December 2022 Summaries

Corporate volunteering is a way for businesses to make a positive impact on society while also engaging their employees and connecting with customers. To launch a successful corporate volunteering program, companies should set concrete goals that align with their mission and values, gather employee suggestions to ensure relevance and participation, choose a workplace giving platform to track data and organize opportunities, and plan volunteering events that cater to different interests and schedules. By doing so, businesses can create a robust volunteering culture that boosts customer loyalty, retains employees, and enhances their corporate philanthropy program.

Checkr has continued to innovate its background check platform in 2022, focusing on improving customer experience and adding new features such as editable packages, investment in partnership and integration networks, transparent pricing, and improvements to the international user experience. The company has also made significant progress towards its mission of building a fairer future of work by launching tools like Checkr Assess, which helps unblock candidates from background check barriers, and Expungements, which offers automated expungement solutions for eligible candidates. With these advancements, Checkr aims to provide employers with the technology needed to scale hiring with speed and fairness, while also continuing to evolve its platform in 2023.

At this economic inflection point, companies that will drive the future of work are those refining HR processes to prioritize building diverse and representative teams. Traditional expectations about how a job gets done are being reconstructed, and innovative employers are introducing strategies to keep up with changing workforce culture. Companies must meet workers' growing demand for flexibility, ensuring remote and hybrid equity is equitable and accessible. Employers must also proactively source and hire talent from historically underutilized communities and untapped pools, including justice-impacted individuals and people with disabilities. Streamlining people analytics will become critical to driving bottom line business results, while investing in learning, development, and upskilling opportunities will attract top candidates and benefit organizations. As employers navigate economic uncertainty and rapidly changing workplace norms, companies that innovate and refine processes to prioritize building diverse teams will drive the future of work.

The US labor market is undergoing a significant shift, with an aging population and rising cost of living requiring Americans to work later in life, leading to a labor shortage and a need for employers to tap into this demographic. With nearly half of the country expected to be in their 40s or older by 2040, workers above 65 make up the fastest-growing segment of the labor force, and older workers are being overlooked due to ageism. Employers face an opportunity to build more diverse and representative teams that reflect the American population by recruiting and retaining this demographic, which can bring benefits such as improved longevity and retention, a wider range of skills, and informed perspectives on problem-solving and decision-making. To attract and retain older workers, employers must evaluate their hiring processes, provide flexibility, create opportunities for mentorship and engagement, and offer upskilling opportunities and continuing education, ultimately dismantling ageist practices to boost talent pipelines, improve employee retention, and build more effective teams.

Checkr’s panel of experts, including Professor Lee Ohanian and Naeem Ishaq, a UCLA economics professor and Checkr's Executive Vice President and CFO, share five strategies to help organizations navigate today's challenging economic environment. The US economy is experiencing unprecedented times with low unemployment, declining GDP, and worker productivity, and the Federal Reserve continues to increase interest rates to combat inflation. Employers can respond by enhancing worker productivity through new approaches to compensation, motivating workers, training, and innovative tooling. They should also evolve their recruiting strategies to include fair chance hiring practices for former offenders, widen their talent pool, and prioritize internal promotions. Additionally, they should entice more experienced workers, particularly in the white-collar job market, which is softening. Employers should also prioritize the right goals, reducing costs and repositioning or raising capital if necessary. Finally, they should position their organization for growth by being honest with themselves about resources, making changes as needed, and embracing innovation to automate hiring processes.