Do you remember the first job application you filled out? If you are like me and it was over 20 years ago, it was probably a single sheet of paper. Once you get the job you fill out another piece of paper for payroll. Then you are done. Hiring in California or anywhere else was pretty basic.
Today, the job application forms are much longer. These forms have specific requirements regarding what can and what cannot be included. The application includes disclosures, notices of privacy as well as use of data notices.
Add in the requirement to watch training videos for safety and/or harassment, consult a tax expert and sign your name on dozens of documents before you can get a job. If you are in the staffing industry, you know the drill and just comply.
Why? Because that’s the job and so we just do it.
Laws for Staffing Industry
The big question is, ‘Who gets to say this is the job?’ Well that is a bit more complicated. It is for the most part your federal and state governments who create the laws that define the need to fill out all these forms.
This might make the curious person wonder: Where do my elected officials get their expertise and knowledge to make these laws? The mere fact that they won an election makes them experts? Or is it that they sit in a meeting where an expert or two testifies for 10 minutes and suddenly now they have all the expertise they need to make decisions about how a staffing business should be run?
Protect Employees with Laws or Being Valued?
Governments impose laws to protect employees from being exploited. It is also true that good employees staffing companies know that their employees are what make them valuable to their clients.
They have no interest in causing harm to a resource that they value. But lawmakers seem to forget that idea too often when creating laws for the staffing industry. Perhaps it is because they don’t experience firsthand the value of a good employee/staffing company relationship.
Making Good Laws
It is then fair to say if elected officials, who have no expertise in staffing, are making decisions on how best to do the job of a staffing professional based on 30 minutes of testimony, isn’t there a better way to help them become educated? Help them experience the value we place on having good relationships with the people we staff. Help them understand how the laws they propose makes that relationship more difficult if not sometimes impossible.
CSP Legislative Day
Welcome to the idea of CSP’s Legislative day. The objective is to educate elected officials on the value and benefit of having staffing companies who value employees and want to be more effective and efficient in getting work for employees.
Have those staffing companies who work every day side by side with the people who need jobs define best practices and define the most effective way to get these valuable employees working.
The only way to bridge that gap is to talk directly with these representatives who make the laws that define the ever growing list of to-do’s needed just to take a job application. The event this year is in Sacramento, CA on March 3rd 2020. For more information visit the CSP website. Make your voice heard and join CSP for our annual Legislative day