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Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility - Mary’s Gone Crackers, Inc.'s Unlawful Hiring Practices 

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Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility - Mary’s Gone Crackers, Inc.'s Unlawful Hiring Practices 

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A Gridley based health food retailer, Mary’s Gone Crackers, Inc. was caught hiring undocumented aliens and was fined $1,500,000 USD (2012)  by ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement).

Mary’s Gone Crackers, Inc.'s hiring policy is influenced by California liberal-progressive political culture that elects to ignore Federal immigration policy and hires undocumented aliens while forbidding any e-verify background checks at a state level.

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A company in a small California city has agreed to pay $1.5 million but will avoid prosecution for hiring 49 illegal aliens. The company rehired 13 of the illegal alien employees after the ICE audit that originally busted them.

A natural food company in Gridley, California, Mary's Gone Crackers, Inc., was audited in March 2012 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The agency was investigating whether the company had any criminal violations of federal immigration laws. Gridley is in north central California and has approximately 6,500 residents.

An investigation of its I-9 immigration forms revealed that 49 of its employees were illegal aliens. One of the employees provided corrected documentation and the company informed ICE that the other 48 employees had either been fired or had resigned, according to a statement obtained by Breitbart Texas from the U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of California.

The statement from the U.S. Attorney said that Mary's Gone Crackers rehired at least 13 employees "that it claimed had been terminated or resigned, all of them under new names." An operations supervisor never stopped working for the company but continued to work under a new assumed name. He also received payment as an independent contractor, not through the company's regular payroll. Several of the employees knew that the supervisor was illegal and not eligible to legally work in the United States.

A search warrant was executed at the Gridley facility in January 2013. As least 12 of the 13 rehired employees were still working at the company.

"Protecting the integrity of the nation's immigration system is a top priority for HSI," said Ryan L. Spradlin, special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) San Francisco. "Our agents are determined to hold those who choose to defraud the system accountable in order to reduce the demand for illegal employment and protect employment opportunities for the nation's lawful workforce."

During the I-9 audit and rehiring its employees, Mary's Gone Crackers had consulted with outside counsel.

After the search warrant was executed, the company cooperated with the government and terminated employees, stopped using outside counsel, and took steps to ensure compliance with immigration laws and I-9 regulations. This included using E-Verify and the Social Security Verification Service. Mary's Gone Crackers also started an anonymous tip line so employees could report any I-9 issues.

The non-prosecution agreement between the food company and the federal government (attached below), requires the company to establish a compliance program covering its I-9 procedures and its use of the E-Verify system. The compliance program also requires complete and timely compliance with the terms in the non-prosecution agreement. The agreement applies to the company and not to specific individuals.
Lana Shadwick is a contributing writer and legal analyst for Breitbart Texas. She has served as a prosecutor and associate judge in Texas. Follow her on Twitter @LanaShadwick2. Mary's Gone Crackers Nonprosecution Agreement

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Vegan Food Company Fined $1.5 Million for Hiring Illegal Aliens

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A natural food company in Gridley, California, Mary's Gone Crackers, Inc., was audited in March 2012 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The agency was investigating whether the company had any criminal violations of federal immigration laws. Gridley is in north central California and has approximately 6,500 residents.

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External Influences -Technology's Influence & Contribution To Blockbuster's Closure

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External Influences -Technology's Influence & Contribution To Blockbuster's Closure

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The modernization of technology and Blockbuster's anchoring to Optical disk storage led them to be unable to keep up with the rapidly changing market that favored digital streaming and storage eventually causing the supply to exceed the demand.

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Video stores are closing by the dozen but the last aren't about to go quietly.

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Training, Recruitment & Appraisal - Nvidia's Graduate Bridging & Repayment Assistance

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Training, Recruitment & Appraisal - Nvidia's Graduate Bridging & Repayment Assistance

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Nvidia introduced its Student Loan Repayment Program in 2015, which allowed trainees and employees greater ease of paying back any student debts they attained from their tertiary education that total a maximum of  $30000 USD. This program also covers tuition fees for employees obtaining a Masters Degree at the Stanford Center for Professional Development.

This is influenced by the demographics of Nvidia's employees, made up increasingly of millennial fresh out of college or in the process of studying for a degree whilst working part time or full time at Nvidia.

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Bulking Up Benefits

Nvidia Corp. has introduced a host of new offerings designed to help its people save time, money and stress spent on worries away from work and on the job.

By Mark McGraw

Beau Davidson remembers what it's like to be a freshly minted college graduate leaving campus with high hopes -- and heavy debt.

"I worked for PepsiCo right out of school," says Davidson, who graduated from Cornell University with a master's degree in industrial and labor relations in 1998. As an entry-level employee -- living on an entry-level salary -- "it was shocking to me when my college loan came due, along with my car payment and so on. It was tough."

Today, Davidson is the vice president of HR at Nvidia Corp. As he looks around the technology company's headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., he sees many young co-workers in the same economic straits he found himself in nearly 20 years ago.

"Student-loan debt can be staggering for those just starting out," he says. "Starting your life off after college isn't easy, especially here in the Bay Area, where the cost of living is high."

Data from the Plan Sponsor Council of America suggests that new grads are feeling the financial pinch in that region and well beyond. A recent study from the group found 69 percent of students graduating college in 2011 and 2012 borrowed money to finance their educations, compared to 49 percent of 1992 and 1993 college graduates.

In introducing its Student Loan Repayment program in 2015, Nvidia wanted to help its youngest workers settle these debts, and start off their careers on the right financial foot.

Designed to help employees repay student loans up to $30,000, the program is open to all full- or part-time employees who have graduated within the past three years and are working 20 or more hours per week and provides monthly reimbursement up to $500 or the worker's monthly payment amount, whichever is less.

Applicable to various types of loans -- Federal Perkins loans, private student loans and subsidized Stafford loans, for instance -- the repayment program also helps employees who go back to school for an advanced degree.

Davidson describes the effort as a "bridge program" geared toward helping recent grads transition to work.

"This kind of assistance might help them get started in an apartment, put a down payment on a car, and get themselves situated and ready to work," he says. "It's one less stressor to worry about."

So far, close to 100 employees -- about 85 percent of those eligible -- have taken advantage of this benefit. The program also offers workers up to $5,250 each year for qualified job-related education expenses, including tuition and books, when they earn a grade of "B" or higher in their courses. Nvidia also pays for eligible employees to complete an engineering master's degree through the Stanford Center for Professional Development.

Nvidia has also found the program to be an effective recruiting tool when trying to attract young candidates, says Davidson, adding that applicants have frequently inquired about the benefit in job interviews since the program was rolled out in 2015.

"We're recruiting the best and brightest engineers. These students have a lot of opportunities in front of them, and we see this as a way to differentiate ourselves."

The loan is one of several offerings the company introduced during the November 2015 open enrollment period. As the Nvidia benefits team considered potential new benefits in the months leading up to last November, "our first thought was that we wanted to make it easier for our employees to live their best life," says Andrea Trudelle, global benefits director.

"First, we considered our demographics," says Trudelle, noting that the organization's workforce is comprised of roughly 20 percent millennial-age employees, 63 percent Generation Xers and 17 percent baby boomers.

"When we talked to millennials, for example, we learned what they were struggling with, including the price of their student-loan debt. We wanted to help them solve that problem" by implementing the student-loan reimbursement program.

Meanwhile, many Gen X workers -- many of whom are approaching middle age and caring for both young children and aging parents -- may be stressed by maintaining this juggling act. In response, Nvidia rolled out a program, in conjunction with care.com, designed to aid workers in finding babysitters and caregivers.

Although many Gen X-age employees have taken advantage of this offering, Trudelle points out that Nvidia does not track the utilization of its benefit programs by age group. And, while benefits such as the aforementioned student-loan debt repayment program may be geared toward young, not-far-removed from college-age employees, the rationale behind the host of benefits the company recently introduced were developed as part of an overall benefits approach that Trudelle is hopeful offers something for everyone at Nvidia.

"We want to take a [benefits] approach," she says, "that allows us to serve all of our [9,200] employees."
Cutting Commuting Costs
Nvidia employees are spread across more than 40 locations, in cities such as Austin, Texas and Seattle, where many have "long commute times, upwards of one hour each way in some cases," says Davidson.

Traveling that sort of distance several times a week adds up, taking a toll on employees' wallets and overall well-being. To help ease the burden, some companies such as Nvidia have begun to offer commuter benefits to workers.

While commuter benefits are certainly not new, "the definition of commuter benefits seems to be expanding, and companies are getting more creative," says Nate Randall, president and founder of San Jose, Calif.-based Ursa Major Consulting.

"Commuter benefits could be 'traditional,' with the company providing money for public transit, but some are starting to package it with mileage reimbursement, and/or help with carpooling or shuttles, for example."

Nvidia has taken the latter approach, partnering with San Mateo, Calif.-based WageWorks to offer employees the opportunity to enroll in a commuter spending account that pays for monthly parking passes or transit and vanpool expenses up to $255 per month (for 2016) with pre-tax dollars. Employees purchasing a monthly transit pass also receive a $100 monthly subsidy from Nvidia. The cost of the pass is automatically deducted from the worker's paycheck, minus the subsidy.

Nvidia also offers ride services, working with the facilities team at its Santa Clara headquarters to ensure regularly scheduled shuttle service from local bus stations, for example.

Like many of the benefits the company has introduced in recent years, the idea for the commuter spending account blossomed out of conversations between HR and employees, says Davidson.

"We're always talking to employees about benefits," he says, noting that annual Nvidia employee surveys include multiple benefits-related questions.

"But instead of just staying holed up in our little spot on campus, our benefits team is also continuously meeting with employees in places where they gather, like the cafeteria," he says, adding that "Popcorn Thursdays" offer employees a weekly chance to enjoy free popcorn while providing in-person feedback on their benefits to the Nvidia HR team and the organization's Cigna representative.

During such discussions, Davidson and his colleagues in HR have heard "many employees [express] concern about their commute times, and their ability to get to and from work on time.

"We looked at this as a program to help get cars off the road, and to help keep employees happy by making their commutes simpler and less expensive," says Davidson, adding that Nvidia has seen a 300-percent increase in the number of employees taking advantage of the benefit since the beginning of 2016. "Now, [stress over their commutes] is one less thing they have to think about at work."
Offering Protection
A more unusual benefit for Nvidia employees is meant to ease stress from another source: identity theft.

Recent statistics suggest that more employees will experience ID theft, with the Federal Trade Commission ranking identity theft as the No. 1 consumer complaint for 15 consecutive years. The FTC estimates that 19 people become victims of identity theft every minute.

Considering the "huge distraction" of having one's identity stolen, "it makes sense" to offer identity theft protection to employees, says Joe Ellis, senior vice president at CBIZ Benefits & Insurance Services Inc. in Plymouth Meeting, Pa.

"And, given the increasing frequency of [identity theft], the time spent dealing with all the [attendant] issues invariably has an impact on productivity," says Ellis.

Helping workers avoid these considerable headaches was the impetus for the identity theft protection service that Nvidia now offers employees.

Provided by Framingham, Mass.-based IdentityForce, Nvidia employees are automatically enrolled in no-cost identity theft protection services through IdentityForce, which monitors users' personal information and notifies individuals of suspicious activity. Employees can also enroll children under 18 for no-cost coverage, and have the option to purchase coverage for other adult family members as well.

"For a victim of identity theft, it takes considerable time and money to clean it up," says Davidson. "We take measures to protect customers' data, so this seems like a natural progression of that."

Davidson, who worked closely with Nvidia's legal and security teams to select a vendor, continues to partner with IdentityForce to address employee questions about services, costs and so on.

From an employer perspective, "it's comforting to know that [all of our employees are] covered with this service," he says. "Dealing with something like identity theft takes time away from employees -- time away from family and time away from work."
Ongoing Evaluation
In the 10 months since Nvidia rolled out the ID theft protection service to all employees, 10 percent of employees have opted to enroll additional family members, and 25 percent have enrolled in free credit monitoring.

While such numbers portend success for the new program, Davidson and his colleagues in HR still keep close tabs on what benefits are working and which ones aren't.

Take, for example, the aforementioned initiative that assists workers in finding babysitters and caregivers at home.

During a benefits team meeting, however, "we noticed that enrollment in that program was relatively low," says Davidson. "We realized that this program wasn't where we need it to be."

HR quickly arranged to bring care.com representatives on campus the following month to share details of the program with Nvidia workers. HR also worked with the corporate communications team to promote the program via email and on the home page of the Nvidia benefits site, as part of a larger redesign that also made the site accessible to employees' family members.

Davidson and the benefits team also re-evaluated how they promote benefits offerings to workers beyond the company intranet.

"We focus on different programs throughout the year," says Davidson, "looking at statistics and usage, and, subsequently, developing communication campaigns highlighting a different program each month."

Nvidia also replaced its annual benefits fair -- "where 40 or 50 vendors would come on campus and give away stress balls," says Davidson -- with monthly events comprised of several vendors that the company is considering to provide new or expanded benefits.

For example, the company is currently focused on broadening its Stanford Health Navigator Services program, which affords employees around-the-clock access to Stanford University health staff for help with scheduling medical appointments, coordinating specialist visits and connecting with healthcare institutions around the world for consultation.

In addition, "we're looking to extend the program to provide experts in a variety of fields to NVIDIA retirees," to offer assistance with life, health and retirement savings, says Davidson.

Ultimately, he says, delivering such guidance to employees, past and present, "is key to our benefits strategy, which is to look at and implement programs that make life easier for our people."

Keeping Communications Simple

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Bulking Up Benefits Nvidia Corp. has introduced a host of new offerings designed to help its people save time, money and stress spent on worries away from work and on the job. By Mark McGraw Beau Davidson remembers what it's like to be a freshly minted college graduate leaving campus with high hopes -- and heavy debt.

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Organizational Structure, Motivation & Culture - Google Work Place Culture

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Organizational Structure, Motivation & Culture - Google Work Place Culture

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Human resource's role in motivating employees at Google revolves around creating a creative culture with work place benefits that blurs the line between work and leisure that ultimately increases productivity.

Motivational Strategies involve incorporating work and relaxation encouraging employees to work and 'live' at their job with make shift living quarters, competitive events to develop employee cohesion and complementary services like buffets and cafés.

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It's pretty well documented that Google has a unique culture. It's not the typical corporate culture. In fact, just by looking at pictures inside the Googleplex, you can see that it looks more like an adult playground, not a place for work.

But Google's success can be attributed to this culture. Google has people who's sole job is to keep employees happy and maintain productivity. It may sound too controlling to some, but it's how this world-changing organization operates.

So can Google's culture teach us anything?

Yes.

Google bases nearly everything off data, and while some of what's below may work best only for Google, there are surely other areas that can work for all companies, regardless of size.

When learning about Google's culture, one of the people you need to know of is Laszlo Bock. He is the head of People Operations, known by many companies as 'Human Resources'. People operations are where science and human resources intersect. And it's what keeps Google a top performing company.

In this post we'll examine how Google recruits, develops, and retains the employees. Let's get started.

How Google Hires

Each year, Google gets over 2.5 million applicants. That's equal to 6,849 per day and about 5 per minute - and Google reviews each one. Don Dodge, a current Google employee shows how thorough Google is with each applicant. What's not important is the logistics of each hire, but why they hire this way and what we can learn from it. Because it's the people that make Google what they are today.

When you get interviewed at Google, you'll receive questions like:
"How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?" "There are 8 balls. Seven of them weigh the same, but one is heavier. Using a balance scale, how do you find the heavier ball with just two weighings?" "You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?"
Google says the answer isn't as important as your thought process and how you think under pressure. The worst possible answer would be a non-answer. Quickly saying "I don't know" won't get you a job at Google.

These interview questions may seem unnecessary to some, but they are one method Google uses to filter and find the smartest, most thoughtful candidates. If you want to run an extraordinary company, you need to hire extraordinary people. And to do that, you need to be very good at hiring and firing.

Update: Bock has announced that Google is no longer throwing brain teasers at their interviewees, calling them "a complete waste of time" that only make the interviewer feel smarter. Google now relies on more on "structured behavioral interviews". They ask the interviewee a question like "give me an example of a time when you solved an analytically difficult problem." The interviewer can then see how the applicant interacted with a real world situation as well as find out what the interviewee finds difficult. When looking for leaders, Google tries to hire those who have a track record of consistency.

Other times, Google recruits employees by "acqui-hiring". A few of the well-known cases have been Milk (which got Kevin Rose), Meebo (which got Seth Sternberg and others), and Slide (which got Max Levchin who has since departed). Sometimes the best talent isn't out there looking for a job; they're already locked up with other projects.

This is how Google hires people. Part of how it attracts, retains, and keeps employees happy is by having a great culture with awesome perks. Let's get into that now.

Perks:

First, let's look at the perks of being a Google employee:

Free breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The organic food is chef-prepared

Free health and dental

Free haircuts

Free dry cleaning

Subsidized massages

Gyms and swimming pools

Hybrid car subsidies

Video games, foosball, ping pong

On-site physicians

Death Benefits

Obviously, all these perks come at a cost for Google. But so does employee dissatisfaction and high turnover. There is a lot of competition for talent in Silicon Valley (and around the globe for that matter) and when you can retain your employees, it means less time and money spent recruiting.

This culture has paid off for Google, as they consistently rank among the best places to work. They've lost hundreds of employees to Facebook and many others who have started VC firms or their own startups. It's one of the consequences of hiring smart, talented, and ambitious people. No matter how good the culture is, many of them receive enticing offers from other places or wish to start their own ventures.

A Culture Built on Qualitative and Quantitative Data

Human resources, or People Operations, is a science at Google. They're always testing to find ways to optimize their people, both in terms of happiness and performance. In fact, almost everything Google does is based off data. So it should come as no surprise that Google uses all sorts of data to gauge employees and improve their productivity.

Let's look into what Prasad Setty and his People Analytics team at Google have discovered:

Lunch Lines: You know by now that Google offers free meals and snacks to all of its employees. So what's the optimal lunch line? At what point is it too long where people waste time and too short where people don't get to meet anyone new? What's the prime happy medium? According to Google it's about three to four minutes. Any longer and they may waste time, any shorter and they don't get to meet new people.

Lunch Tables: If you want employees to meet each other, make the tables long. This will expose them to more people who they can get to know.

Paid Time Off for New Mothers: Google found that women were leaving the company at twice the rate of everyone else. In particular, this occurred with new mothers. Google's maternity leave plan was 12 weeks paid time off. Laszlo Bock changed the plan so new mothers could get 5 months paid time off with full pay and benefits. They were allowed to split this time up however they want (i.e. taking a few days off before expecting). The result after the change in policy? A 50% reduction in attrition for new mothers.

A warm greeting for new employees: A warm greeting for a new employee turns out to have a big impact. According to Bock, a manager greeting a new employee with ' Hi nice to meet you, you're on my team, we're gonna be working together' and doing "a few other things" leads to a 15% increase in productivity over the following nine months. Who knew words could have such a lasting impact?

Diner Booths vs. Conference Rooms: Laszlo and his team have found that diner booths work better than conference rooms for facilitating creativity. David Radcliffe, the man in charge of creating the perfect work environment, says that:

"Casual collisions are what we try and create in the work environment. You can't schedule innovation, you can't schedule idea generation and so when we think our facilities around the world we're really looking for little opportunities for engineers or for creative people to come together."

Managers Do Make a Difference: If you haven't already read the article from New York Times on Google's Quest to Build a Better Boss, you should. It busts the myth that managers don't make a difference. Here's what they found:

Source: New York Times
Deep Technical Knowledge Doesn't Make the Best Managers:

Just because an engineer is ten times more productive doesn't mean they'll be the best manager, according to Google. While having deep technical knowledge is important, it ranks as the least important of the 8.

Google Culture Under Larry Page

On April 4, 2011 Larry Page officially became the CEO of Google, replacing Eric Schmidt. Google had a few issues facing them at the time of the CEO transition, including:

Too many products. They had around 50 they were offering, many of which weren't well maintained.

No focus on design - in many cases products hadn't changed in years

Too much bureaucracy. This led many employees to leave for Facebook, where they could ship code early and often.

What's changes have there been since Page became the leader?

They've also experimented in some interesting areas, such as self-driving cars, the Google "x phone", Project Glass (which is now Google Glass), and likely a few others that are still kept secret. Check out this Fast Company article if you're interested in learning more about Google X.

Page has said that it's in Google's DNA to experiment, and that only making a few products like Apple is "unsatisfying". He says:

"You know, we always have these debates: We have all this money, we have all these people, why aren't we doing more stuff? You may say that Apple only does a very, very small number of things, and that's working pretty well for them. But I find that unsatisfying. I feel like there are all these opportunities in the world to use technology to make people's lives better. At Google we're attacking maybe 0.1 percent of that space. And all the tech companies combined are only at like 1 percent. That means there's 99 percent virgin territory. Investors always worry, "Oh, you guys are going to spend too much money on these crazy things." But those are now the things they're most excited about-YouTube, Chrome, Android. If you're not doing some things that are crazy, then you're doing the wrong things."

On August 10, 2015 Larry Page stepped down as CEO of Google. Sundar Pichai was appointed to replace Page, while Page became CEO of the newly-formed Alphabet, Inc, Google's parent company.

If businesses want to attract top tiered talent that isn't consumed by making money, they'll need to focus on making a great working culture. This includes the work atmosphere, to the work done, to employee freedom.

And Google doesn't view their culture as a "set it and forget it" program. They're actively changing and maintaining it, because it's crucial to their success. With any business, it all starts with people. And if you want to run great business, you need great people. One way to get them there and keep them is by making their work fun. As Mark Twain said:
"Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions."
About the Author: Zach Bulygo is a blogger for Kissmetrics, you can find him on Twitter here. You can also follow him on Google+.

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Inside Google's Culture of Success and Employee Happiness

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It's pretty well documented that Google has a unique culture. It's not the typical corporate culture. In fact, just by looking at pictures inside the Googleplex, you can see that it looks more like an adult playground, not a place for work. But Google's success can be attributed to this culture.