Industry Outlook: Human Resources - UtahBusiness.com

Utah’s human resources professionals are proving their worth as companies face mounting issues such as healthcare changes, undocumented worker challenges and compliance issues. Our human resources and staffing experts discussed the challenges and successes they have experienced as they face these and other complex issues. (Dalynn Jones, Employer Solutions Group, participated in the discussion.)

Are you seeing misuse of workers’ compensation payments and unemployment compensation?

JONES: We had a lot of unemployment claims with all the client companies that we work with. The state is being a little more lenient on allowing people to have unemployment, and we work pretty aggressively to keep them off. There’s a lot of people that really know the system and they are good at staying on unemployment. They don’t want to work if they don’t have to. It’s frustrating to see them get it and continue to work the system. I think there are a lot of people that truly qualify and are using it just as a way to get by, but there are a lot of people that are quite happy to be on it and do everything they can to stay on it.

JONES: A few years ago, you knew that you could handle a claim and they would not be getting it. And now when so many people are on it—and we should be holding those funds sacred—it seems like anyone is getting on it, and you work a lot harder to get people that should not be on unemployment off when it should be the other way around.

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