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Take that, Facebook! Apple Paying Employees $180K in Order to Retain Them

Several engineers at Apple Inc. have received unusually large stock incentives in an attempt to keep them from leaving for tech competitors, including Meta Platforms Inc. Apple Inc. has granted unusually large stock awards to select engineers in an order to preserve talent.

According to persons with understanding of the incident, the corporation told selected engineers in the semiconductor design, equipment, and selective programming and operational departments about the out-of-cycle incentives, which are being awarded as share capital, last week. It takes four years for the shares to vest, offering an incentive to remain with the iPhone manufacturer.

People who got the bonuses were surprised by their size, which varied from around $50,000 to as much as $180,000 in certain circumstances, according to participants who got them. A large number of the technicians earned stock awards in the range of $80,000, $100,000, or $120,000, according to the person, who requested not to be named since the program isn't publicly available. The perk was introduced by supervisors as a way to recognize and reward top workers.

According to a spokesman from the Cupertino, California-based corporation, no more comment will be provided.

Apple is engaged in a talent competition with startups based in Silicon Valley and abroad, with Meta surfacing as a significant source of concern. Despite the fact that Meta has attracted over 100 engineers from Apple in the previous several months, it has not been a one-way road: Apple has also tempted away important Meta personnel.

As augmented- and virtual-reality helmets and wearables grow more popular, the two businesses are expected to become intense competitors, with both firms anticipating big hardware launches within the next two years.

The distributions do not form part of Apple's standard pay levels, which comprise a basic salary, stock shares, and a salary increase in addition to other benefits. Apple sometimes provides supplemental cash incentives to workers, but the magnitude and timing of the most recent stock allocations were out of the ordinary, according to the individuals familiar with the matter. They were distributed to around 10 percent to 20 percent of the experts in the relevant divisions.

Some engineers have expressed dissatisfaction with the bonus scheme since they did not get the shares and felt the selection procedure was unfair. Certain of the incentives were worth as much as the yearly stock grant granted to some employees to work efficiently, therefore the bonuses were a good investment. And if Apple's stock price keeps growing, the value of these investments will rise as well.

The stock has gained 36 percent so far this year, bringing the company's market valuation to over $3 trillion (US dollars). While Apple continues to invest heavily in virtual reality, machine intelligence, code, and systems design, Meta has ramped up its attempts to recruit engineers from Apple's respective departments. A hefty wage increase has been offered by the social media behemoth, which runs Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, in order to concentrate the company's efforts on hardware and the emerging metaverse.

Other sectors, such as Apple's self-driving vehicle team, have been affected by the exodus of personnel. In order to continue working on various next-generation technologies, including the vehicle, VR and AR headgear, and future iterations of the iPhone, the company must retain its technical proficiency.

Some Apple workers have been thrown off by the company's relentless drumming to come to the workplace. This has resulted in an exodus from the company. Despite the fact that the firm has extended its deadlines for returning employees, it is adopting a more conservative approach to in-person employment than most of its technological counterparts.

Apple has said that it wants corporate employees to function in the physical company at least 3 days each week, whereas hardware specialists will be expected to perform four or five days each week, depending on their position. Meta and other corporations want to be less stringent in their policy enforcement.

Apple, however, also confirmed last month that employees would most likely remain in their houses for the near term. Following the cancellation of its return-to-workplace timetable, Apple said that it will provide $1,000 incentives to all executive, sales, and technical-support workers, allowing them to spend the money on home-improvement items.

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Nexxt data helps support times are ripe for poaching.

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So, What the Hell is "QuitTok'ing"?

In November of 2021, the US labor market broke a record. 4.5 million Americans, or 3% of the labor force, quit their jobs. It was the highest rate of resignation since the Department of Labor began tracking the statistic in 2001. Analysts and pundits were quick to name the trend the Great Resignation.

Economists say that a high resignation rate is a good thing. It means employers are hiring. Most employees who quit either have a job lined up or believe they can get one in fairly short order. In other words, people have confidence in the economy.

On a smaller scale, even employers who find themselves temporarily short-staffed when an employee resigns should have relatively little trouble finding a replacement. After all, the country is full of qualified people who recently quit their jobs.

However, this is cold comfort for employers who are having trouble holding onto employees. A short-staffed workplace is inefficient, as is a workplace that's training new employees. Hiring specialists believe that the cost to replace an employee is 33% of that employee's annual salary. And that's only if the employee quits on good terms. What if you have a worker who quits a little more gleefully?

QuitTok'ing

Picture this: you're an HR manager for the small business XYCorp. One day, a clerk comes in and hands you a resignation letter. You accept it, talk him through how to shut down his company email account, and call his manager to tell him that he has to reassign some jobs.

The next day, as you're writing a job posting for his old position, you get an email from a friend with the subject line "Don't you work there?" You open it and find a video of your former co-worker sitting in his cubicle and beaming as a peppy pop song plays. "I'm about to quit the worst job I've ever had in my life," he says. "Please, if you value your sanity, never work for XYCorp." It was shared on the short video service TikTok and has two million views. You close the job posting you were writing.

As resignations rise, so do viral social media posts about them. Dedicated sites like GlassDoor have long been a way for ex-employees to warn jobseekers directly, but lately, posts on social forums like Reddit and Twitter have reached much further.

TikTok is a particular favorite for this type of post, with so-called QuitTok videos garnering hundreds of millions of views. These posts are seen not only by jobseekers, but also by potential customers.

What does a QuitTok mean for a company's brand reputation?

Staying on the internet's good side

Fortunately, keeping yourself from becoming Twitter's villain of the day can be as simple as applying the employee retention strategies every good manager knows. Some of the reasons why employees are quitting their jobs in the 2020s are unique to this point in history.

A recent survey by CareerPlug showed that 13% of people who are thinking about quitting are doing so because they don't feel safe from COVID. Keeping an employee could be as simple as providing better masks in the workplace, granting more paid sick leave, or offering the option to work from home.

However, most of the reasons why people want to quit are the same reasons why people have always wanted to quit. Low pay is still the number one concern, followed by insufficient benefits. Remember that health insurance is a top-of-mind concern in the pandemic era.

The third-place reason, tied with COVID safety concerns, is scheduling. Bear that in mind the next time an employee requests a shift change.

It's no secret that employees get excited about switching jobs, and everyone has had a job that they fantasize about quitting. Now, in the age of social media, those moments of celebration can go viral.

But it's every manager's job to work to keep experienced employees on their side, so that they don't wind up as social media villains. For up-to-date tips on employee retention, or for help filling a vacancy, contact us.

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Time to Start Poaching Truck Drivers from Walmart?

Don’t look now, but self-driving trucks may be coming sooner than you think. Walmart and Silicon Valley-based Gatik, a company that specializes in autonomous trucking, are operating two autonomous delivery trucks in Arkansas without a backup safety driver (let me say that again, no backup driver).

The two Gatik box trucks are shuttling goods for 12 hours a day along a 7-mile loop between a Walmart fulfillment center and a Walmart Neighborhood Market. It's the first time a self-driving truck company has removed a safety driver from a commercial delivery route between a warehouse and a store.

The program began last December after approval from the Arkansas State Highway Commission. The backup driver was removed from the route in August. Gatik, which specializes in B2B short-haul logistics, claims a 100% safety record across its operations in Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, and Ontario, Canada.

Walmart also aims to begin AV deliveries along a 20-mile route between New Orleans and Metairie, Louisiana, in early 2022. When Walmart might expand the use of Gatik vehicles was left unsaid. But the company has invested in several self-driving vehicle projects over the years with the goal of using autonomous cars to help deliver customer orders.

When you think about the number of employers who rely on truck drivers, and the number of products and services that support hiring, the impact on a self-driving world would be huge. And rising wages, higher costs and logistical challenges, some brought on by the pandemic, only seem to be expediting this future.

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is a Poaching Prodigy

Police officers who risk getting fired for failing to either get vaccinated or disclose their COVID-19 vaccination status, have an opportunity to work in Florida under Gov. Ron Desantis' new cop recruitment move.

He hopes to sign legislation that gives disgruntled and unhappy cops from outside states a $5,000 signing bonus, as an incentive to join the Lakeland Police Department. "If you're not being treated well, we'll treat you better here, you can fill important needs for us," the governor said.

"We're, if truth be told, actively operating to recruit out-of-state regulation enforcement as a result of we do have wishes," the Republican governor said in a previous interview. "So in our subsequent legislative consultation, I'm going to optimistically signal law that provides an advantage to any out-of-state regulation enforcement that relocates in Florida."

This follows President Joe Biden's announcement of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) new federal law, mandating all large employers to have their staff vaccinated.

Targeted states include New York, Minneapolis, and Seattle, where city workers, including police officers, firefighters, and nurses have been mandated to get the COVID-19 vaccine or face mandatory unpaid leave. Several police unions have challenged this directive, including Seattle, Chicago and Baltimore.

Chicago Mayor, Lori Lightfoot may be facing a court battle with the Fraternal Order of Police over the enforcement of this legislation. Los Angeles police chief Michel Moore said that the antibodies provided by the vaccines will save the city officials' lives and those of their families. "We want to make sure they're educated, we want to make sure they're following the science," Moore said. "Ultimately, the vaccine mandate that the city is imposing on all of its employees, I think it will help."

In Los Angeles, unvaccinated city staff without the proper exemption documents must be vaccinated or lose their jobs by December 18th. About 70% of the Los Angeles Police Department has been vaccinated.

Gov. Desantis claims in several interviews that mandated vaccination is unconstitutional, and whether or not an individual should get the jab should be left as a personal decision.

"It will wreak havoc on the economy, because even if a small percentage of these folks end up losing their jobs or voluntarily walking away, you're going to have huge disruption in medical, in logistics, in law enforcement'" the governor said. "And so, in Florida, our policy is very clear: We're going to have a special session, and we're going to say nobody should lose their job based off these injections," he added.

Desantis extended this offer to other essential workers, including nurses. In his words, he said, "These people we've been hailing as heroes, the nurses we've said have been heroes, this whole time, they've been working day in and day out," he said. "They couldn't do their job on Zoom. They had to be there and they did it, and they did it with honor and integrity. Now you have people that want to kick them out of their job over this shot, which is basically a personal decision."

Desantis, however, states that his recent police recruitment move is not meant as a cop poaching exercise, but to fill the much needed posts in the Lakeland Police Department. "It will be available to anyone who comes. If people are saying it's a vaccine issue, it's not. It has nothing to do with that," he said, after an economic event in Venice.

Governor Desantis isn't the first leader to attempt this exercise. Recently, Indiana senator Mike Braun also invited Chicago law enforcement officers who don't wish to get vaccinated, to work in his state. "Come on in to Indiana, we are a state of choice and free enterprise," He told Fox News in an interview. "You'll have choices individually."

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Meltdown at Apple

At Poach, we regularly check sentiment at popular companies, and there's a shortlist of those where sentiment is almost always positive.

Apple is one such company. However, the current state of Apple is a bit messy, and offers a unique opportunity to poach their people.

Checkout the summary below:

Why the crash?

Paying customers know. If you haven't subscribed to Poach, I encourage you to give us a test drive for 14 days, risk free. After that, packages start at just $199.

[poachai]

Welcome to the Golden Age of Poaching Talent

One-hundred percent work-from-home (WFH). Hybrid models. Get your butt back to work ... now! Get the vaccine or get fired. Wait, we'll give you cash rewards and prizes for getting the vaccine.

The pandemic has made quite a mess of the world of work. Employees seem to feel equal parts empowered and mentally challenged. Companies are faced with tough choices, and there are no easy answers.

According to a recent Qualtrics survey, about 44 percent of workers said that they would consider leaving their jobs if forced to get a shot. In contrast, around 38 percent of workers would consider leaving their current employer if the organization did not enact a vaccine mandate.

So what's an employer to do? Here's a snapshot.

CVS Health will require "patient-facing employees" and its corporate staff to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 31.

Chevron announced Monday it is requiring some of its workers to be vaccinated.

Following a mandate for its salaried and non-union employees, Disney now requires its unionized employees at Walt Disney World to be fully vaccinated by October 22.

Goldman Sachs said starting Sept. 7, staff and clients must be fully vaccinated to enter its U.S. buildings. Morgan Stanley and Citigroup have also made similar announcements mandating COVID-19 vaccines.

Delta Air Lines is raising health insurance premiums for unvaccinated employees by $200 a month to cover higher Covid costs.

The numbers are ugly. Managers, Gen Z workers, and tech and travel professionals are the most likely people to be actively looking for a new job, according to the Qualtrics report. Over 40 percent of the 1,025 people surveyed said they will be job hunting in the next 12 months.

Directors, managers and executives are more likely to be looking for a new job with more than 50% of each group planning to start a job search. Only 37% of individual contributors are planning to find something new.

Sixty percent of employees say they received no professional development and training last year, and 64% said they were offered no networking or mentoring opportunities. Seventy-two percent of women said they received no networking or mentoring opportunities.

Translation: There's never been a better time to poach employees from the competition.

Let's take tech. Both Google and Apple have been wishy-washy at best on their back-to-work policies, so it's no surprise that competitors like Twitter, Shopify and Facebook have announced WFH forever strategies, which will likely get the attention of workers whose employers want them back in the office. Of course, for workers who want more real world experience and mentorship, WFH companies might be less appealing.

The trend toward diversity and inclusion play into the poaching gold rush as well. Google was recently outed for having a salary calculator, where workers in some suburban areas could see a 25 percent cut in salary.

Ouch! Think there's some people at Google who might suddenly be interested in some new opportunities? You bet. And savvy recruiters who realize chaos breeds opportunity are jumping in headfirst.

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ZipRecruiter Takes Aim at Glassdoor, Indeed With New Partnership

Since its IPO in May, ZipRecruiter has been on a tear.

And now they're taking aim at Indeed's and Glassdoor's hegemony in employee reviews by partnering with startup Comparably. The partnerships means new information to Zip's employer pages, including anonymous employee reviews and salary information.

“ZipRecruiter is committed to making the job search process as transparent as possible as we connect job seekers to their next great opportunity,” ZipRecruiter CEO and co-founder Ian Siegel wrote in a statement. “Giving job seekers more information leads to better decisions, stronger job matches, happier employees and employers, and a better functioning market overall.”

Founded in 2016, Comparably has raised $13.8 million in investment, and in April, the Southern California-based company boasted a database of 10 million ratings from employees across 60,000 North American companies.

ZipRecruiter needs inroads into enterprise companies, and review data is a nice way to start the conversation. As the No. 2 job site in the U.S., they need some competing content. If things go right, it should lead to a nice exit for Comparably, who is still a fraction of Glassdoor and Indeed employee review content, but does a good job of the smoke-and-mirrors thanks to charts and graphs.

There's no guarantee of success, of course, and I doubt Glassdoor is shaking in its boots just yet. Remember Monster partnered with employee review site Kununu a few years ago to provide employee reviews to the aging job board, but the partnership has been discontinued.

I'm guessing ZipRecruiter - and most definitely Comparably, and their investors - are hoping history doesn't repeat itself.

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Inside Biden's War on Non-Competes

Many businesses require employees to sign non-compete agreements...and not just highly paid executives

A traditional non-compete agreement is a contract that is designed to protect corporate interests. It bars the employee from working for a competitor for a certain amount of time in a certain geographical area.

So, is Biden about to ban non-compete agreements at the federal level?

The Current Situation

Currently, restrictions on non-compete agreements exist at the state level and can be extremely varied. For example, in January, the District of Columbia enacted sweeping legislation, the Ban on Non-Compete Agreements Amendment Act of 2020.

This law, similar to broad bans in California, North Dakota, and Oklahoma,  bans both in-term and post-employment non-competes after the acts effective date on March 19. In most states, non-competes are legal with some restrictions.

For example, many states limit the period of a post-employment non-compete to two years, and it's common to have a rule which says that "undue hardship" must not be placed on the employee. Some states have no restrictions whatsoever.

While non-competes are great for employers, they can be terrible for employees. An employee who leaves their job may be forced to relocate to another part of the country to get work in their field.

They've been applied in the past to low wage workers and to construction workers; many people affected are unable to go without work for the extended periods required. Courts have typically sided with employees when non-competes are overly broad.

Does Biden's Executive Order Ban Non-Compete Agreements?

So, Biden is expected to issue an executive order that addresses non-compete agreements in the near future. However, he can't just ban them right away.

Instead, the executive order calls on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to adopt rules limiting non-compete agreements. The FTC has been discussing whether they have the authority to do so. The order itself does not ban or limit non-compete agreements and does not invalidate any agreements.

That does, however, appear to be the goal.

Companies that use these kinds of agreements should audit them to make sure that they are limited properly in duration, geographical location, and industry. They should make sure that they abide by state law and are ready to move with alternatives should a ban on non-competes become law.

It is fairly likely that the FTC will take some action on this, but it's unclear how much authority they have and what rules they might be able to put in place.

It might well be that the courts will rule that the FTC can't take this action and the ball will have to pass to a somewhat divided Congress.

That said, it's still important to make sure that any non-compete and non-solicitation agreements you have in place are solid and place no more restrictions on employees and former employees than are strictly necessary.

How Would a Change Impact Employers?

An actual federal ban on non-compete agreements would result in employers having to be more competitive and focus on retaining employees. Non-compete agreements, after all, only become an issue when employees leave. In fact, non-competes are already starting to fall out of favor, especially as the courts tend to be hostile to them.

Companies should also consider alternatives. A simple non-disclosure agreement to protect trade secrets may, in fact, turn out to be sufficient, and places less hardship on the employee.

Another alternative for certain employees might be garden leave, which is typically used only with senior executives. Garden leave restricts the employee from taking on another job for a period of time, but the employee still receives their salary and benefits during that period. Basically, it's a way of doing a non-compete without creating hardship.

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CareerBuilder's Comeback Playbook

Apollo Global Management recently dropped $5 billion for Verizon's media unit, which includes Yahoo, AOL, TechCrunch, Ryot, Built By Girls, and Furry. Surprisingly, Yahoo is the fourth most-trafficked website in the world. Fourth!

Yahoo's new sugar daddy also owns who? CareerBuilder.

You see where I'm going here.

If you assume Apollo is smart enough to start throwing CareerBuilder's content into all these destination sites, then you start imagining a legitimate second act for a job board many - including me - had written off for dead.

Simply putting CareerBuilder's job content into organic search results on Yahoo, a la Google for Jobs or Bing throwing in LinkedIn job content, for employment-related searches would be huge. Methinks you'll see a new Jobs tab on Yahoo by the end of the year that features CareerBuilder jobs exclusively.

I'll be watching this potential synergy unfold with great interest; Indeed, Glassdoor and ZipRecruiter should be doing the same.

Don't call it a comeback! OK, yeah, you can definitely call it a comeback (if it actually happens).

It has to happen, right?

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4 Reasons to Hate the ZipRecruiter IPO

In case you missed it, after much speculation by yours truly, ZipRecruiter finally filed to go public. Through a direct listing on the NYSE, the L.A.-based company that launched in 2010 and has raised over $200 million in venture capital says it's looking to raise as much as $100 million in a public offering.

Soon-to-be known on The Street as ticker symbol ZIP, the company reported net income of $86 million on revenues of $418.14 million for the year ended December 31, 2020. They laid off a lot of people along the way too, but that's a different blog post.

It's been a long time since a notable company in our space has gone public (damn you, Glassdoor!), and I'll watch with great interest and excitement, like I'm sure many reading this will do as well.

And I hope they crush it. I really do. Success breeds success, and a hot Zip IPO will undoubtedly lead to others making the leap. If The Roaring '20s (Part 2, Electric Boogaloo) actually becomes a thing, it should be very, very good for everyone.

That said, I'm avoiding the Zip IPO. Here's why:

Job boards are antiquated. That doesn't mean they can't work and be profitable, but the days of hyper-growth are way behind us, no matter how much A.I. you throw into your social media marketing. And as growth is the mother's milk for increasing stock prices, I just don't see a strong appetite for some relic of the early 2000s. Global growth? It'll be difficult and very costly.

Programmatic advertising is the future. Gone are the days when job sites owned a user, which resulted in some pricing power. Programmatic advertising is great for employers, who can optimize their spend, but programmatic is bad for the big boys who charge big prices. Programmatic is also how big companies promote their openings in greater numbers, which will make Zip's foray into enterprise a real challenge. But what about SMBs, you say ...

SMB recruitment is a mess. And it's not trending in Zip's favor. Proponents of ZipRecruiter will no doubt point to the impending explosion of, well, just about everything, post-pandemic. Hey, I want to get out of the house and spend money as much as everyone else, but recruitment of support staff at service industries has gotten weird. People would rather collect unemployment and stimulus checks and buy bitcoin or trade Gamestop than work. And the ones who do would rather be a gigger and work on their own time. You know the established players - Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Fiverr, Upwork - but rumors that Facebook and LinkedIn are jumping into the gig economy too is not good for Zip. Sidenote: Zip going gig and calling their workers "zippers" would be cool. Just sayin'.

Who owns the rails? Unless you're Google, Amazon, Apple and a few others, well, you're just renting. Regardless of what you think about Google for Jobs, the traffic generated is essentially free ... as in free for job sites right now but free for Google forever. And the tax is coming. And when it does, it'll be bad for everyone not named Google. However, it will be particularly painful and glaring for a public company. Marketing costs for Zip, in order to keep the heroin drip of job seekers coming to the site and keep businesses opening their wallets, with more and more commercials, will inevitability stifle profitability. Stories rarely end well for the junkie.

Keep in mind, I don't give financial advice and I haven't even seen the S-1. There's probably some disclaimer I need to add here, but whatever. Look, ZipRecruiter could be a solid buy if the price is right. People will probably get rich.

That said, I'm not a buyer in the short term at any price, and the company needs to have some serious tricks up its sleeve to convince me that the long term prospects are positive enough to take another look.

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Poaching Tips for Small Business

When it comes to the United States economy, there's nothing small about small businesses. Every month, approximately 534,000 new businesses get their start in the U.S. Although only 50% of small businesses survive beyond five years, they make up about 44% of the national economy.

Small businesses show up across the country as financial institutions, boutiques, craft breweries, eateries, and more. Most of the companies that fail do so because of cash flow problems.

Despite these monetary concerns, the small business community does a great job hiring marginalized communities such as minorities and those with disabilities. In total, small businesses employ over 59 million people nationwide.

What small businesses do for employees that corporations don't?

Both veteran workers and those starting their careers may seek a position from an established corporation. It makes sense to go for the sure thing. But, small companies offer some unique perks to lure talent their way.

With so many employees setting up home offices due to the COVID-19 pandemic, small businesses continue to create new perks that align with the remote working experience. Check out the ways in which small companies go above and beyond when offering perks to its employees:

Wellness incentives include things such as massages and exercise equipment. The pandemic tends to encourage a more sedentary lifestyle. Keeping employees healthy while working from home becomes a priority.

Perks often align with the company's mission and brand. Examples of this might include supplying clothing and other merchandise with the business logo. The company may also match employee donations to non-profits that their mission supports.

Some small businesses not only offer paid vacations, but they also give you cash to spend on your vacation with the understanding you will share your experiences in a presentation when you return.

A small business that requires its management or executives to dress in more traditional business garb will sometimes give a generous clothing allowance or treat their employees to custom-made suits.

Small businesses often offer perks surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. They may encourage and even help employees find vaccines. They may also provide time-off to get the vaccine and time to recover from side effects if needed.

Other reasons to work for small businesses:

In addition to physical perks, intangible incentives also exist for employees of small businesses that may prove just as valuable as gifts or monetary benefits:

If you work for a small business in your area, you directly support your community.

A small business owner may find it easier to stick to their mission statement and ideology.

You may learn more at a small business. It's easier to follow the big picture and get cross-training on a variety of skills.

Working at a small picture may give you more of a voice. Instead of competing with hundreds or even thousands of other employees, a smaller company often presents more of a family-type environment that makes it a point to listen to employee's concerns and ideas.

Many patrons tend to support small businesses for the same reasons that employees want to work for them. It's a win-win situation. Companies that treat their employees well gain respect from the community, which often translates into sales.

Remember, most large successful corporations started as small businesses. Companies like Apple and Amazon started in a garage. Facebook began in a college dorm room. Employees who find themselves working for a company that grows beyond the scope of the small business may find themselves with unheard of opportunities.

In summary, small businesses need to attract top talent by offering unique and time-sensitive benefits that complement the company's mission and purpose. For more information on ways that small businesses attract top talent contact us.

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2 Staffing Agencies Indicted in Wage-Fixing and No-Poach Scheme

On March 31, 2021, the Department of Justice indicted two Nevada health care staffing agencies and their managers.

Allegedly, these two companies conspired to fix the wages of employee nurses at a low point, to decline any requests for wage raises, and agreed not to poach nursing staff from each other. This (alleged) behavior violates Section 1 of the Sherman Act (15 USC § 1).

The National Law Review website reported details of the felony indictment. In the world of employment law, this called a no-poach agreement. Wage-fixing pacts like this are considered unlawful per the Sherman Act. The FBI, DOJ, and US Attorney's Office were all involved in the investigation.

How it (Allegedly) Happened

This story begins eight years ago, in Clark County Schools. Clark County includes Las Vegas, Primm, and Jean NV.  It's a large county, as big as the state of New Hampshire, but most of the population is located in Las Vegas. And that's where most of the medically fragile children attend schools.

The Clark County School District provides specialized nursing services for students with special medical needs.

In 2013, CCSD request for proposals (RFP) inviting bids from staffing companies to provide nursing staff to the district.

Advantage and Company A each won a contract.

So Company A and Advantage became the two primary providers of contract nurses to the school district.

From October 2016 through July 2017, these agencies allegedly conspired to eliminate competition for the future school district contracts entering into no-poach and wage agreements with each other.

In this way, they would keep their payroll, recruiting and training costs low, and continue to win the contracts.

Is this case provable? It may be. And if convicted, both the managers and organizations can face hefty penalties and significant jail time. As reported by the National Law Review, emails between the managers seem to be the smoking gun of this case.

These emails appear to acknowledge the companies working together, and claim they will tell any nurse looking for better wages to "kick rocks."

The Possible Penalties are Severe

As mentioned above, the Sherman Act is serious business. It's meant to control mega corporations and reduce the instances of true monopoly.

The maximum penalty for violating the Sherman Act is ten years in federal prison and a fine 100 million USD for organizations and 1 million USD for individuals, like the managers indicted in this case.

These penalties can be increased, up to double the amount of monetary gain achieved from the violation or twice the victims' losses.

Anti-Competitive Conduct in Labor Markets is a Focus of the DOJ

Clearly, the DOJ is taking a tough stance on anti-competitive conduct. Healthcare staffing seems to be under the microscope, more so than other temp agencies or staffing organizations.

Only four months ago, in December 2020, the National Law Review reported that the DOJ brought a criminal case involving employer wage-fixing against a different healthcare staffing company. In January 2021, the DOJ brought its first criminal case involving no-poach agreements, again involving healthcare staffing sector.

Our View

Here at Poach, we find it interesting that this string of indictments focuses on medical staffing providers, especially nurses. The nursing staff shortage in the US is well known, and Nursingworld.org says more than 500,000 nurses will retire by 2022. Roughly 100,000 nursing jobs are available in the US right now!

To us, it's interesting that such highly sought-after nurses would have tolerated this sort of behavior from a staffing company. We can only imagine these nurses had deep roots in Clark County. Otherwise, they would move on.

At Poach, we believe high-quality market insight and recruitment intelligence should be available to every employer, not just the mega corporations. If you'd like to learn how to attract and keep the best workforce — including prized nursing staff — contact us today.

[poachai]

Is Workplace Sentiment Really Crashing at Goldman Sachs?

In case you missed it, financial services giant Goldman Sachs was at the center of a story highlighting employee neglect and horrid working conditions. A story by CNN talks extensively about “inhumane” treatment and 95-hour work weeks.

About a dozen first-year analysts say they are working more than 95 hours a week on average, sleeping just five hours a night and enduring workplace abuse. The majority of them say their mental health has deteriorated significantly since they started working at the investment bank.

The survey comes from a self-selected group of 13 first-year analysts who presented their findings to management in February, a spokesperson for the bank said.

Understandably, the media and social media went nuts. Such a story, unsurprisingly, is great for generating clicks and attracting eyeballs. It even led to Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon saying in a voice message sent to staffers, “This is something that our leadership team and I take very seriously,” and underscored a desire to do better.

But is life as an employee at Goldman Sachs really that bad? Poach data paints a much different story. Checkout the following chart:

Aside from a dip on the day the “inhumane” story hit, sentiment at Goldman Sachs actually looks pretty rosy right now. A quick look at Glassdoor also supports our conclusion. The employee review site gives Goldman a 4/5 star rating, and the CEO has an 89 percent approval rating.

We won’t go as far as saying “fake news,” on this one, but a survey of 13 workers hardly fills in all the blanks when looking at the health of a workforce. Fortunately, we have data to help us do that.

[poachai]

The NEW Poach is Here

The first iteration of Poach was pretty simple: Let people track one company for free. We wanted to see if the service was enticing enough, if we could make signing up easy, and we also wanted to make it free.

However, we always had a vision to evolve the product and make our solution more robust as our customer base grew. Hundreds of users said we were on the right track. A little over 6 mos. since we put idea to keyboard, and we’re happy to be releasing version 2.0 of Poach.

To put it simply, we added more data, more context and the ability to track more companies in the latest version. And we’ve also added a few paid subscription tiers.

Want more? Here’s a breakdown:

Monitor up to 25 companies for as little as $3.16 per-company, per-month

Track 2x more employee reviews from around the web

Chart up to 90 days of employee sentiment

Daily alerts

Include news from top news sources like CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, Techcrunch, Business Insider and Reuters

Of course, this is in addition to the stuff we already do.

You can see a full breakdown of our new services here:

https://app.poach.ai/pricing

We're currently offering Early Bird pricing for the next few weeks, and there's a 14-day free trial, pretty much eliminating your risk. If you’re currently a free user or not using us at all, we'd obviously love for you to be an early adopter.

What's more? If you take advantage of Early Bird pricing, your rate will never go up. It's a small way of saying Thank You for the leap of faith. Questions? Just ask in the comments or email us. 

[poachai]

3 Tips for Employers to Attract and Keep Top Talent Post-COVID

In today's world, in which robotics and technology play a big part for many businesses, we need to realize that an essential resource to any company remains human resources.

Attracting and retaining employees who bring talent and fresh ideas to the office, of course, helps to make a business successful. Just as crucial as hiring talented workers involves the development and retention of the employees.

Determining a 'good fit'

Managers may look at many resumes and interview several candidates with similar qualifications in experience and education. So, how does a leader narrow it down to just one new employee? We often hear the expression, 'finding a good fit.' 

Consider the following when narrowing the pool of candidates to join the office team:

Make certain to attract qualified candidates with an accurate and thorough job description.

Share your mission statement with candidates and ask them to give feedback or interpret what the statement means to them.

Consider what kind of energy this person would bring to the team. You may want a more subdued person to balance an overly exuberant group of employees. Or, you may want someone who blends in with the rest of the team.

Ask questions to help determine the applicant's commitment level, especially if you want to hire someone who will grow with the business, try to gauge their intentions regarding their career path.

Diversity in the office or workplace adds new and valuable perspectives. People from different genders, races, and age groups will contribute to a well-balanced and informed workplace environment.

Keeping the perfect or nearly perfect employee

1. Encourage growth and advancement

A good manager knows the best measure of success for a manager deals with the team members' accomplishments who report to them. Managers who help their employees succeed and credit their contributions will see their careers flourish and their companies grow. Some ways that management may encourage the advancement of their employees to include the following:

Encourage continuing education in the form of internal or external classes and seminars. Some employees may want to enroll in a degree program to strengthen their career path.

Provide employees with opportunities that involve travel, meetings with other departments, and other opportunities to encourage their knowledge and understanding of the big picture.

Give team members who show leadership qualities more responsibilities that involve mentoring or training others.

2. Build Loyalty

A talented, industrious employee knows options exist. The competition seeks out passive job hunters to build and improve their businesses. Building loyalty with employees helps ensure a steadier workforce and slow down the revolving door syndrome. It takes more than a competitive salary and benefits package to build employee loyalty. Consider the following suggestions:

Give productive feedback. Make sure to explain errors in a way that involves the entire process or big picture. Remind the employee of their strengths when pointing out problems.

Go beyond tolerance and embrace diversity.

Encourage out-of-the-box thinking and risk-taking.

Provide non-financial rewards. Catered meals, prizes, additional days off represent ideas that work well for individuals and teams.

3. Create a pleasant work environment

The daily routine of an employee may represent the number one aspect of keeping valuable employees. If the office or workplace represents a welcoming place rather than a dreaded one, it will contribute to employee longevity. Consider these ideas to create a pleasant work environment:

Encourage team members to work together to distribute work equitably and prepare to pick up the slack for those with illness or other emergencies.

Create a friendly atmosphere where people may share aspects of their personal lives.

Allow employees to make their workspace personal.

Develop a reasonably comfortable dress code. The dress code will depend on exposure to the public and other departments.

Provide flexible schedules and options to work from home. Many employees enjoy a hybrid situation where they come to the office part of the week and stay at home for the other part of the week. Setting up these options works exceptionally well during inclement weather.

Understanding the concerns and passions of employees may also help retain them. Providing employees with volunteer opportunities through the business and knowing their employer makes contributions to causes they find important will also make an individual more involved with a company.

Looking to get a leg-up in your recruiting of top talent in 2021, join Poach FREE today.

[poachai]

3 Ways Indeed’s Super Bowl Ad Failed

In case you missed it. Indeed ran its first Super Bowl advertisement during the first half of the big game on Sunday. Media reviews were mixed, so I encourage you to make up your own mind. The proof, as always, will be whether or not the company sticks with the message longterm or not, and that’ll be in their own data.

For me, however, the ad was a big airball lobbed-up by The World’s No. 1 Job Site. Yep, a total stinker. And here are 3 reasons why:

They brought a knife to a gunfight. Cutting through the clutter of television advertising is tough enough on a typical day. Now, multiply that by 100x when it comes to the Super Bowl. If you don’t break out some major Hollywood stars, cute kids, cuddly animals or giggling babies, you’re probably wasting your time. Indeed featured none-of-the-above (yeah, there are kids, even unborn ones, but the context isn’t relevant to this opinion). Add the fact their ad was sandwiched between a Jonas brother commercial and a handful of mega celebs in a State Farm ad, and the message was instantly forgettable.

 They missed big-time on the target audience. The ad features “real world” folks who are actively seeking employment. Problem is, by and large, employers don't really want active job seekers. It feels warm-and-fuzzy to appeal to the unemployed during a pandemic, but top talent, the ones coveted most by employers are already working. What makes this strategy most curious is the most common criticism of Indeed I hear from companies is “too many applicants.” Well, this ad just made things worse. 

They make us think. Reading in a TV spot is for lame pharmaceutical ads and reverse mortgage promos. Indeed shows viewers well over 30 words in coordination with each other and roughly a dozen sentences in their 60-second spot. Say what you want about the human race, but let’s agree we’re becoming more visual, not less. Petty to criticize the use of words? Maybe. Seven or less words is ideal, but anything more than 140 characters these days and the masses are out.

I’ll finish by this tidbit: Indeed has turned off Likes/Disikes and Comments from the video on YouTube, which should tell us a lot about their confidence level in how the ad would land. 

What are they afraid of? Scrutiny? Maybe. Criticism? Possibly. 

The sound of crickets chirping? Probably.