Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
HR entrepreneur Mike Coffey, SPHR, SHRM-SCP engages business thought leaders about the strategic, psychological, legal, and practical implications of bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. As an HR consultant, mentor to first-stage businesses through EO’s Accelerator program, and owner of Imperative—Bulletproof Background Screening, Mike is passionate about helping other professionals improve how they recruit, select, and manage their people. Most thirty-minute episodes of Good Morning, HR will be eligible for half a recertification credit for both HRCI and SHRM-certified professionals. Mike is a member of Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) Fort Worth and active with the Texas Association of Business, the Fort Worth Chamber, and Texas SHRM.
You know, so much of the whole vibe of that of this subgenre of working is sort of like employers are suckers, and we're gonna take advantage of them. Right. And I'm gonna get rich off this, you know, 4 times faster than I would have otherwise. So, yeah, I mean, it's it's taking advantage and, you know, all the consequences that come out for that. I mean, there's, again, there's a lot of exposure to these folks when they start doing this.
Mike Coffey:Good morning, HR. I'm Mike Coffey, president of Imperative. Bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service. And this is the podcast where I talk to business leaders about bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. Please follow, rate, and review Good Morning HR wherever you get your podcast.
Mike Coffey:You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or at goodmorninghr.com. And welcome to our Thanksgiving Day episode. Maybe you're listening as you cook your turkey, maybe you're having your second piece of pumpkin pie, or if you're with your extended family, your 3rd glass of Boone's Farm that was your cousin Darlene's contribution to the Thanksgiving meal. But because it is Thanksgiving, it's the last Thursday of the month. It also means it's time for us to talk about miscellaneous HR topics in the news or elsewhere just like the pilgrims did, and I'm today joined by my favorite, not a turkey, Steve Pagler.
Mike Coffey:Steve is the principal consultant at HR Strategies of Texas based in Austin, where he brings his 3 decades of experience across all aspects of human resources and people leadership to clients across the state. Welcome to Good Morning HR, Steve, for your 3rd time.
Steve Peglar:Well, gobble gobble. Happy Thanksgiving, Mike, and everybody else, and happy to be back for a 3rd time.
Mike Coffey:So I know you're so grateful to be here, but you've got a lot to be thankful for, and I know you, you've shared a lot about it publicly. So you had a pretty serious medical condition earlier this year that, you know, makes me thankful that you're here as as you pull through it. Do you wanna share a little bit about that? I think it's pretty amazing.
Steve Peglar:Well, yeah. Absolutely. And, yes, I'm thankful to be on the show again, but I'm thankful to be here. I actually had a liver transplant back in February. I'd had an autoimmune bile duct liver disease for over 20 years.
Steve Peglar:I've known about it almost that entire time and never gave me any problems, and then all of a sudden it did. And, and, yeah, I have used parts inside me now. Actually, more specifically, I have, my awesome lifesaving brother-in-law, Chris's liver or a big chunk of it. He, actually donated 70% of his liver to me, and, he's doing great, by the way. If you don't know, the liver is the only human organ that can regenerate, and therefore, you can actually donate part of your liver to somebody else that needs it.
Steve Peglar:Pretty miraculous, thing, and, you know, combined with modern science, it's just, you know, I'm still here. And so thank goodness for him and and, everybody else that was involved through the process, but I it happened. I made a very quick recovery. Feel great, better than ever. Oh, and by the way, his liver your liver grows back very fast.
Steve Peglar:He was back at work in 2 weeks, and, he never missed a beat. And I was up walking around the next day. So it's it's amazing what what modern science can do. But, yes, all that to say very thankful to be here. And, and by the way, if you're not an organ donor, you should be.
Steve Peglar:Please sign up to
Mike Coffey:do that. Go sign up and do that. Yeah. And it's a pretty amazing brother-in-law. I gotta say, I mean, I once gave my brother-in-law $5 and, and that's probably the most he's ever gonna get from me.
Steve Peglar:I mean, you just wait. You never know. Yeah. It might be an internal organ later.
Mike Coffey:And speaking of unexpected gifts, earlier this month, federal court in the Eastern District of Texas overturned the Department of Labor's overtime rules. So you may remember that earlier this year, in July, we had salary limit for being classified under FLSA as an exempt employee was raised, and it was set to raise again in 2025. And following recent federal, Supreme Court decisions, federal judge in East Texas basically said, you ain't got that power. You're over reading into the law, DOL. You don't have the power to set a salary threshold for, because it's not in the law.
Mike Coffey:Now if if congress wants to change the law, they can change the law, but that's not the that's not an administrative court's, decision. So it's been, you know, it's been all over the HR conversation for the last year. How do we do this? What are we gonna do about these these managers who are only making $32,000 a year, and we're calling them exempt, and now we gotta raise the threshold twice to get, you know, to maintain that that exempt status. How often were you hearing from clients about, their concerns about the DOL stuff?
Steve Peglar:Well, yeah, last year I was, or earlier this year, I was hearing, quite a bit, but, you know, as it turns out, once people really started looking at their workforce and and really understanding where people, how they're classified, whether they're being paid, potential changes necessary. Anecdotally, I did not see the impact that you would think was out there. And it may be the types of clients I work with or the industries I work with, but I just didn't really see too much of an impact. Yeah. I mean, it's a huge deal in in the HR world and the employment law world.
Steve Peglar:I am fairly sure it's gonna be the more, you know, relegated to certain industries. I mean, I'm seeing stuff out there from, you know, trade associations and lobbyists connected with retail and hospitality, food service, that kind of thing, and, you know, they're happy about it and they've got all kinds of reasons, why they are everything from, well, gosh, now we can actually, you know, we get their status won't be lowered. They're, you know, they're still gonna get to be a an exempt employee, and and we can actually, you know, afford, afford benefits for them now kind of thing. So yeah. And if and for those people that actually did, you know, make make a salary change, here and there as needed for smokes, you know, at this point, what do you do?
Steve Peglar:I mean, that's the big question. Personally, I think for employer relations sake, I don't think I would do much of anything. But legally, sure. You have the right to, you know, kick them back down,
Mike Coffey:with regards to their pay. Their pay and, you know, and and put them back to, you know or put them back to exempt if you just moved them to nonexempt, which is probably where a lot of them were really anyway.
Steve Peglar:Yes.
Mike Coffey:You know? And but and where I'm seeing it, because we don't do a lot in in in in my businesses, we don't do a lot in retail in those areas where I'm seeing it are nonprofits. And that may, in my opinion, it may be the one place where having that really low exemption makes sense. Mhmm. Not I mean, the people that go to work for nonprofits are mission driven by and large, especially if they get into the leadership end.
Mike Coffey:And these small nonprofits, that don't have big endowments, you know, maybe it makes sense to say it's so because if you move people to exempt status, it's almost a way of giving them flex time, which the Fair Labor Standards Act doesn't let us do. But if you're in a in a pro you know, a nonprofit or something like that where you're doing weird hours and you've got events and all of that, and if somebody can qualify for exempt status, it probably makes some sense there. They know what they're getting into. Right? And they would always, you know, we always want more money.
Mike Coffey:But the other thing I've heard from employers and seen in some of the discussions online is, well, all we did when we moved them from non exam you know, when we when we, you know, saw what we're gonna have to increase the pay, that wasn't feasible, especially with the pay increase that was coming in 2025. We just moved them to hourly right off the you know, we just said, okay. You're hourly, and you can't work over 40, or you can work up to 45, and we'll still be paying you basically the same thing with your new hourly rate. And that's probably where the a lot of these people needed to be anyway because, like I said, if you really take the the DOLs, you know, test about whether somebody really qualifies for the white collar exemption or even administrative exemption, often, they really don't. And so, you know, just calling them just saying they supervise or they manage a process doesn't make them exempt.
Mike Coffey:So
Steve Peglar:Yeah. You know, what you said about sort of the the pseudo flex time aspect of it, I mean, that's that can be a big deal for folks. And, you know, some people, there's also sort of the, you know, the the dynamic of mindset of being an exempt employee versus a non exempt employee. And and, you know, even though there's so many advantages to being a non exempt employee, obviously, You know, some people don't think there are, and it's a it's just it sometimes it's a misconception. So, yeah, I, you know,
Mike Coffey:I I I feel for the employers who have already communicated, and most of them probably have, to those nonexempt employ or those exempt employees, that they're getting a raise effective January 1, so they would be up under the the the second threshold. Now they'd be either gonna walk that back, which, like you say, that's that's a harsh thing to tell somebody, or they're just gonna stay in it and their salary bands are gonna be screwed up, for, you know, people who are, you know, doing a lot of times very similar work, but don't manage people, things like that, and they're making an hourly rate, and you're gonna have to figure out how do you how do you compensate for those things. So but I every culture is different. Every set of employees is different. What their expectations and what they want from their employers are different.
Mike Coffey:And so what do you do? I mean, the law under the law now, you can pretty much do what you wanna do as far as you're you're meeting the old old standards. But you gotta really think about what it's gonna mean to those employees who how how they're gonna respond to it and what they're gonna think about their employer. What's it gonna do to your engagement?
Steve Peglar:Well, you know, again, I know this is this is new, but I haven't had anybody, and I work with a, you know, pretty wide variety of folks. I haven't had anybody I haven't heard anything about people cutting peg. I just have not heard that yet. And so not even, hey. Let's can you can you walk me through this?
Steve Peglar:Let's talk talk about this. Nothing like that. So, not that it won't happen. Again, I know it's new. But,
Mike Coffey:well and as soon as the lawsuit was filed, my advice to anybody was go ahead and make your plans. Yeah. But there's no reason to tell your employees about they're getting a raise in January. Right. There's no reason, you know, why why roll this at, you know, this is something that's always litigated, and there's always a better than even chance that the courts are are are are gonna do something about it.
Mike Coffey:So just hold on to it. Sit on your hands, and then, you know, happy New Year. You got a raise. But That's right. It makes it easy.
Mike Coffey:Right?
Steve Peglar:You know, and and from a bigger picture standpoint, I mean, with the, you know, change in regimes here coming up, I certainly don't think it's it you know, this isn't really gonna come up again so quickly like it has. And, at least, you know, in favor of the employee, I don't think. So, you know, that's that's my opinion on that, but we shall see, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Coffey:Well and speaking about employee engagement, there's a Glassdoor survey that came out this month of 34 100 professionals. And according to the survey, 65% of the respondents said they felt stuck in their current row row. And it also pointed out in the article that the September quit rate has dropped down to 1.9%. So people aren't quitting their jobs, but they feel stuck. And, as we'll talk about in a little bit, I have spent a lot of time on Reddit lately, and there are and, you know, you it's not the real world.
Mike Coffey:Social media is not the real world. Right? It's not the real world, But there is at least some subpopulation of employees who definitely feel like they can't find other work. The other jobs just aren't available even though unemployment is is still high, but there's 7,400,000 open jobs. But we got a giant skills gap in the country right now, and, and so people feel stuck in their role.
Mike Coffey:And I think COVID did a lot to us. Right? I mean, how many people are want you know, they see their friends working from home, and they wanna work from home. And so that makes you feel stuck. I mean, you know, I can't go get another job.
Mike Coffey:I can't find a remote job. But if you look on job postings or on the Facebook HR groups and all those things, you see people looking for work who are saying, oh, yeah. I want this job, and I wanna make this much money. Oh, and it also has to be fully remote. And so, if you're not getting exactly what you want, then maybe you feel stuck.
Mike Coffey:What's your take? Yeah.
Steve Peglar:Well, and you mentioned quite a few points there that that I'll try to touch on, as best I can, but the whole post COVID world, I I think we've really underestimated, at least a lot of us, what an impact that really did have. I mean, what I'm seeing out there, you know, with with clients I work with and and then beyond that just, you know, the social media that I see, it almost seems like there is a completely different, sort of, of of take on the employer employee relationship now. You know, prior to 2019, you never saw as many, you know, again, this is anecdotal, maybe not the real world sort of approach here, but, you know, pushback against employers, against the workplace in general, you know, just less trust of the workplace, less trust of of, you know, folks that would normally be an authority, you know, and it's it just really seems very prevalent, and it also Yeah. I mean, the job market's weird right now. I agree, and everything I'm reading too says people are not happy, still, you know, but this persists even though, yeah, people are out trying to get jobs.
Steve Peglar:They're trying to, you know, like they always have, get ahead and and advance in their careers and and if they're not happy wherever they are, they, you know, they wanna try to leave. You know, the numbers show that people aren't leaving, They are stay staying put, but that sentiment, that sort of that that negative take on the employer employer relationship really still seems to be there. At least that's that's what I'm seeing. And, you know, and and again, it's so much of this has to do with COVID. I mean, our world changed really quick, for quite a while in a in a in a serious way.
Steve Peglar:You know, another thing you're hearing popular thought now is, well, you know, everyone's returning to the office. That's just, you know, the work from home, remote work things a thing in the past. I mean, not in my experience. I work with a lot of clients, smaller to midsize companies that most of them, you know, people work remotely, and a lot of people work remotely. And people that you thought, maybe they would go back to an office, they haven't, and they haven't been pushed either.
Steve Peglar:So that's that's what I've seen. And just to kinda kinda come back at you there with with a few more angles, I'll throw it back to you. Any thoughts on any of that?
Mike Coffey:Well, you know, there are people quitting, and according to that that article on MSN, we'll have the links in the show notes, 17% of the people who switched jobs took a pay cut. That tells me they were leaving situations, circumstances where they were really unhappy. They weren't just stuck. They were truly unhappy, and it's it's not necessarily because it was a bad employer. They wanted to do something different.
Mike Coffey:I think COVID brought about in the workforce, it it diminished their willingness to do things they didn't think were valuable, that didn't bring them personal meaning. And so and I've we've got I've got professional friends who are my age, in their fifties, who who've done career shifts and taken the same, you know you know, a lateral pay cut, you know, pay or even a pay cut to do something completely different. And and I kinda get it. I mean, I love what I do. And, you know, I just went through that phase when I was in my twenties, and I had a corporate job, and I said, screw this.
Mike Coffey:I'm not gonna do this, and I went out on my own. So I think maybe people that's part of it, you know, that people are just not willing to put up with something they don't you know, in those kind of roles. But I think the other part of it maybe and I think this is where employers really need to pay attention is, what are we doing? You know, we've got money sunk in these employees. These you know, I roll my eyes when employers say employees are our most valuable asset because first of all, they're not your asset.
Mike Coffey:No. They can get up and walk your assets don't get up and walk their assets right out the door whenever they want to. Right? Okay. They're not assets.
Mike Coffey:They are, you know, and you get and when you look at them as assets as as cogs in a machine, I think you're really making a mistake. But, you you know, you've gotta incentivize them to stay here. So you've gotta understand why they're there and and what do they want. And maybe it's just a you know, maybe it's cross training into another area. Maybe they never even want to do that job, but if if if you got some time, I mean, you've got the the bandwidth to let them cross train, let them just be deeper, more connected with what the organization's doing, that may connect them.
Mike Coffey:But the other thing is is and it's the that's the good good old, you know, good morning HR drinking game, but you've got to train your managers to be good leaders. Just because they were good at that job doesn't mean they're gonna be good managers, and people wanna work for you know, you know, they wanna take orders from people they respect and that they trust, and that's that's leadership's problem. So I think there's a whole bunch here, and I think there is. I mean, a lot of people got a lot of money for 12 or 18 months that they didn't earn during COVID.
Steve Peglar:That was a long time ago, though.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. We say it was a long time ago, and the money's gone now.
Steve Peglar:Oh, sure.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. But I think the mindset may not be gone. That, you know, we were handed this and, you know, and you hear about companies who made profit during COVID. Well, good for them. That's what the companies are there to do.
Mike Coffey:I don't you know, I'm not against that, but, a lot of employees got money, and but their expectation is that somehow that maybe that lifestyle is not there. So I think it's a whole bunch of different issues.
Steve Peglar:Yeah. You know? And I'm not sure what kind of impact those, you know, subsidies or whatever they were, you know, 4 years ago now. I I really am am very very much, of the opinion that, you know, people got a taste of what we can get done in different ways than we had ever before. And that mindset, even though, you know, companies, I guess, drug people back to the office or what however you wanna you wanna, describe it.
Steve Peglar:I mean, that mindset is still there. And a lot of companies, you know, may maybe talk tough, and at the end of the day, they didn't follow through. And people know, people hear about that, and people understand in a broader culture that that's, well, there, you know, there's all kinds of ways to to to approach work and to get get the job done wherever the job is. But I agree with you, you know, back when you mentioned, the whole employees are our greatest asset. I've never liked that term.
Steve Peglar:It's not true, you know, employees are humans. That's they're not they're not assets and and they're very unpredictable or can be very unpredictable. So, yeah, absolutely.
Mike Coffey:And let's take a quick break. Good morning, HR is brought to you by Imperative, bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service. At Imperative, we have 3 core values, one of which is always act in the best interest of our client. To ensure we do that, we focus on keeping 3 promises to our clients. 1st, we choose our team's competencies over technology, AI or algorithms.
Mike Coffey:Our research and the information we provide our clients is always guided by our professional analyst, augmented by, but never substituted with technology. And second, because our processes are thorough, our compliance is strict, and our staff cares, our clients can fearlessly take action based on the information we provide. Finally, when the phone rings or the email chimes, our team answers and solves our clients issues immediately with fast and friendly service. These are our promises to our clients and it would be an honor to extend them to you. You can learn more about how Imperative serves our clients at imperativeinfo.com.
Mike Coffey:If you're an HRCI or SHRM certified professional, this episode of Good Morning HR has been preapproved for 1 half hour of recertification credit. To obtain the recertification information, visit good morning hr.com and click on research credits. Then select episode 176 and enter the keyword Reddit. That's redDIT. And if you're looking for even more recertification credit, check out the webinars page at imperativeinfo.com.
Mike Coffey:And now back to my conversation with Steve Pagler. And speaking of employees who have different expectations than what most employers want, there is a whole section. And for the those of you who are unfamiliar with Reddit, the little different groups on Reddit are called subreddits, and these are just conversation old style bulletin boards if for those of you Gen Xers out there who who remember that stuff. And these are just conversation groups, but there's a whole group called overemployed, and these are people who have that are working remote and have multiple jobs. Sometimes, as many as 3 jobs that they're doing allegedly doing at the exact same time.
Mike Coffey:And there are, even educational things on this Reddit subreddit about how to have multiple jobs, and a lot of them are technical jobs apparently. And but they're they're jobs where maybe to get the work done, they only do need to work 2 or 3 times, you know, 2 or 3 hours a day, and they're finding 2 or 3 or 4 of those jobs. And then they have problems, and what's really funny is when they get mad and post on this group that they had to attend a meeting on Zoom with their supervisors at a time that they were supposed to be working on a you know, something else for for employer number 2 or employer number 3. But I think this is I've we've we've encountered it doing background checks on a couple occasions where we would run the work number or somehow, in another way, identify that this person didn't leave their previous employer, that they have a current employer that they didn't list on their on their application process or on their resume. And, I mean, there's a lot of instructions on that on that out there on how to do how to get past all these things.
Mike Coffey:Have you encountered this very much? It's, it's kind of mind boggling to me, but it's it's it seems to clearly be a phenomena out there.
Steve Peglar:Yeah. And, you know, I'm familiar with it. And, you know, I'm in Austin, and it's very tech oriented people here, and and there's lots of these kind of folks that could do that kind of I'm gonna call it shady, sort of employment practice there. Yeah. I'm familiar with it, and I've even seen the resources that are out there for folks like this.
Steve Peglar:I mean, at first at first look for me, it it really seems like almost like a life hack thought up by some smart tech nerd somewhere that maybe had, you know, less than stellar ethics. I don't know. But, but basically, it's it's also kinda tied to that fire movement that, you know, financial independence movement because, and you don't have to look very far to find memes and social media posts about people to do this and claim, gosh, you know, I'm a software engineer. I'm working for 4 companies, and I'm making over $1,000,000 a year. Maybe legitimately so.
Steve Peglar:Interestingly enough, just yesterday, I was having a conversation with a friend who she is, a senior, leader in a very well known international tech firm that we've all heard of here in Austin. And I was asking her about this about this, you know, what would you do if you found out somebody on your team was doing this? And, you know, the answer is they would be immediately terminated. It is a thing in that world. She's hope she confirmed that there are people that do this.
Steve Peglar:It is kind of viewed as being unethical in a lot of companies. And as a matter of fact, her company even has a policy against it. So, you know, and that it's it goes a little further than a than a moonlighting policy. We're not talking about moonlighting. It's often described that way, but we're talking about, yeah, hop off one Zoom call with, you know, one company and hopping on another with another.
Steve Peglar:And and there's a lot
Mike Coffey:of And this employer is paying you for your full time attention, your 8 hours a day. Yeah.
Steve Peglar:Well, and and it's and it is, there's a lot of sneaking around. And the the resources that this community has, it kinda teaches you how to sneak around. I mean, there's a lot out there. You know, you're the expert on background checks on how to evade these, you know, potential checks into your pay history and and and anything else that you might be able to look up on somebody that could be detrimental, but how to get around it. Again, you know, how to hack it.
Steve Peglar:But, yeah, I mean, you mentioned at the beginning that, these are primary tech roles. That's what I see. I don't know if there's too many other professions or lines of work where you could do this. Maybe maybe, like, creative professionals of some kind. But even then, you know, why not just be a freelancer?
Steve Peglar:But then, you know, I don't know, but that's not what I do.
Mike Coffey:And I think it also boils down to, again, a leadership and a management issue. If you if you if every employee has a number or metrics and you're really measuring their output and there are things that they're really supposed to be doing and you're gauging their, utilization, you know, you're giving them enough work that it really should take 80% of their time to you know, that you're paying them for to get the job done, then they won't have the bandwidth to do this or you or their performance will slip. And I think a lot of this can be racked up to lazy management Mhmm. And, or just inexperienced management. They don't know what to do.
Mike Coffey:They don't have systems in place. They don't have clear deadlines. They let people, you know, you know, or they let deadlines slide and and without real explanations. I think a lot of it boils down to leadership because as much as we want leaders to, you know, make people, you know, warm and fuzzy about being at work and how great it is to work here, We they also need to hold people accountable, and and employees, you know, want to know explicitly what the expectations are. So if you set the bar this low and you really expect somebody to sit there at their desk, 40 hours a week and only work 15 of it, then you're probably setting yourself up as an employer for that.
Mike Coffey:Or if you're not measuring them and you're not measuring their productivity, then you've got a problem. We did have a client who, large software client. They they procured another company and they found they saw the CEO of this company was watching, you know, the other CEOs on LinkedIn, of his competitors just, you know, as as one does. And the CEO of the other company said, hey. We welcome Joe Smith or whatever to our company, and this is this is kind of one of the things they always do on LinkedIn.
Mike Coffey:And they tagged him and put his photo on there, and the CEO of the software company said, this guy works for the company we just acquired, and there are and and this other company is a direct competitor. So, now, this guy is working for a direct competitor. He's got he's holding down 2 jobs
Steve Peglar:Mhmm.
Mike Coffey:And, he's got a at a pretty high level position. And so, you know, the record scratch, you know, you know, and they say stop, you know, hit the brakes, and, called us and said, hey, can you verify? And that was just a matter of picking up the phone saying, you know, hey. I wanna do an employment verification. Yes.
Mike Coffey:He still works here.
Steve Peglar:Yeah.
Mike Coffey:And, you know, employment date of, you know, you know, 3 months ago or whatever. So it happens.
Steve Peglar:Yeah. And they you know, and and their resource material is gonna give you a bunch of tips on how to hibernate your LinkedIn or or do something to it to kinda lock it so there's no you know, nothing funny shows up there or suspicious. But, you know, in these tech startups, a lot of them, yeah, they just they want a job done. They want amount an amount of code produced or something, and they may not care that you check-in every morning for, you know, a stand up call or something. But then again, if they were smart, they'd be using contractors on one hand.
Steve Peglar:In this world, these folks get hired as w two employees
Mike Coffey:Right.
Steve Peglar:On multiple companies. Now, you know, yeah. Throw it back in the company and the manager, like you said, holding people accountable, but the company itself for, you know, not I don't know. And I'm not here to solve the problem, but but, there's, you know, this this could potentially be, especially when it comes to, you know, intellectual property and confidentiality, I mean, you know, you wouldn't want somebody out there, you know, doing a project for your competitor and you're paying them money, you know, not the fact that they're you're paying them while they're doing competitors' work, but the fact that they've got your information, your institutional knowledge. And so that's that's really scary, and it seems like it would really open people up to potential legal liability and exposure.
Mike Coffey:Well, and and another thing another practice and you hear you've I'm sure you've heard employers say it. Yeah. We don't verify previous employment because you never get any good information. Mhmm. Well, you know what?
Mike Coffey:Date of hire, title, and date of termination is a great lie detector test.
Steve Peglar:Yeah.
Mike Coffey:And, if, you know, the employees you know, either way, if they're filling gaps in their employment by extending dates or just making up out a whole cloth, we see more people lying about their employment history than we see lying about their criminal history in our background checks. Wow. And so if people, you know, if they were all honest, I'd be out of work. Right? I'd have a I'd have a straight job myself, but the you know, just verifying employment, doing those basic things.
Mike Coffey:And one of the things that the over overemployed subreddit says is, oh, well, you always list, if you list that you work for some place and, you know, to cover the second employment and you say something, you know, you list another employer, then what you say is you worked for a staffing agency. And when the staffing agency says they've never heard of you, the employers will just move on because the recruiters are too lazy to to try to track it down or follow-up. I don't doubt that that's true sometimes that, you know, you know, people listen to their you know, they give them credit. And it's, oh, okay.
Steve Peglar:So, you know, so much of the whole vibe of that of this subgenre of working is sort of like employers are suckers, and we're gonna take advantage of them. Right. I mean, that's really what it comes down to. And I'm gonna get rich off this, you know, 4 times faster than I would have otherwise. So, yeah, I mean, it's it's taking advantage and, you know, all the consequences that come out for that.
Steve Peglar:I mean, there's, again, there's a lot of exposure to these folks when they start doing this.
Mike Coffey:And it ties back to what we were talking about with that Glassdoor survey too. Right? You know, people are a lot of the justification as well, the employers are, you know, they're, you know, they're not they're not giving us what we want in their workplace. They're not paying us fairly or they're not, you know, we're not growing or they don't we're not getting what we want from the employment context, so we're not gonna give them what they want. We're just gonna, you know, we're justified.
Mike Coffey:And, I mean, you know, the the private investigator, Mike, who's having all the training on fraud detection and all that, that's the first thing somebody needs to to commit an offense is often they'll find the justification to do it, you know, and so they'll point it back at the employer. So as an employer, you're doing a lot better off if you can make your employees not have that feeling towards you, and your leadership, but then also manage them and hold them accountable.
Steve Peglar:That's right. Yeah.
Mike Coffey:Well, I know you have turkey to go eat, so, I'm going to we'll we'll wrap it up there. There's so much more we could talk about. And and readers, let me or listeners, let me know, did you like the the Reddit conversation? It's a dystopian view of the workplace when you get on Reddit, but I I think it's kind of interesting. I think there's things we can learn as employers.
Mike Coffey:Thanks for joining me, Steve.
Steve Peglar:You're welcome. Thanks for having me once again.
Mike Coffey:And thank you for listening. You can comment on this episode or search our previous episodes at goodmorninghr.com. Rob Upchurch is our technical producer, and you can reach him at robmakespods.com. And thank you to Imperative's marketing coordinator, Mary Anne Hernandez, who keeps the trains running on time. And I'm Mike Coffey.
Mike Coffey:As always, don't hesitate to reach out if I can be of service to you personally or professionally. I'll see you next week, and until then, be well, do good, and keep your chin up. Have a great Thanksgiving.