Earlier this year the American Dental Association was fined $1.95 million by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for discrimination against seniors and disabled people. The ADA also agreed to change its hiring practices and offer anti-discrimination training to its employees, all of which are costly endeavors.
In 2015 Target paid $2.8 million to settle a case of racial discrimination in hiring tests. In addition, they had to provide anti-discrimination practices and overhaul their recruiting processes.
The EEOC collects a staggering $404 million in settlements from employers every year. Out-of-court settlements average $40,000 per case. And overall, each employee lawsuit costs companies an average of $250,000 to defend.
Investigations, fines, and lawsuits can break a small business. Too often they’re the result of bad or absent HR compliance systems and processes – which means they’re easily preventable. But beyond the obvious financial penalties, poor compliance through the hiring, onboarding and training process can cause a multitude of other problems for a company.
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How ATS Systems Protect Employers From Liability
The importance of compliance when it comes to human resources can’t be underestimated. One of the best ways to protect yourself from these problems is a good applicant tracking system or ATS system.
Applicant tracking systems encompass the portal through which candidates apply for jobs and recruiters keep track of them, from job opening to application, interview and offer. It is the system through which recruiters and hiring managers organize and assess candidates, and the space where every part of the onboarding and training process is managed and tracked. When it comes to HR compliance, your ATS system is the most in important people management and compliance application in your businesses arsenal of HR tools and technology.
Even best in class organizations struggle to keep up with the hundreds or even thousands of candidates they interact with over the course of a year. An ATS system like Comeet helps your recruiters and hiring managers to organize candidates, research and assess them, and most importantly, ensure that hiring processes are compliant with state as well as federal employment law. In other words, your ATS system knows all your workplace secrets including every person who’s applied for a job, been interviewed, hired and let go. And it knows more about those candidates than you could hope to – including their status in protected classes and marginalized groups, which is especially important if you are a federal contractor.
HR Compliance Challenges and Pitfalls You Might Face
At Comeet we feel very strongly about helping our customers and clients navigate the HR compliance challenges and pitfalls they might face. Imagine getting stuck with a new employee who, you discuss right after his probation ends, has a long criminal record. He’s not suitable for the role, which requires a lot of trust, but you can’t just dismiss him, can you? That dilemma has come up for many companies when a manager pushed a seemingly great candidate through the interview process without properly vetting them. There wasn’t an established process and things just got missed in all the rush. It’s no one’s fault, right? That excuse won’t fly with the EEOC, Department of Labor or USCIS. Your organization will be fined, audited, investigated or all of the above.
Or, imagine you’re about to be audited in relation to an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) investigation. A candidate you interviewed for a sales manager role has filed a charge, claiming your company didn’t hire them because of a number of reasons that fall under what is called protected class. These are the forms of prohibited discrimination that the EEOC investigates and enforces, including age, sex, disability, race, religion and national origin. You don’t think you’ve been bypassing diverse candidates but you don’t have the data to prove it. Up until 3 months ago, you’ve been managing your hiring process via Google Spreadsheet.
Your paperclip version of an applicant tracking system was used so erratically that your records of the employee process aren’t complete. You don’t actually know how many people applied for your most recent roles and who made it to the interview stage. In short, you don’t have any real documentation to defend the EEOC’s claim. How do you prove, just based on your payroll records, that due diligence was done?
Having an ATS system like Comeet can save you hours of scrambling to document your process after the fact, and potentially millions of dollars in fines and settlements. We help you maintain HR compliance and most importantly establish a hiring and recruiting process and workflow that allows everyone to participate in the hiring process from CEO to HR Director to Recruiter to Hiring Manager. All parts of the hiring process are documented and recorded allowing you and your team to focus on hiring the best-qualified candidate quickly, collaboratively and efficiently.
Are you looking to start your hiring process today? Comeet can help, Contact us to get started.
