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Friday Feature – Searching for an Account Using an Alias

SACS allows for up to 60 characters in an account. That’s a lot of characters. Now, I know, the account is broken down into components: fund, resource, object, etc., but still it does seem like too much to remember on a daily basis, especially if you have access to a lot of accounts, but really only manually enter a few.
For example, a Principal may have access to many accounts for oversight, but only use a handful of accounts for ordering supplies for the office. For those few accounts, the Principal could use account aliases or shortcuts that are only 6-digits long. (Account aliases are assigned internally by Escape Online.)

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Let’s see how this works.

Here is a screen capture of the Accounts list for the Principal. You can see that she has 1,212 accounts for her high school, but all she wants to do is order some toner for her printer using the highlighted account.

Instead of having to remember 010-4300-0000-0-0000-7700-160-D00-0450-0, all she has to is remember the alias, 112861.

She can use the alias throughout Escape Online: in reports, on the Account search, in the Account field in the Vendor Requisition, and more! Escape Online automatically knows the full SACS account!

Stay tuned for next week’s celebration of searching for accounts using everything we have learned in the series.

Friday Feature – Searching for a Range of Accounts

Escape Online provides you with five ways to make your account searches faster! That means that we are about half way through the series on searching for accounts. So far, we have discovered how to search for accounts with blank components, wildcards and commas (series). We still want to cover searching for a range, using aliases and then one last celebratory Friday Feature where we put it all together. Today, we will go over searching for a range of accounts. Let’s say that I only want to see the expense accounts for all my supplies for CAHSEE (California High School Exit Examination). Check it out.

Objects for Supply Expenses. The objects for expense accounts for supplies are in the range of 4300-4599. In Escape Online, all I have to enter is 43-45, using a dash (or two periods) to indicate a range.

Functions for CAHSEE. The functions that cover CAHSEE are in the range of 1100-1199. In Escape Online, all I have to enter is 11. Escape Online translates that as “begins with 11” so I don’t have to enter 1100-1199.

When I press GO, what I get is 162 accounts for the General fund for expenses for supplies for this year’s CAHSEE.

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Now, that’s some great productivity: a list of 162 accounts with only three quick entries.  Speaking of quick entry, next week, I will show you how to get one account FAST using an account alias.

Friday Feature – Searching for Accounts Using a Series

Over the last few weeks, you have seen how to search for accounts with blank components and using wildcards. Now, it is time to search for a series of accounts I want to review. Let’s say that I only want to see the benefit accounts for certificated management at the local high school. Seems complicated, but it is easy-squeezy using component lookups and the “series” capability. Check it out.

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With this search, I limited my results to only those accounts with the following attributes:

  • Certificated benefit account object – Separated by commas, I entered the four objects that are used for certificated benefit accounts: 3101, 3301, 3501, 3601.

  • Location – Using the lookup, I selected the local high school.

  • Bargaining Unit – Using the lookup, I selected the management bargaining unit.

And, the results are perfect!

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I get exactly the four accounts I want. I can see the total for each account and a grand total for the balances, encumbrances, expenses, adopted and revised amounts at the bottom of the list.  And, I can double-click on each account to produce a report listing all of the account’s activity for the fiscal year.

Friday Feature – Searching for Accounts Using Wildcards

Last week we talked about finding blank components, where you are looking for an account that doesn’t have anything (blank) in the component. Now, we are going to learn how to look for accounts where a component has some characters you care about and others you do not. Let’s say we want to look for benefit accounts for classified positions, but we don’t care if the positions are designated as PERS or STRS or OASDI. Let’s also say that our district uses the last digit of the object to designate the benefit account as classified or certificated. So, what we really want to look for is an account with an object that begins with 3 (for benefits) and ends with 2 (for classified) and we don’t care what is in between that 3 and 2.

Complicated? No, not with Escape Online. All we have to do is enter an asterisk for each character in the account component that isn’t relevant to our search criteria. We call this asterisk a wildcard and it works wherever you search for accounts. Check it out.

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As you can see, I entered a fund, a goal and a location, but for the object, I entered 3**2. When I hit GO, you can see that I only received a list of accounts that had an object that began with 3 and ended with 2, exactly what I wanted!

Have Your Substitutes Shown Up?

Gone are the days of simply calling up a substitute and considering the absence filled. Even if you use a substitute placement and absence management system to manage the scheduling side, how do you know if the substitute ever actually showed up for the job? How do you know if he or she was on time? How many hours has each substitute actually worked this month? How much time are they spending on district property? What buildings were they in, and can you prove it?

The answers to these questions are critical for vetting your payroll efficiency, your federal compliance and your campus security.

Here are just a few of the benefits of tracking your substitutes’ time and attendance

Tracking substitute time and attendance improves payroll accuracy.

Some districts are still paying their substitutes on a shift by shift or daily basis. That is, districts know a substitute has been assigned to a vacancy, so they pay that substitute a flat rate for that period, or even that whole day, regardless of how many hours the substitute actually worked. In fact, in a lot of cases, the district doesn’t know or have record of the exact number of hours worked.

Generally, this process works. The payroll office cuts checks, and substitutes are happy. But the amount paid is not reflective of the actual time substitutes are working. In some cases, the district may be underpaying or overpaying subs. Neither of these situations is ideal, and evaluating exactly how much you should be spending on substitutes becomes a lot more difficult.

By tracking the actual number of hours a substitute works with an automated time & attendance system, you’ll automatically gain access to exact, comprehensive reporting on the work history of each of your substitutes. You’ll know exactly how many hours they’ve worked, whether they were on time to their classroom, or whether they showed up for their absence at all. And best of all, you’ll know that you’re paying your substitutes accurately according to the hours they’ve worked.

Tracking substitute time and attendance improves FLSA and ACA compliance.

While we’re talking about knowing exactly how much time your substitutes are working, do you know how your current process holds up against evolving FLSA and ACA regulations?

First, are you not tracking substitute time because you’ve classified them as independent contractors instead of employees? Many districts have been hit with classification lawsuits because they assumed that their substitutes were independent contractors rather than employees, and subsequently did not track their hours and pay them accordingly.

Second, how are you managing your long-term substitutes? In these unique situations, overtime and benefits obviously become important costs to calculate.

Third, how are you planning to manage your substitutes’ hours in light of the Affordable Care Act? While 72% of school districts do have plans to track substitute hours for the ACA, 28% are still not tracking their substitutes’ hours. Others have decided to limit their substitutes to 16 days a month to guarantee that substitutes stay beneath the 130 hours-per-month limit. While this approach will work, it’s not the most practical in light of the current substitute shortage.

In all three of these situations, having detailed records of your substitutes’ actual time worked would tell you how you ought to be paying your substitutes. And combined with ACA tools and reporting, those records could prove to be invaluable in determining who needs benefits, and proving it if an auditor comes to your district.

Tracking substitute time and attendance improves campus security.

Accurate pay and compliance aren’t the only benefits from tracking substitute hours. Tracking the time and attendance of all the workers in your district — substitutes included — improves the security of everyone on campus. By having your workers clock in and out of their jobs, you’ll have a record of when they were on district property, and what buildings they were in. Records like this can go a long way in investigating and exonerating individuals if a theft or worse crime occurs.

So what about you? Have your substitutes shown up? Are you prepared to prove it? Comment below to tell us how your school district is managing substitute time and attendance this year.

Friday Feature – Recompute Salaries and the Affect Salaries Flag

Graduation day! We have reached the final blog of the Affect Salaries flag in Budget Management. Today we review the last Budget Perform Change option that uses the Affect Salaries flag. Over the course of the last month, we have reviewed all four of the options:

  • Percentage Adjustments
  • Load Salary Records
  • Load Vacancies
  • Recompute Salaries

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The Recompute Salaries option reads the salary schedule and recomputes salaries and vacancies. This is different from the Load Salary Records option in two ways. First, it does not reload position accounts. Second, it doesn’t “load” amounts from the Salary Schedule, instead it a computes the ratio between the Budget Amount and Salary Rate Amount in the Salary Schedule and scales existing salary and vacancy budget lines based on the ratio. (Very smart. Move to the head of the class!)

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Once again, we are going to repeat the same screen shot from Load Salaries and Load Vacancies so you can follow along.

Apply Salary Schedule Budget Amounts to Actuals Only – Using the screen shot, the actual salary budget lines (including subject grosses and benefits) will be recomputed using the ratio of $111,848.00/$114,248.00. (Remember, “actual” means salaries that were “locked in” when they were loaded or imported/entered as actual.) Also, since we are only affecting actuals, projections will not be recomputed.

Apply Salary Schedule Budget Amounts to Both Actuals and Projections – This is the same as above only it is going to also recompute salary projections and vacancy budget line items. (Remember, “projections” are salaries that were “open” when they were loaded or imported/entered as projections.)

Apply Salary Schedule Cell Amounts to Both Actuals and Projections – This would recompute all salary and vacancy budget lines using the Salary Rate.

Apply Salary Schedule Budget Amounts to Projections Only – This is going to leave those actual budget items alone, but recompute projections using the Budget Amount. Again, since we are only affecting projections, actuals will not be recomputed.

Now, that’s some A+ budget changes.

Of course, you are a star student so you remembered that regardless of your choice, benefit account/amounts will be recomputed, and benefit accounts will be created, if they do not already exist and if it is appropriate (as defined on the Ledger tab of the Organization record). And, you get extra credit if you already knew that recomputing salaries does not affect manual items.

And that’s it for our series on the Affect Salaries flag. Congratulations graduate!

Hiring to the Test: Ensuring Fairness in the Teacher Selection Process

This post originally appeared on EducationWeek, K-12 Talent Manager Blog by Emily Douglas-McNab on November 4, 2014. Reprinted with permission of the author.

Many school districts I speak with across the country are examining how they recruit and hire great educators and other staff. I think this is positive as having a great recruiting and teacher selection process can ensure your organization is looking for new candidates in the right places and using the right measures to select the best person for the job!

As part of these conversations, many districts have mentioned creating their own selection “test” that asks new hires a series of questions, and then the district would use the results as one measure to inform hiring. There are also many vendors who offer such tests. It sounds like a great idea…and one that could be done for relatively low cost, right? Not always.

If districts are considering the use of selection tests, they should be concerned about disparate impact.

What is disparate impact?

Disparate impact is a term that HR people, employment law attorneys, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) use to describe when an employer uses tests and other measures to choose job applicants, and then “disproportionately excludes people in a particular group by race, sex, or another covered basis, unless the employer can justify the test or procedure under the law.”

The Law

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA); the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967; and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 all note the use of discriminatory employment tests and selection procedures as illegal. According to the EEOC, selection measures could include but are not limited to, physical ability tests that measure strength or stamina; cognitive tests assessing math or reading comprehension, memory, reasoning, or the knowledge of a particular job or function; sample job tasks such as work samples or performance testing; personality and integrity tests measuring certain dispositions; credit checks; English proficiency exams; medical examinations such as psychological tests or assessments of physical health; and/or criminal background checks.

When it comes to tests, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act allows employers to ‘test’ candidates as long as the test is NOT “designed, intended, or used to discriminate because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” (42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(h)) Title VII also places restrictions on altering or adjusting scores as well as having moving cut-off scores for different groups of applicants. (42 U.S.C. §2000e-2(l))

Disparate Treatment vs. Disparate Impact

Title VII prohibits both “disparate treatment” and “disparate impact” discrimination. The difference between the two is that one is intentional discrimination (disparate treatment) and the other occurs as an effect of testing.

According to the EEOC, disparate treatment cases typically involve evidence of bias such as discriminatory statements or people being openly treated differently due to their race, color, religion, or national origin. Further, an example scenario given by the EEOC on an employment facts sheet shows how this might look in reality. “Title VII forbids a covered employer from testing the reading ability of African American applicants or employees but not testing the reading ability of their white counterparts.” While an example, this was taken from a real court case of disparate treatment, Griggs v. Duke Power Company (1970).

Disparate impact is different from treatment. The EEOC notes that, “Title VII also prohibits employers from using neutral tests or selection procedures that have the effect of disproportionately excluding persons based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, where the tests or selection procedures are not “job-related and consistent with business necessity.”” An example scenario would be that an organization requires that all applicants pass a strength test and the result is that all women are disproportionately screened out. While an example, this is the situation behind the disparate impact case EEOC v. Dial Corp.

How do you know if your selection measures disparately impact a particular group? A statistical analysis! (And they say HR people don’t “do” math… psh!)

The Bottom Line

Candidate Lessons

As a job candidate, asking bluntly if a selection test or question is “illegal” may put you on the employer’s do-not-call list (which, sadly, happens every day). Rather, if you are uncomfortable with a specific test, I suggest asking in a calm, cool, collected, and professional manner how it aligns to the job and how it is consistent with business necessity.

Employer Lessons

If you’re buying a test, be cautious and do your homework (just because others around you are buying a tool doesn’t mean you have to as well). It never hurts to check with your legal counsel. Further, ask the vendor for information on EEOC disparate impact. If they are unwilling to provide such information, or do not know what you are talking about, you should have a conversation with other leaders in the organization, including legal counsel, to decide the best course of action.

One vendor that develops selection tests for teacher candidates provides an EEOC Four-Fifths Report. It notes that:

According to the EEOC Four-Fifths rule, “A selection rate for any race, sex, or ethnic group which is less than four-fifths of the rate for the group with the highest rate will generally be regarded by federal enforcement agencies as evidence of adverse impact. The percent of applicants scoring at 72% or higher between each subgroup pair in the overall database is within the four-fifths guidelines; thus, the classification system indicates no disparate results.”

This is FANTASTIC and exactly what any organization should be looking for when considering a selection test. It also never hurts to collect your own data to ensure that the reports are accurate. If you’re creating a selection test, be cautious, do your homework, check with your legal counsel, and collect the appropriate data to ensure you’re not disparately impacting a group of individuals. Run the test yourself, and then check again with your legal counsel.

The bottom line as a K-12 Talent Manager is that if your organization is considering a selection test from a vendor or designing one in house, be very careful and do your due diligence, as one misstep could be very costly. Note: This blog does not serve as legal advice. If you still have questions about disparate impact or treatment, contact your HR department. If you are in the HR department and have questions, call your district legal counsel for advice.

Friday Feature – Load Vacancies and Affect Salaries Flag

As we continue on our journey to discover the flexibility of the Affect Salaries flag when loading budget amounts, we come to the Load Vacancies perform-change option. (As you will remember, we have already covered the Percentage Adjustment and Load Salary Records from HR perform-changes options.)
The Load Vacancies option reads all of the positions, searching for periods of vacancy. It then calculates a monthly amount based on a daily rate using salary schedules for the fiscal year, taking into consideration any mid-year salary schedule changes. And, it lets you define a “vacancy date” if you want to load vacancies for particular pay periods. Nice!

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Just like the Load Salary option that we discussed last week, this option is going to look to the Salary Schedule and apply the column you select to the vacancies that match your criteria in the budget model. Unlike the Load Salaries option, we are dealing with positions that are not being paid (thus a vacancy), so you are not going to have four options, distinguishing between paid amounts and projections, you are only going to have two options, because vacancies are always projections.

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What you see here is the same screen shot we saw for Load Salaries. It is the Salary Schedule, and what you need to decide is which column you want to use.

Do Not Apply Budget Amounts in Salary Schedule – Use the salary rate columns from the salary schedule record.

Apply Salary Schedule to Projections Only – Use the budget amount columns from the salary schedule record.

Pretty smart! But, Escape Online doesn’t stop there. It knows which budget accounts have line items for vacancies that you have loaded previously. For example, in February, you load the Salary Rate, but in April, you find that there are going to be salary schedule changes so you want to load the Budget Amount.

When you run the Load Vacancies the second time and set the Affect Salaries flag to Apply Salary Schedule to Projections Only, all of the vacancies that you previously loaded will be modified to use the new Budget Amount! Of course, Escape Online will not change any vacancy amounts that you entered manually. But, it will recompute benefits and add any benefit accounts that don’t already exist (if you are set up to do that).

Brilliant!

Friday Feature – Load Salary Records into Budget from HR

As we continue on our journey through budget creation, we come to one of the most famous features of Escape Online: the integration between position control, salaries and budget. Perhaps you have just created a budget model (they are unlimited BTW) to model a given set of contribution amounts. The Load Salary Records from HR task reads all of the positions and runs through a payroll calculation. All appropriate employer contributions are calculated based on the model’s contribution amounts. Really! One task does all of that!
But, wait there’s more!

Budget masters get options on how to load those salaries with the genius of the Affect Salaries flag. What makes this option different from the Percentage Adjustment is that it is looking at a specific field in the setup records. You get to decide. Do you want to use the figures that are currently in place or do you want to use “budget” figures that you have entered? This is especially helpful when you are working on two fiscal year budgets (this year and next). The Affect Salaries flag gives you the ability to budget for the next year using Budget cell amounts and to budget for the revised using the actual amounts. Check it out.

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See how both the Salary Schedule and the Benefit Provider have fields for the “current” rate and a “budget” rate.

For loading salary records, the options for the Affect Salaries flag let you define which amounts in the respective records you are going to use.

Apply Salary Schedule and Benefit Provider Budget Amounts to Actuals Only – Using our example, this would load $114,248.00 and $1,050.27 for actual budget items. (Remember, “actual” means salaries that were “locked in” when they were loaded or imported/entered as actual.)

Apply Salary Schedule and Benefit Provider Budget Amounts to Both Actuals and Projections – This is the same as above only it is going to load the figures into projections, too. (Remember, “projections” are salaries that were “open” when they were loaded or imported/entered as projections.)

Do Not Apply Budget Amounts in Salary Schedule and Benefit Providers – This is going to use the “real” rates ($111,848.00 and $940.59) for actual and projection budget items.

Apply Salary Schedule and Benefit Provider Budget Amounts to Projections Only – This is going to leave those actual amounts alone and only load the “budget” rates into projections. This means that if you had any adjustments during pay, those will be honored in the budget. This is the default.

Regardless of your choice, budget salary items previously loaded from HR or copied from another model will be replaced. (Manual items will not be replaced.) And, benefit account/amounts will be recomputed, and benefit accounts will be created, if they do not already exist and if it is appropriate (as defined on the Ledger tab of the Organization record).

No matter how you want to finesse your budget, the Affect Salaries flag gives you the options you need for the type of change you are making.

Stay tuned for next week’s look at how this flag works with vacancies!

Friday Feature – Percentage Adjustments to Budget Line Items

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Friday the 13th is not a “bad luck” day.  It’s a budget day! As you remember, last week I touched upon the Perform Change task and how it worked with the Replace Budget Items flag. Over the next few weeks, I am going to dive into the Affect Salaries flag, which provides you with options on which type of salary items you want to affect (salaries, vacancies, manual entries) and what source (actual or projection).
As we discussed last week, you can make mass changes to your budget in the Budget Management activity using the Perform change task. There are over a dozen tasks, each with their own purpose and flags for changing your budget in just the right way.

Four of the Perform Change tasks (Percentage Adjustment, Load Salaries, Load Vacancies and Recompute Salaries) support the Affect Salaries flag. I am going to cover each task, one per week, describing how the flag affects the individual budget line items.

First up is the Percentage Adjustment change, which adjusts selected budget accounts by a percentage (negative or positive!). Customers use this type of change during bargaining unit (BU) negotiations to try out different scenarios. (And, of course, when negotiations are over and you have a final percent adjustment!)

There are four options for the Affect Salaries flag in the Percentage Adjustment change:

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Actuals Only – You might want to use this when the BU is talking about a one-time retro. This option will affect only salaries that were locked in before they were loaded into budget.*

Both Actuals and Projections – You might want to use this when the negotiations include a retro and future salaries. This is going to affect all budget items (salaries and vacancies), regardless of source (locked in or not!).

Projections Only – You might want to use this option if the retro is off the table and only future salaries will be affected. In other words, any salaries that have been locked in will not be affected, but “open” salaries and vacancies will be.

Do Not Affect Salaries – You might want to use this when you are completely blue-skying these negotiations and you are only concerned about benefits. You haven’t loaded salaries or any other amounts. All you have done is key in or import some dollar amounts for a handful of benefit accounts. This option is only going to affect those items.

The best part about performing this change? There is no good luck or bad luck.  There is only you, doing your job, using Escape Online to create a budget. Heck, you know what you’re doing and Escape Online helps you by automatically recomputing benefit accounts/amounts, even creating those accounts, if they do not already exist (and you are setup to automatically create accounts as defined on the Ledger tab of the Organization record).

* Escape Online also supports importing and hand-entering manual salary and benefit items that can be defined as actual.

Friday Feature – Replace Budget Items

It is February and the time has come to buy flowers for your favorite budgeting person. What?! Yes, the crunch is on for creating next year’s budget and those budgeting gurus need a little extra love.
While Escape Online is not a love machine, it can make your February lovelier by loading salaries (including step/column changes) and benefits from HR/Payroll, loading actuals/revised account amounts from Finance, and importing account amounts from your spreadsheets. In fact, Escape Online supports over a dozen ways to load amounts into your budget, the majority of them conducted through the “Perform Change” task. Over the next few weeks, we will review some of the more advanced “Perform Change” features to help your budget bloom.

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First up is the Replace Budget flag. This is a sweetheart of a feature, applying to importing and copying (change types 5-9).

It allows you to define how budget item records will be affected by the change!

Let’s say that Special Education entered their own budget figures and you want to apply those to a “master budget.” Let’s see how the three options might work.

Do Not Replace – Items in the selected component range from the source model are appended to the current model. No budget line items are deleted from the current model.

This means that whatever budget account line items the Special Education Department added will be added to your already existing items. So if they have one manual salary line item for account #123456 and you already have two line items for that account (one salary and one manual salary), after the change, you will have three line items (one salary and two manual salary).

Replace All Item Types – Items in the selected component range are deleted from the current model and items from the source are added.

Let’s continue with our example. After the change, you will have one item, the one from the Special Education Department’s budget. Your original two items for account #123456 are deleted.

Replace Same Item Types – Only items with the same type and component range are replaced. Accounts that do not have activity in the source will not affect the current model. In other words, budget accounts in the source that do not have line items will not force the deletion of budget line items in the matching budget accounts in the current model. However, zero amounts will replace items in the current model if the type matches.

One more time with our example. After the change, you will have one salary line item (from your original) and one manual salary (from the Special Education Department). In other words, the manual salary item from your original was replaced by the Special Education Department’s because it was the same item type for the same account.

Now, that’s a powerful flag, definitely a sweetheart of a feature!

5 Ways to Support a Legally Defensible K-12 Teacher Hiring Process

We all want the best candidates filling vacancies in our school systems. Regardless of the position we are looking to fill, be it a classroom teacher, a superintendent or a bus driver, we want the person who will outperform our expectations and make our school community a better place.

Although we will move mountains in search of the best candidate, we must be mindful that we do so in a manner that is legally defensible. Meaning, our desire to have the “best” person cannot be more important than our obligation to adhere to a fair hiring process in the eyes of the law.

Here are some important practices to keep in mind for maintaining and defending a fair hiring process.

1. Advertise vacancies to a wide range of candidates

Part of supporting a fair hiring process is offering jobs to a diverse range of candidates – and being able to prove that you did so.

Many districts are uncovering new ways to attract more candidates, including using popular K-12 job boards and social media tools. K12JobSpot.com is a popular job board for educational positions, with more than 12 million visits to the website last year. Other popular job boards include EdWeek’s TopSchoolJobs.com, Indeed.com, SimplyHired.com and Teach.org.

Districts are also expanding the reach of their open positions by posting them on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

While these efforts can be time-consuming, some web-based recruiting tools integrate with these outlets, allowing you to easily reach a broad audience and prove that you’ve done so.

2. Develop objective and compliant hiring criteria

To support a legally defensible hiring process, you need to remove as much subjectivity as possible. For example, do you know if all your principals are using the same interview questions? Discrepancies like this could cause questionable inconsistencies in your hiring process.

First of all, establish a library of uniform and compliant job descriptions. In building these descriptions, make sure that each description adheres to FLSA, FMLA, and ADA regulations. As descriptions are updated, you will want to share these with your entire hiring team, so everyone has the same version. Some applicant tracking systems come with a pre-built library of compliant K-12 job descriptions to make this process easier.

Second, you will want to use a consistent set of objective criteria for filtering through applicants. You can compile your own criteria or use an existing applicant screening tool. An electronic applicant recruiting system will then allow you to filter through large volumes of applications based on objective criteria (i.e. academic credentials, years of experience) versus race, gender or order of application.

Third, ensure all your hiring team members are using consistent interview questions. Providing a list of approved and compliant questions that all members use will help eliminate bias in the interview process and prevent claims of discrimination.

3. Maintain a communication audit trail

Keeping a record of all communication that took place during the interview process will help your district defend your hiring process if an applicant files a complaint against your district.

While you probably have record of all your email communication, consider also documenting interactions over the phone and in person. Finding an applicant tracking system that includes an electronic communication log makes this documentation much simpler.

4. Protect sensitive information

Including a large number of people in the interview process aids in unbiased evaluation of candidates. However, it can also increase the risk of sensitive data getting in front of the wrong people and even leaking outside your district. Documenting sensitive information on paper poses a higher risk than using online systems, where you can control individual permissions and encrypt data.

5. Report on employee diversity

You know how challenging it is to comply with EEOC and the variety of other requirements to ensure fair hiring. However, documenting your due diligence in these areas is crucial to avoiding potential compliance violations.

Web-based reporting tools, whether canned reports or an ad-hoc reporting tool, will make it easier to see the story behind your recruiting and hiring efforts.

Hiring great candidates for your district should always be your first priority. But protecting against legal infringements — or even the appearance of them — makes that task far more difficult. Proactively taking these steps to ensure that your hiring process is fair and defensible will give you the time and peace of mind necessary to freely recruit the very best for your district and the students for whom you are responsible.