During this time of year, many holiday traditions and folk tales come to mind. One of the most instantly recognized and popular figures of Christmas folklore is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The tale of this loveable, but often undervalued and maligned young buck has been recounted by generations of Americans for 75 years. People throughout the U.S. love to celebrate the legend of how the seemingly meager and shunned Rudolph eventually grew into an irreplaceable force on Santa’s reindeer sleigh team.

The message in Rudolph’s journey offers a lot of merit. There are lessons from his story that can be applied in the workplace. On the diamond anniversary of this holiday classic, it is important for HR managers to identify any Rudolphs at their workplaces. What is more, employers should make sure that they have implemented the policies, practices and resources required to cultivate the unrecognized assets, or Rudolphs, of their organizations.

Employers need to address the following three things in order to ensure that they are discovering and properly developing their own Rudolphs:

1. Hiring
2. During every hiring cycle, employers typically attract a wide variety of job applicants. In some situations, there may be an applicant who stands out due to their distinctive sense of style, physical appearance or way of communicating. Like Rudolph, they could even conspicuously stand out as “different” based on palpable attribute.
3. The traditional, often unspoken, protocol in hiring practices has been to summarily disregard candidates that do not meet certain appearance standards.
4. Under current employment law, employers still have a broad license to make hiring decisions based on appearance. This past March, the National Law Review reported “existing jurisprudence does not automatically prohibit appearance-based discrimination in the workplace. No comprehensive state or federal law prohibits an employer from making adverse employments decisions when an employee or prospective employee is too heavy or too thin, revealing unconventional body art, or is generally unattractive.”
5. However as industries and workplace cultures have evolved, employers are increasingly realizing that they may be foolishly rejecting valuable candidates based on an outdated premise. Even though a job candidate’s appearance, or ability to verbalize their thoughts, may seem a bit unorthodox, they may bring an undetected devotion to the advertised job.
6. Any employer who chooses to establish their own employment screening program, needs to incorporate this philosophy into their hiring process.
7. Visier Founder and CEO John Schwarz recently told Business News Daily, “it’s easy to write off candidates based on their appearance, but it’s more important to consider how well they can do the job and if they’re a good fit in other ways.”
8. Originally, no one, including Santa, comprehended Rudolph’s future ability to guide the reindeer sleigh. They had rushed towards an unfair judgment about the young buck based on his appearance. As an employer, you want to be sure that you are not making the same mistake.

2. Workplace bullying
3. Throughout Rudolph’s story, he is repeatedly bullied by his peers over his shiny red nose. The inherent value of his peculiar trait is overlooked by both his fellow cervidae and Santa. In fact, Rudolph is mocked and estranged from the team. The popular song, which came out 10 years after the Montgomery Ward Company first published Rudolph’s story, exclaimed:
4. “All of the other reindeers
   Used to laugh and call him names
   They never let poor Rudolph
   Join in any reindeer games”
5. Similar to our artiodactylian friend of Christmas folklore, some people are often alienated in workplaces over what is unfairly perceived as an idiosyncratic characteristic or personal trait. What is more, their colleagues’ oppressive obsession with this unique quality can easily overshadow the person’s true value and talents. Even worse, a herd mentality can develop that further exacerbates a hostile work environment. Under these conditions, no one’s unknown skills or talents can be allowed to flourish.
6. Workplace bullying is an issue that has existed in organizations for decades. Up until the last few years, it continued to slowly germinate the American workplace landscape without much public initiative being taken to address the issue. By the beginning of this decade, it had grown into what executive coaching expert Ray Williams described in Psychology Today as “a silent epidemic”.
7. A recent study by Vital Smarts showed that 96 percent of people say that they have been subjected to bullying in the workplace. If the problem is truly this pervasive and pernicious, than in all likelihood it is stifling the talent segment that goes unnoticed in even the healthiest of work environments.
8. There are several things employers can do to target eliminating episodes of bullying at their workplace. By establishing a background screening program, that includes criminal background checks, employers can limit their chances of hiring or retaining workers who relish preying on assailable colleagues.
9. In addition, The Network’s General Manager for Training and Communications Strategy Julie Moriarty lately described to CIO how organizations need to have an ethics officer, or an independent “team of ethics and compliance specialists”, who can make objective decisions about disciplinary measures around bullying. She also explained the importance having a clearly defined reporting process that is spelled out to every employee.
10. These types of measures will empower the unfettered Rudolphs in your workplace to let their talents come to fruition.

3. Reevaluate Your HiPo program
4. One of the most frustrating incidents of Rudolph’s journey occurs when he reaches adolescence. He tries to participate in the Reindeer Games with the hopes of being selected to get trained to pull Santa’s sleigh. Yet after his shiny nose is discovered, he is no longer allowed to “join in any reindeer games.”
5. Rudolph’s potential strengths to the team are completely misunderstood and unfairly unconsidered. In truth, the evaluation process at the Reindeer Games is flawed, and its formula for appraising potential is awry.
6. Over the last few decades, many organizations have dedicated resources towards creating and advancing high-potential (HiPo) programs.
7. In their report titled “The Pearls and Perils of Identifying Potential”, researchers Rob Silzer and Allan Church documented how an increasing number of organizations had implemented HiPo programs over the last 20 years. In 1994, they reported that 42 percent of the 21 major corporations that they surveyed had HiPo programs. By 2008, they found that 100% of the 20 major corporations that they surveyed reported having a HiPo program.
8. Likewise, recent research conducted by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) found that 68 percent of organizations had increased their investments in HiPo programs since 2012.
9. But many HiPo programs are not implemented or managed properly. In certain cases, some organizations may be placing too much weight on poor predictors of potential. They are likely overlooking the Rudolphs of their organizations who possess other underutilized critical attributes that make them promising HiPo candidates.
10. Earlier this year, the CEB’s Robert Morgan explained why many HiPo programs have proven to be ineffective. His post served as a complimentary piece to CEB’s HR Guide to Identifying High-Potentials and its accompanying infographic. Morgan emphasized the additional criteria that organizations frequently fail to look for when identifying and selecting HiPo candidates.
11. And, he further stressed the importance of using vital hard data on HiPo candidates during the intake process. This is a practice numerous organizations fail to do in their HiPo programs. As a result, they presumably end up improperly assessing any Rudolphs that they employ based strictly on anecdotal observation.
12. The CEB’s Improving the Odds of Success for High-Potential Programs report found “only one in three organizations use hard assessment data to identify employees” for their HiPo programs. And that 46 percent of organizations do not have any type of “systematic process” in place to identify and develop their HiPo candidates.
13. The aforementioned report also explained how most organizations have not even adopted a clear definition of “potential.” It showed that two-thirds of companies are misidentifying their HiPos.
14. So it would be quite easy to surmise, given all of this research, that the Rudolphs of most workplaces are overpassed for development opportunities.

Disclaimer Statement: All information presented is for information purposes only and is not intended to provide professional or legal advice regarding actions to take in any situation.

Most business owners and HR departments understand the need for criminal background screening as an essential protective measure. After all, if someone has committed violent or non-violent illegal acts in the past, there’s always a chance for that behavior to rise to the fore in the future. But how can employers be certain that a candidate with a perfectly clean criminal record will not end up committing unanticipated, even criminal activity after joining the team? By screening a candidate to measure their job compatibility and integrity, job employers can come closer to answering that question. This process also complements any previously conducted criminal background check.

Figuring out how compatible a prospective employee really is with a position can save both employee and employer a great deal of future friction — friction that could turn into hostility, disenfranchisement, and dissociation. Some individuals may say anything to obtain a steady job, even when the job itself turns out to be a poor fit for their emotional and financial needs. For this reason, HR professionals need to go beyond job compatibility matches that look great on paper or online. For instance, a detailed personal interview, conducted by a body language expert, can reveal how comfortable a candidate truly is with the job’s conditions and the workplace’s corporate culture.

Integrity in the workplace generally boils down to behavior that reliably follows a desirable moral and ethical compass. To get a firm idea of how a prospective (or current) employee will behave in the future, employers can administer self-reports such as the Predictive Index, or PI. The PI is a test that asks participants to respond to two lists of adjectives, expressing their own feelings about each word in the first list and their perceptions of how others feel about each word in the second list. The responses provide a personality snapshot across four categories: Dominance, Extroversion, Patience, and Formality. While there are no right or wrong answers, the results should give clear indicators as to whether a given personality type is likely to feel frustration or resentment under certain workplace requirements or conditions.

Just as criminal background screening can illuminate a prospective employee’s past, job compatibility and integrity screening can help predict that prospective employee’s future. By implementing this holistic approach to hiring, employers get the best of both worlds.

Source: http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2011/05/facial-expressions.aspx

Business managers, human resources industry professionals and small business owners recognize the importance of hiring the best candidates in order to fulfill open positions within their companies, which is why they turn to us at HRemploymentScreening.com for our easy, accurate and quality employment screening services. While we recognize that we are a top provider nationwide for these types of background check services, we still strive to increase our offerings for our clients in order to improve their experience with our company. With that in mind, we have created several new valuable employment screening resources list pages for our human resources industry clients to use.

New Valuable Employment by Major Industry Resource Page for Employment Screening and Human Resources Industry Clients!

Human Resources Industry Resources

The new employment by industry resource page provides customers with relevant data from the United States Census Bureau. This industry and occupation data was collected during the 2010 U.S. Census, and it outlines the top industries for each particular state. Our human resources industry clients will be able to quickly navigate the graph on the page in order to determine which industries are most relevant in any given state, and also note which industries are growing across the country. This can help a person better understand and interpret a job candidate’s interest and desire in a particular position.

Ultimately, we recognize that context is a pivotal part of the search for the perfect candidate. A person’s resume may list a variety of information about their background, qualifications and education, but it doesn’t always tell the whole story. We believe that accurate data presented in a way that is easy to read and interpret is a valuable resource for all of our clients, which is why we created the industry resource page.

If any of our human resources industry or employment screening clients have questions about the information presented on our website or they would like assistance in utilizing our website resources, our company representatives are happy to help. We look forward to hearing from you, and hope that you will provide us with any additional feedback that you might have. Be sure to check out our new human resources industry resource page today and contact us to become a client to gain access to high quality employment screening.

In the United States, health insurance data coverage and employment is directly related. At HRemploymentScreening.com, we have found that many job candidates are interested in positions that offer health insurance policies and benefits. We believe that our clients — who are largely managers, owners and human resources professionals — could benefit from accurate health insurance data that is easy to find and interpret. With this in mind, we have created the disability insurance data and health insurance coverage resource page for our employment screening clients to use during the hiring planning process.

Understand Health Insurance Data and Apply It To Your Employment Screening Process Today!

On this health insurance data resource page that was recently launched, our clients will find information about health insurance and disability insurance in the United States. This healthcare information will help them better understand the benefits offered by clients who are hoping to fill the available positions at their companies. In addition, a table was created and is located on this page that breaks down healthcare information for each individual state. Human resources professionals will find that they can easily have access to data regarding the percentage of people in a particular state that have health insurance policies through their employers versus those who have purchased a private policy. The data table also outlines information about disability insurance policies in each individual state.

The employment screening resources that we created and launched on HRemploymentScreening.com will provide employers with information they need to make informed hiring decisions. Our company representatives are available to help our clients make the most out of their investment in our healthcare background check solutions and employment screening services. We are constantly striving to improve the client experience and will continue to release new resources for our clients to use during their research, recruiting and employment screening hiring process. In order to find out more information about health insurance data and disability insurance use throughout the United States, be sure to check out our new resource page today.

As the economy slowly rebounds across the country and in the many states that were hard hit by the Great Recession, we have found that more human resources professionals are interested in utilizing secure background screening during the hiring process. While the state employment rate rises with more jobs continuing to be created each day and employment opportunities are on the rise, companies are more particular than ever about the candidates that they hire to fulfill those positions. In general, all companies want to hire the most qualified and competent workers, and they are willing to invest valuable resources in order to make the best hiring decisions.

With this in mind, we at HRemploymentScreening.com have added valuable employment screening resource pages to our company website. While many people know that they can work with us in order to get high quality, easy-to-interpret, and accurate employment screening reports, they may not realize that we offer our clients so much more than that. We have recently created an employer resource page that provides state employment rate and unemployment rate data, broken down by each individual state.

The state employment rate data is provided to our clients in order to provide them with more information about employment in the U.S.A. It is very useful for human resources professionals and hiring managers to know if their company is in a state that still has a relatively high unemployment rate and a lack of job opportunities. This context can help assist the hiring professional when posting job positions and eventually the employment screening process.

The HRemploymentScreening.com employer resource section now includes the state employment rate for all 50 States and the unemployment rates across the country.

Our company representatives are available to help clients who want to utilize our website and employment screening services. We are constantly working to provide our clients with the best experience possible when completing a background check order and during the entire employment screening process. For more information on the state employment rate and the unemployment rates across the country, be sure to check out this new employment resource page as soon as possible. We look forward to your feedback and will answer any questions you might have about this new resource that is available.