Pay for Training

“When I hire new employees, they have to go through several days of training before I can have them do the actual work. Only about 50% of these employees end up staying with my company… some don’t make it through the training and others complete the training but decide this work isn’t really for them. This is very costly to my company. I want to have applicants volunteer to go through the training and then I could choose who I want to hire from those who pass the training.”

My HR Survival Tip

I certainly sympathize with you regarding the costs of recruiting, hiring, training, and then losing those employees. Unfortunately, California doesn’t offer or allow many options here. Unpaid volunteers are only allowed to work with non-profits so that is not an option for you.

When a company has “control” over a person, the company must pay that person. Control is implied when you require that person to attend the training. The only way your training could be unpaid time is if (1) you are offering the training to anyone who wanted to attend and (2) the company will not benefit from providing the training.

What California will allow is to have training time paid at minimum wage because these employees are not yet doing the work for which they were hired. This isn’t much but it may help.

I would also recommend reviewing your own processes to lower the costs and increase the likelihood of hiring people who become good employees.

• Consider investing in testing you can use with applicants to give you a clearer picture of the applicant’s aptitude toward the work.
• Look into recording parts of the training to reduce the time your trainers need to spend in front of the group.
• Determine if the training period can be shortened and still be effective.
• Can the training be divided to result in a Level 1 position initially and the remaining training provided later resulting in a Level 2 position?

Waiting to put people on payroll until they have finished training is not a solution. It’s costly to pay them while training but it can be even more costly to not pay them.