HireNYC Program Frequently Asked Questions for Businesses Q. What is the HireNYC Program? A. The HireNYC Program is the NYC Economic Development Corporation s (NYCEDC) workforce development program which connects the permanent jobs created by tenants within the City s real estate development projects to the City s workforce development services. The Program does this by obligating any developer of NYCEDC s real estate development to require their tenant s participation in the HireNYC Program. HireNYC offers tenants free workforce screening services to find locally sourced talent for permanent jobs offered by the project. One of the values the Program offers is helping participating employers overcome the obstacles in finding talent to meet their needs. Q. Can t I just agree to try and hire locally? Do I have to use Hire NYC? A. While the City appreciates any efforts by employers to hire locally, HireNYC was created with employer hiring practices in mind. The Program follows best practices of creating linkages between the needs of employers of finding the right talent to individuals that face barriers to employment. The screening process that HireNYC administers ensures that employers are only seeing candidates that qualify for their needs. Q. What is the target population for the HireNYC Program? A. The City recognizes the importance of enabling low-income persons to participate in the City s economic growth. For this reason, the HireNYC Program was created to assist employers to hire locally from the target population of qualified talent. Target Population is defined as persons who have an income that is below two hundred percent (200%) of the poverty level as determined by the New York City Center for Economic Opportunity (a description of the income level meeting this threshold for each household size is available at http://www.nyc.gov/html/ceo/downloads/pdf/ceo_poverty_measure_2005_2012.pdf) Q. So how does the hiring process work in the HireNYC Program? A. The typical HireNYC Program hiring process is as follows: -6 months prior to the commencement of business (your location opening), you must contact HireNYC Program staff -A meeting will be convened by HireNYC staff. The meeting will include the HireNYC recruitment representatives leading marketing and candidate screening as well as representatives from your company responsible for overseeing recruitment. -At this meeting, the marketing and recruitment strategy will be finalized based on HireNYC Program goals and a business recruitment needs -Based on the referral process created jointly with you, candidates will be screened and referred to you by the HireNYC recruitment team -HireNYC candidates are interviewed by you and final hire decisions are made by you -New hire information provided to the recruitment team by the employer 1
-For ongoing hiring when 5 or more positions are open at the same time, you must contact HireNYC staff to work on a referral process that would follow a similar process to initially hiring (job qualifications, interview windows, etc.) Q. So why am I obligated to comply with the HireNYC Program? A. Your prospective landlord is a developer that responded to an NYCEDC publicly competitive Request for Proposals (RFP) and was awarded the development site based on many requirements and commitments, including the HireNYC Program. If you enter a Tenant lease agreement with the developer, the commitments that they agreed for HireNYC require your participation in the HireNYC Program. Q. How do I comply with the Program? A. There are essentially 8 main HireNYC Program requirements that you must comply with. These can be found within the HireNYC Program section, item #2, sections A to J within your tenant lease. Each of the 10 requirements is essentially steps that you must take to comply in order to be considered as making Good Faith Efforts. Put simply, if you become a participating tenant of this project, you are required to make good faith efforts toward reaching HireNYC Program workforce hiring, retention and advancement goals, provide specified hiring window periods for initial and ongoing hiring and provide reporting forms. Failing to meet the workforce goals does not imply failure to comply with the HireNYC Program. Q. What specifically are the hiring, retention and advancement goals for HireNYC? A. The standard HireNYC Program workforce development goals are as follows: -Hiring Goal: Fifty percent (50%) of all new permanent jobs created in connection with the project (including jobs created by tenants, but excluding jobs relocated from other sites) will be filled by members of the Target Population for a period beginning, for each employer, at commencement of business operations and continuing through the end of the Program Term. -Retention Goal: Forty percent (40%) of all employees whose hiring satisfied the Hiring Goal will be retained for at least nine (9) months from date of hire. -Advancement Goal: Thirty percent (30%) of all employees whose hiring satisfied the Hiring Goal will be promoted to a higher paid position within one (1) year of date of hire. -Training Goal: Cooperation with NYCEDC and the Designated City Agency to provide skills-training or higher education opportunities to members of the Target Population. Q. What does Good Faith Efforts mean? How do these relate to the workforce goals? A. Good Faith Efforts, for the purpose of the HireNYC Program, is defined as 1) compliance with the HireNYC process requirements (see HireNYC Program section of the leases item #2, sections B to J) and 2) making diligent and honest efforts toward achieving the Retention, Advancement and Training goals. 2
Q. What if none of the Candidates that HireNYC sends me match my needs? A. If your business does not reach the HireNYC workforce development goals (i.e., 50% Hiring, 40% Retention and 30% Advancement), you will not be penalized. Compliance with the HireNYC Program reflects a businesses utilization of the Program not its ability to reach the workforce development targets. Q. What if we are unable to reach the workforce development targets? A. If your business does not reach the HireNYC workforce development goals (i.e., 50% Hiring, 40% Retention and 30% Advancement), there will be no damages applied. Compliance with the HireNYC Program reflects a businesses utilization of the Program not its ability to reach the workforce development targets. Q. I m not sure I can meet the workforce hiring goals. I d rather lower them to ensure I can meet them. Is it allowable to change workforce 50% Hiring, 40% Retention and 30% Advancement goals? A. No. HireNYC Program workforce development goals cannot be lowered but if the Tenant can exceed goals, that is acceptable. Because these goals are aspirational, and you are not deemed to being in non-compliance if you do not meet them; we are unable to change them. We believe that if you meet the process requirements, the goals of the program are very achievable based upon our experience working with other employers. Q. Based on the Training Goal, are businesses required to provide training through the HireNYC Program? A. You are not required to provide training. However, the HireNYC Training Goal requests your cooperation with the NYCEDC and the Designated City Agency to provide training opportunities to individuals who have been placed through the HireNYC Program. In those instances, if you would like to provide training to new or incumbent workers, the goal requests that you work with the NYCEDC and the Designated City Agency in providing the training. This can be beneficial to you in that there are free programs and additional resources that can offset training costs. Additionally, the City can provide training best practices to the extent you find them helpful. Q. How is our participation in HireNYC monitored? Are there reports? If so what is the reporting procedure for the HireNYC Program? A. The HireNYC Program requires reporting which will track the Program workforce development goals based on candidates hired, retained and advanced by your business through HireNYC. Please see HireNYC Employment Report attached to your Tenant lease. The report captures your progress against the HireNYC goals. You are not penalized if you are unable to meet the goals. Submitting the report is a requirement of any tenant that is covered by the HireNYC Program. For any reporting changes, either in frequency or content, a written notice will be provided by NYCEDC 30 days before the due date of the report. The questions found within the reporting form will not deviate from the tracking of the workforce development goals. 3
Q. I see that in the HireNYC language found within the tenant agreement that we have to agree to allow our employees hired by HireNYC to be surveyed. What are the surveys of our employees hired through HireNYC being used for? A. Surveys may be provided to employees hired through the HireNYC Program to measure employee experience and satisfaction with the HireNYC Program and its processes. Survey questions will not inquire about the employer or workplace experience. Prior to giving out the survey, tenants will have an opportunity to see the survey questions. This information will be viewed and kept by NYCEDC for HireNYC Program evaluation of processes and also marketing materials. To the extent any survey data is included in marketing materials, NYCEDC will not reveal individual company names. All survey data will be aggregated. Q. I m concerned that NYCEDC will use my company s information publically. How will NYCEDC use my reporting data in public communications including press releases and other media events? A. Any information collected through annual reports regarding the HireNYC Program will be aggregated for use in marketing and communication materials. To the extent your company is willing to share your experience in using HireNYC, NYCEDC would like to share that information to help market the program more broadly. In those situations, your company will have an opportunity to review materials before they are published. Q. So what exactly is the benefit for my company for participating in HireNYC? A. HireNYC can provide your businesses with: -No cost business and hiring services -Access to job-ready and qualified candidates from the local community -Full vetting and screening process based on a business open job specification -Complete recruitment and marketing strategy development based on business hiring needs -Administrative leadership and support in hosting recruitment events -Space to host recruitment events or interviews Q. Where does the HireNYC Program get candidates from? A. HireNYC Program works directly with the NYC Department of Small Business Services and other appropriate City Agencies and local partners to source and screen qualified candidates for your open positions. NYCEDC works through the SBS managed Workforce1 Career Centers. Through these centers, a team of recruiters then develop a marketing plan to communicate position information to local community-based organizations and other City agency partners that can refer qualified candidates based upon the employer s job specifications. All candidates are then screened based on your job specifications. Q. Can HireNYC fill management positions? A. Yes. In working with the NYC Department of Small Business Services, we have vast experience in working on many different types of positions from entry-level to management. Q. Are we obligated to hire candidates from the HireNYC Program? A. There is no obligation or requirement to hire HireNYC candidates. 4
Part of the requirement of the HireNYC process is to provide specified HireNYC interview windows the requirement is to interview candidates we present. All final hiring decisions are up to your discretion. Q. The Program asks me to provide specific hiring windows what if this time period does not work with our interview process? A. As part of the HireNYC process, all businesses are to provide specific hiring windows for initial (10 business days) and ongoing hiring for 5 or more jobs (5 business days) where program staff will present qualified HireNYC candidates for interviews. If the hiring windows deviate from your hiring process, you must request NYCEDC s written approval of a new process that still provides the opportunity for HireNYC staff to present candidates. Program staff works with businesses to create a recruitment strategy that is informed by each business hiring process and referral request (i.e., large recruitment events, resume submission, assessments). Our goal is to work with businesses and their processes and find the best way to incorporate HireNYC candidates into your already established processes. Therefore, HireNYC can set-up the appropriate referral process that works with any application process you may have. Q. We have our own online application how do we work with you if we have our own established processes for hiring? A. You can still comply with your HireNYC obligations even if you have online applications. HireNYC and the Designated City Agency have much experience working with various employers in different sectors that use online applications. Again, our goal is to work with businesses and their processes and find the best way to incorporate HireNYC candidates into your already established processes. Therefore, HireNYC can set-up the appropriate referral process that works with any application process you may have. Q. How many HireNYC candidates am I required to interview? A. The number of candidates each business interviews depends on the number of open positions each has available for us to present HireNYC candidates. Typically, we will provide a 3:1 recruit-to-hire ratio (i.e. for each 1 open position, 3 candidates will be presented for interviews) so that businesses have a substantial number of HireNYC candidates to choose from. If you would like to negotiate that ratio, we can create a recruitment strategy that can account for the amount of candidates you would like to interview. Q. How long is our commitment to the HireNYC Program? A. The commitment to the HireNYC Program is 8 years from beginning of first business operations at the development. Depending on the time that you are signing your lease for the Development, your commitment could be up to 8 years. Q. You keep mentioning Designated City Agency - who is this? 5
A. The Designated City Agency in many instances is the NYC Department of Small Business Services. However, HireNYC does work with multiple City agency partners depending on the development location. Q. We already work with a NYC City agency for hiring services can we just continue working with that agency and not use the HireNYC Program? Isn t it all the same? A. The goal of the HireNYC Program is to provide job connections for local residents seeking jobs. Each City agency holds specified goals for hiring that may not correspond to HireNYC goals. The benefit of HireNYC is that we can work with any City Agency. If you have another City Agency that you ve worked with in the past, we are happy to work with them, and incorporate them into the HireNYC process to refer candidates. No matter which City agency is used, your commitment to HireNYC remains. Q. When should I contact NYCEDC s HireNYC staff? A. Based on HireNYC Program terms, businesses should contact HireNYC staff 6 months prior to the commencement of business operations. 6