Our LA human resource consultants are frequently tasked with supporting company-wide management initiatives driven by market dynamics or more specific organizational changes for our clients. Now, to make things a bit more interesting, we have additional generalized factors impacting Los Angeles businesses, particularly those with 25 or more employees, and many small business owners are bracing for a sea of change this year.

You don’t need special fortune-telling skills to understand the impact of higher minimum wages, increased mandatory employee benefits, an unemployment rate of 5%, inevitable future restrictions on H1B Visas and immigration policies, and commuting challenges that combine to change the landscape and composition of the Los Angeles workforce. Here are a some of the reasons why:

• In July 2016, Los Angeles became the first large city to increase minimum wage for employers with 25 or more employees to $15.00 per hour and increase mandatory sick benefits to six days per year.
• Unemployment of 5% (December 2016) has created a highly competitive recruiting atmosphere for talent and heightened attention to applicant review for skills and job suitability among a limited labor pool.
• “Ban the Box” has changed up the way employers can screen job applicants for criminal backgrounds. Not only are the questions on the job application itself now prohibited, but the screening process has become very detailed requiring various pieces of the puzzle to come together for compliance.
• Accommodations with ADA are affecting how websites display information, as seen with the recent issues faced by corporations who did not have accessible documents on their website (they were in PDF format rather than being ADA compliant). See NFB v. Target (2006) for more on this interesting issue facing employers.
• Uncertainty as to H1B Visa and immigration policies affects many Los Angeles businesses and their employees. Prepare for swift and volatile change.
• Business service and information service sectors both declined in the last quarter of 2016. Layoffs, staff adjustments, and retraining are on the table for companies to correct course with products and services.
• Work-life-balance in Los Angeles is not an amicable slogan for many businesses, it is the underpinning of negotiations for flextime, remote work and compensation that considers the difficult traffic logistics of getting to and from work and calling on clients and customers.

In light of these facts and figures, consultants at Peoplescape have some recommendations for small businesses in Los Angeles. You can be nimble in response to change by focusing attention on three key areas of human resource management.

1. Bolster your hiring process. Train hiring managers in high value selection interviewing, cast a wider net, and invest in professional guidance on selection by utilizing job suitability assessments. At Peoplescape, we operate under the model of “hiring people already predisposed to your core values – and keeping them.” (Jim Collins, Bloomberg Business Week Magazine, May 2009). By attracting, selecting, and retaining talent that lines up with your organization’s mission, vision, and core values, you are ahead of the game and we want to help you stay there.
2. Focus management training on the leaders who will be managing others and create an atmosphere where change is embraced. New problems are faced, not with set answers or a reliance on outdated business models, but a mindset to explore best moves in order to advance.
3. Keep your ear to the ground, outside your business with industry dynamics and inside your business with your employees. Employee engagement activities, surveys, suggestions, and idea exchanges support product and service innovation, as well as work satisfaction. Utilizing carefully constructed employee engagement strategies, we can draw out employees with constructive ideas for the enterprise. This helps employers capitalize on the survey momentum by building engagement through quick-win action items which show employees that their leadership team is, in fact, listening to what they have to say. A true win-win situation!