FoxHire reported in a previous blog that employers are already looking to hire their temporary seasonal help for the holiday season. According to a recent Society for Human Resource Management article titled “Staffing Up for Holidays Raises Compliance Issues,” those employers need to remember that those temporary workers need to be treated the same as their regular staff.
According to Attorney Greg Grant, who was interviewed for the article, employers tend to get lackadaisical about following employment laws when it comes to their seasonal staff. Some common procedures that get neglected are the proper completion of I-9s, following minimum wage and overtime regulations, and properly withholding taxes.
To get around these obligations, some employers bring on their seasonal workers as 1099 Independent Contractors. But these workers often do not qualify to be Independent Contractors, and with increased government enforcement of worker misclassification, this is not something employers want to get wrong.
This may be the perfect time to pitch contracting to your clients. By bringing seasonal help in on a contract basis, they can avoid misclassification issues because the worker is hired as a W-2 Employee rather than an Independent Contractor. But companies can still avoid the paperwork, administration, and compliance issues that come with maintaining employees because those contractors can be employed by a back-office service provider, such as FoxHire, that will handle all of those issues. When the busy season is over, your clients can simply end the contract. And if they like some of their seasonal workers, it is easy to convert them to direct-hires, which can result in a conversion fee for you! How’s that for a holiday bonus?
