Schulist Interests provides our clients with customized employee handbooks that clearly state company policies, procedures and benefits in language emplyees understand in a document lay-out that is reader-friendly. For clients with franchisee or member/dealers, Schulist Interests will also design generic employee handbooks based on current federal law.

Our Process Involves:
• Initial meeting with the employer using a questionnaire to discuss over 70 potential policies, including federal and state requirements and other optional
• Creating a first draft of the handbook for client review
• Second client meeting to clarify and approve employee benefits and policies
• Identifying policies for employee signature on issues such as substance abuse, employee search, company systems and anti-harassment
• Assisting the employer in presenting the new or updated handbook to current employees
• Remaining available for 18 months after implementation to answer questions arising from the new handbook

Employee satisfaction surveys ask employees for their opinions on numerous issues affecting company performance. Using this tool, clients of Schulist Interests have realized the following benefits:
• Early warning for employee crises such as employee turnover and complaints of sexual harassment, discrimination, wage and hour issues, and/or labor relations
• Risk-free, confidential opportunities for employees to express their ideas and concerns to management
• Valuable employee insight
• Appreciation and increased credibility shown to management for taking interest in employee progress and opinions
• Feedback and measurement of the effectiveness of current management, human resource programs and employee investments
• Format for maintaining ongoing employee communications
• Long-term measurement tool for tracking continuous improvement in employee relations efforts


Customer Satisfaction Surveys
Do your existing customers seem less excited or pleased with your product or service than they were in the past? Are you unhappy with your market share but lack direction for attracting new customers?

Customer feedback is critical in building repeat business and continued organizational growth. Customer satisfaction surveys tap into your most important information source-your customers. Through this tool, Schulist Interests can provide you with the research and analysis you need to enhance market share and uncover critical areas for improvement.

In today's economy, unprecedented numbers of domestic and global mergers and acquisitions are taking place. Large companies are merging to gain greater competitive advantage. Smaller companies are acquiring and being acquired in hopes of entering new markets and enjoying economies of scale. What is important to remember is that buyers do not just purchase hard assets, but human assets as well, and this transition is key to the future success of the new company.

The involvement of a human resource expert often means the difference between a successful or failed merger. In fact, careful planning and integration of HR issues during a merger or acquisition is clearly linked to meeting key business objectives. A properly conducted due diligence process goes far beyond examining financial records.

Schulist Interests utilizes an Employment Audit Checklist to identify and manage potential labor and employment issues during and after the transition. We also conduct Employee and Customer Surveys to identify issues and concerns of both groups. Using this feedback, we help the employer design a game plan to address these areas. Schulist Interests then conducts a follow-up survey six months after the merger or acquisition is complete to measure improvement and attitudes of employees and customers.

Schulist Interests provides informative and practical training seminars on all areas of employee relations. These seminars target compliance with employment law and company policies and procedures. Topics include:
Recruiting and Interviewing
• The do's and don'ts of the interview and hiring process, checking references, application retention and record keeping.
New Employee Orientations (Onboarding)
• How to properly design Orientation program for the first 90 days to increase employee retention.
Diversity Training
• Effective practices for successfully appreciating and managing today's diverse workforce.
Labor Law Seminar
• Increases awareness and understanding of basic federal and state labor laws, such as overtime and exempt/non-exempt classifications.
Anti-Harassment/Sexual Harassment
• Trains managers to recognize harassment, avoid situations that may be construed as harassment, and how to respond to reports of harassment or hostile work environment.
Performance Evaluations
• Communicates to managers and supervisors the importance of documenting performance honestly, accurately, and in a timely fashion.
Discipline and Termination
• Teaches managers how to discipline employees and properly document violations of policies and procedures to ensure consistant and fair treatment of all employees.

In today’s rapidly changing world — with its new technologies, new markets, and new global mobility — succession planning matters more than ever before. The success of your organization depends on the continuing productivity of people in key positions. Having a qualified successor ready to carry on is absolutely critical, and a succession plan can help your organization identify a successor.

Losing people in key positions - from your chief information officer or chief financial officer to key managers or other employees- can be devastating. A succession plan helps you prepare for those losses and deal with them when they occur.

When your organization has a visible succession plan:
• It signals to your employees you’re focused on their long-term future by protecting your organization from the havoc that unwelcome departures can create.
• It assures clients and customers and helps preserve their confidence in your organization because they know that it will continue to provide products and/or services without interruption.
• It helps focus people’s attention on the competencies they need to do an excellent job.
• It puts more focus on developing talent from within your organization. This boosts overall motivation, morale, and satisfaction in the organization.

Schulist Interests will assist you in developing a Succession Plan whereby your company ensures employees are recruited and developed to fill each key role within the company.

Schulist Interests provides onsite services to clients who have no full-time HR employee or whose HR department has limited time or expertise. An experienced HR consultant will come to your place of business one or more days per month to diagnose and implement solutions for your organization. This hands-on service providing professional HR support includes unlimited telephone consultation, management consulting and an ongoing monthly report summarizing results.
• Regulatory Compliance
• Employee recruitment and retention
• Individual and team performance management
• Leadership and communication skills
• Compensation programs
• Process Improvement

Through its strategic staffing and recruiting alliance, Schulist Interests provides our clients with access to a preferred source for workforce solutions. Businesses rely on our partner to meet their staffing needs with tailored workforce solutions. As a proven leader in providing skilled, qualified staffing support on a short or long term basis, they can apply their recruiting and selection expertise to find the right people for your staff.

The job description is one of the most valuable tools an employer has. Properly prepared job descriptions significantly aid in recruiting, compensation and performance management. They also protect the company by reflecting compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Virtually every organization has employees who are incorrectly classified as exempt or non-exempt. Chances are one of them.

Schulist Interests works closely with its clients to develop accurate job descriptions for their unique organizational environment, identifying:
• Departments and immediate supervisors
• Exempt and non-exempt classifications under the FLSA
• Essential job functions
• Secondary employee duties

During this process, Schulist Interests can also assist its clients in ensuring pay grades and salary ranges fit diverse positions within the company.

Performance expectations are the basis for appraising employee performance. Written performance standards let you compare the employee’s performance with mutually understood expectations and minimize ambiguity in providing feedback.

Having performance standards is not a new concept. When you observe an employee’s performance, you usually make a judgment about whether that performance is acceptable. How do you decide what’s acceptable and what’s unacceptable performance? The answer to this question is the first step in establishing written standards.

Schulist Interests will assist you in setting standards and identify a baseline for measuring performance. From these performance standards, supervisors can provide specific feedback describing the gap between expected and actual performance.

Effective performance standards:
• Serve as an objective basis for communicating about performance.
• Enable the employee to differentiate between acceptable and unacceptable results.
• Increase job satisfaction because employees know when tasks are performed well.
• Inform new employees of your expectations about job performance.
• Encourage an open and trusting relationship with employees.
• Setting and clearly communicating performance standards and expectations, observing and providing feedback, and conducting appraisals enables you to achieve the best results through managing employee performance.

In today’s job market, where talent, energy and mobility count more than seniority, new hires often earn more than seasoned veterans. Managers anxious to recruit and hang on to employees with particular skills routinely ignore traditional wage/salary scales and pay whatever they must to acquire and keep them. As pay becomes increasingly arbitrary, lopsided and unfair, managers find themselves trying to contain a bombshell of resentment.

Schulist Interests aids its clients in designing wage/salary programs to meet key objectives:
• To position jobs according to their internal worth to the company and their external value in the marketplace
• To establish and maintain appropriate, fair and competitive pay ranges for positions requiring various levels of knowledge, skill, experience and responsibility
• To attract and retain quality employees
• To provide recognition and reward for differences in individual performance

Schulist Interests assists clients in developing salary administration programs tailored to their organizational needs, including:
• Pay-for-performance systems
• Merit and performance review cycles
• Promotional increases
• Special increases
• Skill-based pay
• Bonuses
• Non-traditional employee reward systems

Workforce issues are constantly changing, posing a significant time commitment for employers challenged with staying current while managing other responsibilities. Schulist Interests works with its clients to develop and maintain up-to-date policies clearly stating company rules, guidelines and benefits.

Steps in the process include:
• Reviewing and evaluating clients' existing policies
• Determining their level of compliance with current federal and state laws
• Making recommendations for change to current policies
• Helping clients establish new policies with the correct terminology

Rapid growth of a company and changes in federal and state legislation will require the setting up of an HR function to put into place policies and procedures which will assist you in creating a professional HR Department to manage the ever changing workforce issues.

Schulist Interests can help you take all the steps to set up your HR Department. We will help you understand the business need for HR and where HR fits. We will provide you with practical and professional solution that your unique situation requires. Our experience and perspective means that we will ensure that you do not miss out on best practices and great ideas from other companies.

Our process includes identifying the following key areas of compliance and human resource functions:
• Record Retention Requirements
• Recruitment and Interviewing
• Compliance with Employment Law
• Discipline and Termination Procedures
• Documentation
• Required HR Forms

Your employees are among your most valuable assets. But do you take the time to analyze the effectiveness of your human resource department and the alignment between your personnel and your objectives?

Schulist Interests specializes in improving the human resource function at organizations and has developed a comprehensive HR assessment that can help you reach your goals. The review process will assess key areas of your HR activities. The areas include:
• HR Policies & Procedures
• Performance Management
• Employee Relations
• Recruitment & Selection
• Benefits Administration
• Training & Development
• Workplace Productivity & Climate

We focus on practical suggestions and ask the questions that make a difference. How are you storing your records? Are you using all of the electronic tools available to communicate with your employees and collect the information you need for compliance? When did you last update? How are you securing the information that you collect?

The goal will be to develop your HR department into a strategic partner and major contributor to the success of your organization.

Schulist Interests assists employers in properly documenting poor employee performance or violations of policies, rules and guidelines. We ensure there is no bias in the documentation and that the same standard is applied to all employees. We work with our clients to make sure the performance deficiency or rules violation is clearly stated and addressed, along with the appropriate consequences.

It is important that management remain alert and ready to address growing workforce issues. Schulist Interests has developed an Employment Audit Checklist identifying potential labor and employment issues. The following key areas of the employment life cycle compliance, and human resource functions.

The checklist examines:
• Recruitment and Interview Procedures
• Employer Recordkeeping
• Compliance with Employment Law
• Compensation
• Benefits Administration
• Discipline/Discharge Procedures and Documentation
• Terminations

Upon completion of the audit, Schulist Interests provides its clients with a detailed report and recommended actions. From there, we can assist employers in implementing an Action Plan to bring their organization into compliance with state and federal law and their own stated policies.

Schulist Interests provides assistance to clients confronted with allegations of discrimination, harassment, unfair discharge, improper pay or undocumented workers. We will conduct an investigation to determine the facts, including a thorough review of all records related to the charge, taking statements, and interviews of all parties involved in the charge.

Circumstances warranting investigations include:
• Charges of harassment
• Charges of discrimination filed with the EEOC or Commission on Human Rights
• Claims for Unemployment Compensation
• Wage claims filed under the Texas Payday Law
• Audits of I-9's Department of Homeland Security
• Audits by the Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division

Through its strategic affirmative consulting alliance, Schulist Interests reduces clients' potential liability resulting from an OFCCP Compliance Review through the following Affirmative Action Plan services:
• Compliance-Ready Affirmative Action Plans
• Strategic Planning for OFCCP Compliance Reviews
• Onsite Compliance Review Support
• Pre-Contract Award Compliance Reviews
• Adverse Impact and Compensation Analysis
• EEO Survey Filing
• EEO-1 and VETS-100 Filing