Hiring Staff to Work in CT

As Contract Training Practitioners, you have two fundamental needs related to your institution’s department of Human Resources:

1. Hiring staff to work in your unit
2. Hiring temporary trainers, instructors, consultants, vendors to deliver the services you have sold to your client  

And while the first item on the list is potentially challenging, we are going to focus on the second in this article, as without Human Resources as your ally in this endeavor, it has the potential to shut your operation down. Most Contract Training programs run on a Just-In-Time hiring practice – bringing on board temporary help for just enough time to deliver the client’s training or services.  Without the ability to do so easily, you don’t really have a program.

With so much at stake, why would the Human Resources department ever hesitate in offering their full support to your division? Or utter words like these:

“Yes, your temporary instructors need to be TB tested and fingerprinted, and those services are only available on campus Mondays from 8 to 8:30 in the morning.”

Just like their operational counterpart, the Business Office, the answer is fairly simple:  Their entire operations were established to support a different kind of business – a structured, semester- or quarter-based educational institution.  They are not set-up to support a nimble, responsive, entrepreneurial business unit – hiring people on the fly.  The result is that everything you do that touches their departments is ‘different’, ‘special’, ‘urgent’…

So what can we do so everyone wins?  The very first thing you need to do is acknowledge the fact that you are different!  This is not a judgment, but a fact.  And making that acknowledgment to them is the first step in coming to some agreements about how you can both achieve your goals.

Second, understand and accept that you might not get the turnaround times you would in a ‘real’ business.  But what you really want and need in order to set appropriate expectations with your prospects, clients, instructors and vendors are turnaround times you can both commit to.  For example, if you can get Human Resources to commit to a two-day turnaround on executing your temporary hires paperwork, than you can set the instructor’s and client’s expectations about when training can start.  And that’s what everyone really wants to know so they can set expectations, too.

How do you get them to commit to a two-day turnaround, or make any kind of commitment for that matter?  Remember what I said earlier about them being geared up for another kind of business?  You really have to start there… you have to understand their processes, paperwork and protocols, so you can understand where and how your operations are different.  Then you can identify the sticking points between the departments.

Once everyone has an understanding of the larger landscape (and this may take getting senior leadership involved) you can begin the work of identifying where efficiencies can be realized. 

Suggestions for alliance making with Human Resources:

¨     Start with a high level meeting between your department’s administration and the senior administrator of Human Resources.  Secure your administrator’s approval/support for this session.

• The objective of this meeting is to develop a collaborative partnership between the two divisions
• Share your goals and objectives for the year, and talk about how if you work together it will be easier to accomplish and easier on them
• Acknowledge how your operation is different but you don’t want to be a burden to them
• Identify possible sticking points between the two divisions’ operations
• Brainstorm solutions for dealing with the sticking points

¨     Use as many of their regular processes and forms as possible to minimize your impact on their workflow

¨     Have your temporary hire contracts pre-approved by the legal department to shorten the review time

¨     Make sure you understand the IRS implications of your request to hire (Independent Contractor vs. Temporary Employee)

¨     If you are working in an organization with a faculty union, keep up on the latest bargaining agreement, making sure that your hiring practices don’t violate any of these specially negotiated agreements.

¨     Keep in mind it is sometimes simple solutions, like putting your paperwork in a red folder so they stand out from the rest of the paperwork on the desk of the overworked personnel administrator, that go a long way to facilitating your end goal… which is really to get the paperwork processed as quickly as possible so you can be responsive to your client.

¨     See if Human Resources will assign one person to work with your office for all HR related matters.  Then assign someone in your division to be the liaison to HR.  This should not be the dean or director of the division, but rather one of the operations team members. This person should be the most diplomatic among your team.  This single point of contact goes a long way to simplifying communications between the two groups.

¨     Publicly acknowledge the work they are doing on your behalf:  Valentine’s Day chocolates – Thank you card after a large contract is won – Holiday popcorn tin – Certificate of Appreciation for someone on the team who went above and beyond to help you land a big deal.  

Thanks to Leslie Larrabee for the ideas!