American Disabilities Act & Military Veterans: Know the Rules

Learn more about best practices in recruiting veteran and military job seekers by joining a Talent Circles sponsored webinar on 2/13/14 at 9:00 PM PST. Click here to register & learn more. 

By Jessica Miller-Merrell  

Each year, thousands of military personnel stationed around the world leave active duty and return to jobs they held before entering the service or begin the job search looking for new work. The transition from military to civilian life can be difficult for any active duty military member regardless of the time they spent serving our country. The time spent serving our country, in my opinion, is the ultimate American sacrifice.

A growing number of veterans report high rates of service-connected disabilities. These are disabilities that were incurred in, or aggravated during military service and the service of our country. About twenty-five percent of recent veterans report having a service-connected disability, as compared to about thirteen percent of all veterans. Common injuries incurred by these veterans include missing limbs, burns, spinal cord injuries, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), hearing loss, traumatic brain injuries, and other impairments. For employers, it’s important to understand how service-connected disabilities are protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

The ADA defines an individual with a disability as a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; has a record of an impairment; or is regarded as having such an impairment.” An individual with a disability is qualified if he/she is able to meet an employer's requirements for the job, such as education, training, employment experience, skills, or licenses, and is able to perform the job's essential or fundamental duties with or without reasonable accommodation. This includes military veterans and individuals returning from deployment, active duty military or national guardsmen and woman serving our country.

The ADA defines major life activities such as seeing, walking, hearing, concentrating as well as activities that involve bodily functions like the neurological system.

A request for reasonable accommodation under the ADA usually begins with a request from the individual or family member with the disability. Keep in mind the request doesn’t have to formally mention the ADA or a request for accommodation under the ADA.

A reasonable accommodation request can be one of the following: (This is not a comprehensive list.)

• Anti-glare monitor
• Footrest
• Raised desk or work station that is wheel chair accessible
• Braille materials or special computer programs for the seeing impaired
• Permission to work from home
• Special work lighting
• Job coach
• Reassignment to an open position of the same level
• Request to leave work for treatment as well as part time or modified schedule work

One of the biggest misnomers is surrounding what is considered reasonable as “reasonable” is not defined according to the cost to a facility or an employer. While an accommodation of lowering or raising a cash register might cost an employer several thousand dollars, it is considered a reasonable expense especially when you also consider the cost compared to a large operation or company.

Although the ADA isn’t specific to military members, there are a number of veterans who qualify under the law to receive accommodation as a result of disabilities sustained during their time in the military. These disabilities don’t mean they are any less productive or important as an employee of your organization. They are loyal, dedicated and productive employees regardless of visible or invisible disabilities.

Employers looking for more information about the Americans with Disabilities Act can visit the EEOC’s website as well as the Job Accomodation Network. JAN provides free and confidential resources for workplace accommodations and disability employment issues including former active duty military.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a leading voice in HR and workplace technology. She’s an author and founder of  Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @jmillermerrell.

Photo Credit. 

How to Add Instant ROI to Your Veteran Hiring with VOTC

Learn more about best practices in recruiting veteran and military job seekers by joining a Talent Circles sponsored webinar on 2/13/14 at 9:00 PM PST. Click here to register & learn more.

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

Aside from the obvious benefits of hiring military veterans at organizations, companies often forget about a 2011 tax benefit program that encourages them to hire prior service members and military called VOTC. VOTC stands for Veterans Opportunity Tax Credit. Companies complete forms 8850 and 9061 as part of the WOTC or Work Opportunity Tax Credit program to receive tax benefits for veteran hiring.

Working in HR and recruiting, finding quantifiable and direct metrics or ROI can be challenging. This tax credit provides a monetary reward of up to $9,600 per hire for our veteran and military recruiting and hiring efforts that directly impacts our company’s bottom line.

This tax credit is common for companies to receive when they hire job seekers who have received government assistance. In 2012, Obama signed into law a different type of tax credit for Veterans and military what is referred to as the VOTC or the Veterans Opportunity Tax Credit. Also know as the Returning Heroes Tax Credit, it is designed to for companies to receive a tax credit of up to $5,600 per veteran. The Wounded Warriors Tax Credit is another piece of this program. Companies who hire disabled veterans can receive a maximum credit of $9,600 per veteran. These are all pieces of the American Jobs Act , which was signed into law November 21, 2011.

In 2013, the American Tax Payer Relief Act of 2012 was signed into law further extending programs like the Veterans Opportunity Tax Credit as part of WOTC until December 31, 2013.

Congress has yet passed legislation to extend the program into 2014. However, the Department of Labor is directing state workforce agencies as of January 2, 2014 to continue to process WOTC and VOTC applications until further notice is given. What that means for employers, is that we can still submit and receive the tax credit benefiting further from hiring veterans to our companies.

There is no time limit associated to when a veteran leaves their service under VOTC. And recently, qualified tax-exempt organizations can also receive the tax credit incentives. Additionally, there is no benefit to the tax credit. Whether you hire 1 veteran or 25,000, the tax credit program has no boundaries. Here are direct links to the two forms used as part of the tax credit program – Form 9061 and Form 8850v.

Often overlooked, the program and its tax credit apply to all veterans regardless of the year or time in service. If you are hiring any veterans who have been unemployed for four weeks or more, your company can receive the tax credit. The tax credit applies to every and all veteran regardless of if their time in service was 1965 or 2013.

And voila – instant ROI in the form of veteran hiring.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @blogging4jobs. 

Photo Credit. 

The DirectEmployers Annual Meeting: Informative and Inspirational

By Marylene Delbourg-Delphis

Bill Warren, Executive Director of the DirectEmployers Association

Last week, I attended the Direct Employers Annual Meeting in Scottsdale. I was impressed by everything I saw:

— The value of the Association

— The quality of the event

The value of Direct Employers

Direct Employers is a nonprofit HR consortium of employers started in 2001 under the leadership of Bill Warren, an HR veteran, who was the founder of the first online recruiting company in 1992. After a great career, Bill's goal was to help corporations organize and build a top‐level .jobs domain similar to others like .edu or .gov. Today, the success of Direct Employers is obvious: It provides low cost solutions to online recruiting, unambiguously improves labor market efficiencies, and has reached the milestone of one million jobs from over 100,000 employers in syndication who benefit from the basic service for free. For 93% of users, the online experience begins with a search engine, something that recruiting via Internet must take into account. Hence the critical importance of .Jobs, as well as the outstanding SEO offered by DirectEmployers. I'll let you browse through the scope of services provided by the organization as well as the amazing range of its partnerships and job syndication alliances, but one thing is clear: Its current 600+ members who leverage all the services of Direct Employers, have clearly proven the power of sharing best practices, advancing industry standards, providing research, as well as understanding big data analysis and what reducing recruiting costs is about. Any .org relies on the efficiency and dedication of its leadership and employees as well as the evangelistic power of any person who happens to be exposed to such organization. So here is my advice: if your organization is not yet a member, it should become one — for, in this case, pursuing the common good of offering jobs to people also serves the pursuit of each company's self-interest.

The quality of the event

This Annual Conference is the most informative conference I have seen so far in the HR industry. First of all, it's not a "show." It's a place where employers share their experiences and initiatives to inform peers of what is working for them — whether best practices in strategic interviewing to building an online recruiting brand, creating veteran outreach, understanding the potential and challenges of social media exposure, optimizing recruiting efforts with a clear SEO strategy, focusing on meaningful performance metrics, or designing a mobile career fair engagement. Presenters know first-hand what they are talking about as practitioners, strongly involved decision makers, or as employees of the Association.

It's hard to isolate any single reason why a conference elicits such unanimous and sincere kudos. Clearly the organizing team's acumen is critical — as is a participative audience of educated professionals. I would also venture something else... The HR industry talks a lot about diversity while, in practice, showing very little of it, as, quite strikingly, in the main industry events, the majority of the speakers are men. What definitely sets apart Direct Employers is the presence of women. Its board members include a majority of women. The committee directing this year's programming, promotional opportunities and sponsorships was comprised mostly of women, in addition to the (women-run) marketing organization of Direct Employers. Last but not least, the number of women presenters exceeded the number of men...

Two phenomenal keynote speakers enthused the attendees for their grit and their unstoppable determination, Aron Ralston, the inspired adventurer of 127 Hours and Sage Steele, the epitome of the working mother who made her way into a male-dominated world of sport (ESPN SportsCenter Co-Host), who recounted her "lessons learned" with wit, fire and truthfulness.

Conclusion... Become a member of DirectEmployers, don't miss their annual meeting — and check their smaller events too!

A sweet career development meal for our military veterans

By Kevin W. Grossman

One in three. Mercy me.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, one in three young military veterans were out of a job the last quarter of 2011. That rate was double that of their civilian peers.

Double, mind you. So much for economic independence day (that continues to still evade America and most of the world). Whoopee. Have some stale shortcake with those moldy strawberries.

And according to a recent New York Times article, “The unemployment rate for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has remained above the civilian rate for several years, standing at 12.7 percent in May, compared with 7.7 percent among nonveterans. The problem is particularly great among younger veterans ages 18 to 24, whose unemployment rate was 23.5 percent in May, 10 percentage points higher than their nonveteran peers.” That’s not accounting for those who have partial employment or those who have given up all together.

The disparity, as I’ve read over and over again of late, is blamed on the fact that matching military skills and experience to civilian jobs has been confounding to employers, of which I find confounding. With the exception of direct combat experience, all the skills learned in the military are critical for the private sector today — from technical skills to leadership skills to being an adaptable and disciplined a team player.

But why is it that so many employers are missing out on these highly trained individuals? It’s not that there aren’t enough skills assessments on the market: SHL alone claims to have over 1,000 titles and competitive prices. Plus, there are myriad of other assessment companies to choose from, allowing employers of any size to size up their applicants, albeit from the military or not. Not to mention the even minimally trained sourcers and screeners who should be able to match and translate experience to business needs. Literally matching keywords from resume to job posting does not a meal make.

We’ve got “bleeding edge” recruiting technologies to help us sort through the candidates, which for some companies could mean hundreds of online applications each week. However, as I’ve written before it can all be like an Escher maze, the social networking pages to job boards to career sites to applicant tracking systems that are as endless as the miles and miles of back road we travel everyday, where we are in fact loosing qualified passengers along the way, not to mention the gastronomical unmentionables we find along the way.

We keep measuring the cost of a bad hire – thousands and thousands of dollars per bad hire depending on the level and position. But we’re not spending enough time evangelizing the return of making a good, tasty hire. These good hires are the employees who make our businesses thrive and grow; they know who else around them, above them and below them are making things thrive and grow, like fresh yeast activating flour, salt, water and eggs. They know who has had previous military experience and who doesn’t.

Why aren’t we facilitating a “platform” mixing bowl in which these thrivers and growers can show us directly how and why their recipe works? We don’t want to stop our top team members and leaders in their tracks, but we do want to watch in real time their interactions with one another. And if you’ve got anyone with previous military experience, find out why were they hired in the first place, and if they’re performing, add another why on top of that. If you haven’t hired anyone from the military, figure out that why as well.

It’s up to the people acquisition and management folk – recruiters, human resources, hiring managers, project managers, executive management – to identify, analyze and extrapolate what skills their best talent has and then examine their origins to create better talent mapping techniques. An internal talent network recipe makes for the right dish that sticks to your ribs. You can source, screen, assess, interview, identify, map, sprinkle in a dash of salt and pepper –

Nothing says Independence Day like a sweet career development meal for our military veterans. Invite them over to your house soon, and don’t forget the fresh whipped cream.