Prominent reporter Jose Antonia Vargas (@joseiswriting) recently confessed, via an in-depth article in The New York Times Magazine, that for the past 18 years he has lived and worked in the United States as an illegal immigrant.

Vargas’ goal was to spark discussion about immigration issues, and to promote the DefineAmerican campaign. Much of the reaction, however, has centered on the issues of risk and liability for his current and past employers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, and The New York Times.

Should employers, whether they’re deceived or fail to be diligent, be sanctioned by the government for hiring illegal workers?

Regardless of your moral or justice stance, the fact is that in The United States, the large majority of employers of illegal aliens are never fined or prosecuted.

The illegal workforce represents approximately 9% of American GDP, and is a significant source of unskilled labour, particularly in the restaurant and construction industries. Some surveys report that as many as 1 in 3 dishwashers at American restaurants are working illegally.

The widespread availability of fraudulent documents, combined with the online E-Verify system’s limited access and countless implementation problems, means that for many employers, determining who is legally eligible for employment is an often insurmountable hurdle.

Of course, it’s in your best interest to make some effort at verifying the legal status of your prospective employees. How much of an effort is a difficult decision, and it’s yours to make.

Illegal workers often suffer from lower wages for equal work, limited job security, insecure living conditions, and restricted access to social services. Abusive employers are known to only report illegal status when staff begin to make demands for equal treatment, overtime pay, or union representation. That’s the bigger issue here.

Once you’ve hired an illegal worker—whether you do so knowingly or not—you should commit yourself to treating them like every other member of your staff. Obey labour laws. Follow HR best practices. Don’t terminate them without just cause or compensation. Never use their race or immigration status as a bargaining chip.

The rule of law is important in any society, but in today’s America, illegal immigrants are important too. Treating everyone justly and equitably, within the reasonable confines of the law, is not only your obligation as a human resource professional, it’s your obligation as a human being.

If everyone puts a greater focus on the universal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we’ll all be better off.

Paul Baribeau writes for TribeHR, studies Knowledge Integration, and once considered a career as a pirate (it didn’t work out). TribeHR eliminates the big hassle of HR management for small and medium-sized businesses.

Matrix is an international high-performance venture capital fund whose past investments include Apple, SanDisk, and HubSpot. This deal marks the first time that Matrix Partners have ever provided seed financing to a Canadian company.

With the increased monetary flexibility, TribeHR will be able to dedicate more time and resources to the development of our market-leading social human resource management software. We’ll also continue working to improve our customer service and marketing presence.

We’re extremely excited about a number of forthcoming improvements which will continue to revolutionize the way small and medium businesses recruit, keep records, provide feedback, engage their employees, and much much more.

As part of the deal, serial entrepreneur David Skok will join us as an advisor. David is currently a Board Member with a number of software industry leaders, and previously served as the CEO of several high-performance high-tech firms.

The team plans to celebrate with planking, infographics, and improvements to our zombie defenses.

Read the full press release, sign up for our newsletter, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe to our RSS feed for more information.

While succession planning matters, it focuses on expected and permanent successorship. What will you do if your CEO is hospitalized with angina, your chief architect demands a summer-long leave of absence, or a bout of flu takes down your entire custodial staff?

Replacement planning is the process of arranging temporary coverage for key internal responsibilities. Having a plan in place before an emergency arises is critical to business continuity. If you’re among the 40% of companies that aren’t prepared for the emergency succession of the CEO, read on.

You can't plan an emergency, so you should plan for one. Don't delay. www.toothpastefordinner.com

In some cases, replacing an important function on a temporary basis is relatively straightforward. Often, an experienced administrative assistant can manage most of the workload, while the absentee’s staff and colleagues fill in the gaps. For entry-level positions, chances are a temp agency can find someone on short notice.

Balancing the costs and benefits of naming temporary successors can be challenging. It’s important to consult widely, and consider maintaining confidentiality, in order to ensure office politics don’t become a distraction. Here’s a simple plan to help you get started:

1. Get a Commitment from Management.

Because this can be a fairly large project, with significant operational repercussions, it’s important that management commits to it. Cite the high costs of vacancies and of training new staff. If that doesn’t work, you might be able to appeal to a stubborn manager’s ego. Sell replacement planning by noting the importance of effective managers, stressing how helpless the company would be without them.

2. Determine scope.

What positions are you looking at? What length of time? A wide scope is great, but you need to be realistic with your time and resources, or you’re going to have trouble completing the project on schedule and on budget.

3. Let managers do the leg work.

Managers know their jobs, and those of their employees. They have a thorough understanding of their individual employees’ competencies. So let them plan replacements. Give them guidance and offer tons of assistance, but don’t needlessly step on toes. If selling the project wasn’t easy, implementing it definitely won’t be. Try to arrange for some informal group meetings, so that peer influence and competition can encourage progress.

4. Finalize and Act.

Once everything is planned, make it happen. Get approval from whoever you need to. Inform whoever needs to know. Then work to make sure that your replacements are ready to hit the ground running, if and when they’re called on.

5. Review.

Replacement planning is an ongoing process. Jimmy probably can’t fill in for Marsha if Jimmy left the company six months ago. Identify gaps, successes, and failures, and then start the process again. This is something you should consider doing on an annual basis.

HR sometimes struggles to get a seat at the table. If your replacement planning program gives you a role in filling everyone else’s seats, it should be much easier to pull up a chair for yourself.

If your CEO resigned tomorrow, would you be able to replace her?

Paul Baribeau writes for TribeHR, studies Knowledge Integration, and once considered a career as a pirate (it didn’t work out). TribeHR eliminates the big hassle of HR management for small and medium-sized businesses.

Source: Rothwell, W. J. (2011). “Replacement planning: a starting point for succession planning and talent management.” International Journal of Training and Development 15(1). 87–99.

The results are an interesting reflection of the larger trend towards internet-based commerce, as well as the widespread adoption of technology to streamline business processes.

Or, in layman’s terms, “they’re pretty neat.”

Explosive growth

SaaS, or software as a service, has emerged in the past few years as the preferred terminology for online subscription-based business resources. Small and medium businesses are drawn to SaaS in part because it allows them to perform like major corporations, without having to invest in computing or IT infrastructure.

Google Insights results for "SaaS."

Cloud computing—the online storage and manipulation of information—has seen explosive growth in the past few years thanks to large investments by companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft. Just last month, Microsoft released Office365, a cloud version of the ubiquitous Office (Word/Excel/Powerpoint) software.

Google Insights results for "cloud computing."

Facebook was founded in 2004. Twitter was founded in 2006. In only a few short years, they’ve become key parts of online commerce. In the next few years, watch for social media to continue its massive growth in the small business realm.

Google Insights results for "social media."

Steady increases

Hiring is of course nothing new, but small businesses are increasingly relying on the web to recruit new staff. We search for almost everything else online, so why not people too?

Google Insights results for "hiring."

Simply put, an API (application programming interface) is how one website shares custom information with another. Integrating web services allows you to use the best features from a variety of different vendors, in one easy-to-use format.
For example, you can use HootSuite to log in to Twitter and check your Klout score. APIs make it easy to transition from one service to another in a secure way, which gives small businesses more freedom and flexibility.

Google Insights results for "API."

Fading fast

The once-standard term classifieds is being overtaken by brand-specific online boards like Monster, Kijiji, and Craigslist. The newspaper monopoly on job postings and ads for used junk is over.

Google Insights results for "classifieds."

Office? What’s that? More and more people are working from home, or using their iPads and Blackberries to work from wherever they happen to be.

Google Insights results for "office."

A few weeks ago, I needed to send an insurance claim in the mail, but I didn’t own any envelopes. Neither did any of my friends. As everything shifts to the internet, snail mail is quickly becoming obsolete. Small businesses have clearly caught on to the trend.

Google Insights results for "envelope."

Google Insights can assess the past, but it isn’t very good at predicting the future. What do you think will be the major changes in small business over the next 10 years?

Paul Baribeau writes for TribeHR, studies Knowledge Integration, and once considered a career as a pirate (it didn’t work out). TribeHR eliminates the big hassle of HR management for small and medium-sized businesses.

Stretch goals are distant aspirations that are both extremely difficult to meet, and extremely novel within your industry. While they don’t have to appear unachievable, they often do (and sometimes actually are).

If you stretch too far, it might hurt. f1uffster/flickr

In 1972 Southwest Airlines was forced to sell one of their four aircraft in order to help pay their bills. Instead of permanently eliminating 25% of flights, they adopted a stretch goal of 10-minute turnaround times at airport gates. Other companies thought it was impossible. Southwest eventually met their goal with a race-car pit crew-inspired maintenance and refueling regimen.

This unprecedentedly efficient use of resources allowed the company to offer enhanced services with significantly reduced infrastructure costs. Southwest would become one of only a handful of American airlines to survive the tumultuous two decades following deregulation of the airline industry.

Researchers at 5 major American universities have found an interesting problem that’s inherent to the concept of a stretch goal. Their findings, published in the July 2011 issue of Academic of Management Review, show that for most firms, stretch goals are either unlikely to ever be pursued, or unlikely to ever be achieved.

Southwest Airlines isn't perfect, but they do a lot of things right. Emlyn Stokes/flickr

In high performance companies, there’s very little motivation to pursue stretch goals. Staff and management are prone to accepting the status quo, and are reluctant to do anything that might present risk or disrupt productivity.

In low performance companies, stretch goals are created in a desperate attempt to get out of the red. Unfortunately for these companies, meeting stretch goals takes time, money, and personnel. Sacrificing core functions to pursue long-term dreams is not a realistic plan for companies without a financial buffer. The benefits of a stretch goal might not be realized for years after the pursuit begins, and by then the company is in financial ruin.

Stretch goals don’t have to be company-wide. Individual staff, or cooperative teams, can come up with their own long-term aspirations. In companies with resources to spare, management and HR should make sure that staff have help developing their long-term plans, and access to the resources that will allow them to succeed.

Big aspirations often present big risks. Before you set stretch goals, ask yourself if you can afford to fail. If you can’t, consider some more modest strategic improvements.

“Success doesn’t come to you; You go to it.”

— Marva Collins

Source: Sitkin et. al. (2011). “The paradox of stretch goals: organizations in pursuit of the seemingly impossible.” Academy of Management Review 36(3). 544–566.

That’s why I’m so excited about Google Insights. The service takes advantage of Google’s massive popularity to track the things people are searching. Halloween? Gets a ton of searches every year in October. Obama? Very popular in 2008. Vancouver? February of 2010.

Tracking when people are interested in things can help you manage human resources more effectively. If you know that “my job sucks” tends to peak early in the summer, and “quit my job” peaks in August, you can step up employee engagement and retention practices for those months—or get ready to start a fresh round of hiring.

Consider this: “Job” and “hiring” dip every year in December. People are probably more concerned about their families and their holidays than their careers. That means it’s probably not a great month for you to look for new staff.

Google Insights results for "job."

“Lost job” saw a dramatic increase at the beginning of the great recession, but has almost completely recovered since then.

Google Insights results for "lost job."

“Bonus” peaks every year in December. So don’t forget about it. You might even want to try giving one at a different time of year, just to give people a pleasant surprise.

Google Insights results for "bonus."

“Cheese” also peaks in December. Just some food for thought.

Google Insights results for "cheese."

Paul Baribeau writes for TribeHR, studies Knowledge Integration, and once considered a career as a pirate (it didn’t work out). TribeHR eliminates the big hassle of HR management for small and medium-sized businesses.

Earlier this year, the Journal of World Business published a special issue, highlighting issues and developments in human resources in Africa. Six peer-reviewed articles cover everything from conflicting corporate cultures in an African merger, to the development of female talent in African business schools.

Forget what you think you know about Africa. [teachandlearn/flickr]

Business and academia don’t spend much time talking about “the last economic and industrial frontier.” When we do, there’s a tendency to lump everyone into a homogenous group. The reality is that Africa has incredible diversity: One billion people speaking 2000 languages in 53 countries.

The creation of unique organizational structures and management styles, that reflect the realities of the pan-African economy while respecting local heritage and cultural norms, is key to the successful development of business in Africa. This is a challenging and fascinating task.

In Gabon, almost 100% of people use a cellular phone. [Ken Banks/flickr]

Innovative and flexible Western human resource managers have knowledge and skills that can be of tremendous use in the Global South. There’s also much to be learned from African experiences, which can inform and improve your own HR practice. Unfortunately, with only a few exceptions, HR as a profession has failed to establish itself in much of the developing world.

Preview the special issue of Journal of World Business for free, access it through a subscription (perhaps from your company or your alma mater), or purchase individual articles here. You can buy a hard copy (at a better price, I should add) here, or find it in a local library.

I challenge you to get involved. What’s stopping you from investing in Africa? Money? Family? Fear? What would it take to change your mind?

It’s no surprise, then, that 74% of high-tech workers think having the option of telecommuting is “important.”

A lawyer will warn you about lots of (important) things you need to consider before allowing a telecommute: Who is liable for injuries at a home office? Will private and proprietary information be secure? How can you ensure productivity?

Simply maintaining communication and avoiding liability can make your corporate culture—what ultimately sets you apart from the competition—fall by the wayside.

Home offices: high productivity, low commute.

Here are five easy ways to make sure that even when telecommuting, your business remains best in class.

1. Make face time
If the team never meets face-to-face, it might never see eye-to-eye. In order to succeed, everyone will need to be on the same page. Arrange meetings, go on retreats, or meet for dinner. Telecommuters who don’t get to see their supervisors and colleagues face-to-face may become isolated, or feel like they’re missing out on promotions or other opportunities.

2. Reinvest Savings
Telecommuters can cost as much as 70% less than conventional office staff. And they know it. Reinvest a portion of your savings back into your staff: bonuses, gifts, meal allowances, benefits, vacations, retreats, and more. When staff don’t feel recognized, morale can be low, and turnover can be high—either way, your corporate culture will suffer.

3. Use technology effectively
You could e-mail spreadsheets back and forth. You could also save them on a floppy disk and Fedex them to eachother. If that doesn’t sound appealing, why not use some easy and affordable software that makes collaboration and telecommuting easy? At TribeHR, we use Harvest, Basecamp, Google Apps, and of course, TribeHR.

4. Give everyone the option
It’s great to save office space by having new employees telecommute, but don’t forget about your loyal workhorses. If you don’t offer them the chance to telecommute, they might never ask for the opportunity. And if your most experienced staff feel ignored, you’re in big trouble.

5. Personal space in a shared office
Make sure that staff who are only on-site part-time still feel like they belong there. If you give them a secure place to keep their stuff, they’ll feel more invested in the company.

6. Brand your home offices
Because you can. Send corporate letterhead, pencils, business cards, and anything else you would have in a normal office (a mini fridge?). If your staff feel like they’re “at work,” you won’t have to fear that they’re not actually “doing work.”

Paul Baribeau writes for TribeHR, studies Knowledge Integration, and once considered a career as a pirate (it didn’t work out). TribeHR eliminates the big hassle of HR management for small and medium-sized businesses.

Several studies have demonstrated that a key way to reduce employee turnover is to increase employee engagement. According to a study conducted by the Corporate Leadership Council, an HR-focused membership program of the Corporate Executive Board, “increasing an employee’s level of engagement can potentially improve performance by 20 percent and reduce the employee’s probability of departure by 87%“¹.

Similarly, another case involving the United Parcel Service, shows a similar outcome. In an attempt to retain part-time workers, the firm used different methods to increase employee engagement. The result was very positive, as “part-time turnover had dropped to 6 percent.”² This equated to 600 worker staying and allowed the company to save $1 million in hiring costs over that year.

In short, don’t consider the Manpower report a harbinger of coming doom and gloom – there are things you can do to help retain your teams, and starting with engagement-building tools, like TribeHR of course, is a great first step.

¹ Corporate Executive Board, Tekrati Research. N.p., 11 Apr. 2007. Web. 23 Sept. 2010.
² Leigh Branham. “Planning to become an employer of choice.” Journal of Organizational Excellence. Web. 23 Sep. 2010.

The week kicked off with us being featured in BostInnovation’s Spreadable Startup series, but from there, we picked up a number of hits from interesting places including Killer Startups, FeedMyApp, Ziipa, WWWhatsNew and HiManagers.

All told, this coverage resulted in some interesting traffic results. As a Canadian startup, we’re used to seeing upwards of >70% of our traffic coming from Canadian locations, with the rest primarily stemming from the US.  The traffic over the last 7 days, however, looked more like this:

In this last week, Canadian traffic accounted for only 11% of our visitors. It’s worth noting, though, we didn’t see any reduction in Canadian traffic – rather, we saw an increase in international visitors. This global increase in traffic translated into a 15% upwards surge in the number of companies using TribeHR to manage their teams, including some interesting companies from India, Thailand and Africa.

Supporting that growth, we also quietly released a number of tweaks and changes to further streamline several of our features:

• Improved Email Notifications for Time Off Workflow
• Enhanced Templates for Job Sites
• Additional Performance Enhancements
• Several Minor Bugfixes

Additionally, we continue to make progress on our user interface redesign – we’ll be taking it to user testing and focus groups over the next few weeks. In the meantime, while we continue to refine the interface, here is another sneak preview of our new design:

Side note: if you didn’t see it before, you can also check out our earlier sneak preview.