitoring of updates to legislative requirements, can ensure that the company’s policy remains up-to-date.

About HumCap
HumCap is a premier Dallas TX HR and Recruiting company. We provide small to mid-size businesses assistance with various human resources and recruiting needs such as:

• Employment Background Check
  
• Safety Risk Assessment
  
• Employee Benefits/PEO Services
  
• HR Consulting
  
• Search and Contract Recruiting
  

Our expert HR professionals can help guide small and mid-size business owners through the employment background check integration and management process. With our years of experience supporting growing businesses, we understand the specific difficulties managers face in implementing such policies and can help them smoothly develop the infrastructure to support the changes.  

Contact us today for an immediate consultation!

Most small businesses are rarely aware of all their obligations in regards to workplace safety standards. Defined by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) with possible additions from state health programs, workplace safety standards are often difficult to comprehend and even tougher to implement. When combined with additional factors such as exemptions based on specific industries and the size of the company, the rules can be absolutely foreign to HR employees without proper specialized training.

Growing companies rarely have the resources to monitor and ensure that safety compliance processes remain effective as the company expands. Rather than divert their resources from value adding services, managers often end up overlooking this critical aspect of their HR policies. By overlooking preparations, companies can be left vulnerable to costly fines and penalties that can cause severe financial damage.

Fortunately, HR outsourcing agencies like HumCap offer extremely affordable OSHA and Safety risk assessment services for Dallas TX businesses. This service, administered by an experienced HR professional, can identify and spotlight areas of liability while offering recommended solutions.  Using HR outsourcing companies on a contingent basis allows growing businesses to efficiently utilize their resources to achieve the greatest effect.

Identifying Workplace Safety Issues

The first step of the OSHA and Safety risk assessment process is identifying any currently existing issues within the Dallas TX company’s policies, practices and facility maintenance. This allows the company’s management team to highlight the issues and begin formulating methods of solving them to ensure that the company is complaint with OSHA standards.

Proposing Workplace Safety Solutions

Following the identification portion of the Dallas TX OSHA and Safety risk assessment, the HR personnel can begin formulating potential solutions to the concern. The proposed actions will be practical, minimally disruptive options that can be easily implemented to protect the company’s workforce while reducing its liability in the case of an accident.

Preventing Accidents and Reducing Liability

By completing all the solutions proposed during the Dallas TX OSHA and Safety risk assessment process, a company can provide a greater sense of workplace safety for its employees while also protecting itself from additional liability in case of an accident. With updated workflow and safety processes along with recommendations regarding any facility maintenance needs, the company can effectively reduce the risk of workplace injury. This can lead to additional positive consequences such as increased morale and higher productivity that will ultimately benefit the business overall.

About HumCap

HumCap is a Dallas TX HR Outsourcing and Recruiting agency that provides a variety of services for small to midsize businesses which need personnel with HR expertise but lack the resources for full time HR employees. By engaging our services on a project basis, clients are able to access and utilize the experience and expertise of our HR employees at a fraction of the cost of an in-house HR department. Outsourcing their daily HR tasks to HumCap allows our clients to focus on their core business operations, resulting in a leaner, more competitive business.

Contact us today for immediate assistance!

While managing a growth stage small business, a President can often find his or herself balancing multiple responsibilities. With a growing number of employees and the legal responsibilities that follow, the demands can become overwhelming for just one person to handle. While the need for a dedicated HR presence might exist, the unfortunate truth is that smaller companies rarely have the budget for a full-time HR employee. Instead, they can use their resources more efficiently by utilizing the services of a Dallas TX HR outsourcing company. Through the external service, companies gain access to the expertise of experienced HR employees who work on multiple projects across a variety of clients.

Some of the services offered by HumCap, a premier Dallas TX HR outsourcing agency, are:

HR Consulting and Fractional HR

HumCap’s fractional HR services allow clients to leverage its human capital services without the costs and overhead expenses of developing an internal HR department. After an initial overview meeting to understand the current needs of the client, HumCap’s HR consulting professionals can create a detailed plan to solve current issues and prevent any future problems. Each plan of action is customized to reflect the nature and needs of the client and can be as in-depth as necessary.

Payroll Processing and Technology

From simple payroll processing to complete ASO services, HumCap offers a variety of levels of payroll assistance to companies scaling their businesses. By outsourcing the payroll processing function, companies are able to focus on reaching their core business goals instead of maintaining routine processes. As one of our many Dallas TX HR outsourcing services, HumCap’s payroll processing assistance is an affordable option to complement or replace systems that have been outgrown.

Safety Risk Management

One of the HR processes most often overlooked is occupational safety risk management. Especially for a growing company, managers have to be aware of any new liabilities that might be applicable to their expanding workforce. As part of its HR outsourcing services in Dallas TX, HumCap’s personnel perform an on-site visit to comprehensively assess and audit the current safety policies and practices. After evaluating the facility and safety procedures, HumCap creates a report highlighting areas of concern and possible compliance issues along with recommended solutions. If necessary, we can also implement the solutions to prevent any future occurrences of safety incidents.

About HumCap

HumCap is a Dallas TX HR outsourcing and technical staffing agency. We are located in Plano near the Telecom Corridor and offer a wide range of services to small to midsize businesses which require HR and staffing assistance but lack the resources for full time personnel. By sharing our employees’ expertise through fractional work among multiple employees, we are able to offer each client the specific levels of service necessary to achieve their goals.

 For more information regarding our HR outsourcing services, contact us today!