Your employees are like your family and you want to take care of them and their families. Contain your claims cost and give them access to a doctor 24/7/365 from the convenience of their homes. Teladoc is perfect for those late night worries in cold and flu season when you're just not sure if you need to see a doctor.
Talk to a doctor by phone or online. There's even a mobile app! All doctors are U.S. board-certified and licensed in your state. 

Are You Rolling with Medical Marijuana? It's hard to know how to protect your business, as the government has yet to release all the details about the "Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Pilot Program Act." Don't wait for problems to spark! 

The most important thing businesses need to do is to address medical marijuana in their drug policy. Employers can prohibit employees from using, but it has be spelled out in a detailed policy. Because medical marijuana is used for people who have a debilitating disease, employees who are able to get a prescription may be protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Reasonable accommodation must be made for these individuals.

Businesses should also address medical marijuana with union reps, discuss potential issues with employees, and talk to an attorney before refusing to hire, disciplining or firing a registered user for a failed drug test.

Program updates are available at www.mcpp.illinois.gov. Joel Harrison will be giving a People in Business presentation on March 10 about what businesses need to do now. We are here to answer your questions and help you craft your business's drug and anti-discrimination policies. 

Group Interviews Explained Have you ever been in or conducted a group interview? Group interviews involve having an interview with a range of 5-15 candidates at the same time. The interview can be conducted by asking the same question to the whole group and allowing each individual to answer among the group. Or, the group may also be divided into subgroups for group activities and assignments. Group interviews can save an employer a lot of time in the interview process. For example, a manager is more likely to have time for a 1-hour group interview with 10 people but making time for 10 one hour interviews may not be possible. Group interviews can aid in identifying those candidates with leadership skills as they stand out in the crowd and take the lead in the group. 

Group interviews are a great idea for certain types of positions, but for other positions should not be utilized. A group interview should not be conducted for mid-level management positions or higher. Upper management is an integral part of any company. It's important that their interview time is spent one-on-one to really get to know them. Plus, it can be perceived by the applicant as demeaning and degrading for an executive to be interviewed in this way. Let's be honest, it is difficult to find good managers. You want to spend one-on-one time with them for your own sake and for the sake of showing them respect in the recruiting process. Group interviews are a great tool for lower level positions, to entry-level management positions. These positions often have a lot more applicants than management positions, so you can really maximize your interview time with group interviews. Plus, as mentioned above, you can see what applicants show strength, confidence, and leadership. 

Would you consider a group interview situation? What roles would you put through a group interview? Leave your comment below. 

By: Dan Cozzi

Veracity is one of our core values at Elite HR Team. We define Veracity as, "extending permission to embrace unique qualities and serve genuinely."

Passion means to have a strong, almost uncontrollable emotion about something.  Where do such emotions come from?  They aren't logical, but they are tied to something deep within us; extremely personal.  One of the great philosophers in western history, Thomas Aquinas, held that temperance binds our passions.  In the realm of morality and justice temperance protects society, but the absence of it can turn an individual into a sociopath.  However, when related to the health of your workforce, encouraging certain passions is a goal of the highest order.  Passionate people greatly engage in the things they are passionate about, and here is where veracity is important. 

Companies that don't embrace veracity find it difficult to promote passionate workforces. Without it managers, executives and company leaders risk tempering their worker's passion for their work. Think about it, how passionate can someone be where her/his unique qualities are suppressed in an effort to force compliance to tasks and exercises which are counter to their strengths or individuality. 

At Elite HR team, we embrace veracity as one of our values to avoid tempering our team members’ passion for their work.  In whatever we are working on, for our clients or for our business goals, we give ourselves and our partners permission to embrace their unique qualities and strengths and live them in their work. These unique qualities determine our strengths which we welcome and encourage to strengthen our team and yours.

We've shared why we feel veracity is key to our vision for our future, please share how or if veracity plays a role in your company, team, or work group.  We look forward to learning from you! Comment below or join the conversation on our Facebook page.

You can also watch our video about Veracity where Dan interviews Kandi on Elite HR Team's core Value Veracity here: 

February already? What happened to January? Are you as shocked as we are that a month has already gone by in 2014? Don't freak out. I want you to take a look back at January. What did you accomplish? Remember to celebrate your successes. What professional resolutions did you make for 2014? Did you put any pieces in place that got you closer to your goal? Progress is a great thing, celebrate it! In December, we sent our our E-zine article about change being inevitable and it is. The strongest and most successful people are adaptable and embrace change. Albert Einstein, a very wise man indeed, once defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." If you want different results in your business, or just in your life in general, you have to embrace change. Too many people (our employees included) do not embrace change. When someone is in their comfort zone, change is scary. Business owners tend to embrace change more than their staff does. Entrepreneurs have to push through the fear in order to launch their business, launch a new program or product, hire their first or another employee, change locations, change their company name, and the list could go on and on. We've conditioned ourselves to embrace change. The question is, how do we condition our employees to embrace change? Employees don't like new systems, new methods of doing things, and sometimes they even frown at the new staff being added to your growing company. The unknown is scary for them. They realize that they depend on someone else for their paycheck, that their job is in the hands of someone else. They fear change because they are scared they won't be able to learn the new system, or because they are intimidated by the new employee. It is our duty as their employer to communicate with them open and honestly, to provide them with training that gives them confidence both in their jobs and the organization, to spend time with them to uncover and address their fears. It's not that hard, but we see many small business owners that keep themselves too busy to spend any quality time with their employees. Are you guilty of this? When you go to talk to one of your employees is it to ask about work? Get to know them as an employee, as a valued member of your team. Something that we launched within our own business at Elite HR Team is Dream Manager. We held a company-wide meeting where we "Dream-Stormed" with each other. It was very neat to see the team document their dreams, share their dreams, and it will be even better holding each other accountable to their dreams, and watching everyone achieve their dreams. In the process we learned a lot about each other and 'what makes us tick.' Dan Cozzi, our Excellence Manager, oversees the Dream Manager program internally for us and also as an external service for our clients. Contact him to learn more. Outside of the Dream Manager, other ideas to help your employees overcome fear are to have frequent meetings with them, identifying their needs, and their concerns, and putting goals and plans of action into place (and signed copies into their personnel files) to follow up on during future meetings with them. Simply asking your employees what they need shows and tells them that you care about them.