I-9 Audits: The Cost of Non-Compliance
Hiring employees means complying with regulations around taxes, documentation and more… and non-compliance is expensive. I-9 Forms, which are used to verify the identity and employment authorization status of employees, are a common area of non-compliance.
I-9s must be completed once you’ve made an offer of employment, but no later than 3 days after hiring; typically you’ll complete the I-9 on the employee’s first day at work. You should have an I-9 on file for every employee you employ.
I-9 audits are on the rise, and errors are expensive:
I-9 audits increased by 375% in 2018, and overall, by 5X over the past four years… that’s nearly 6,000 employers who were I-9 audited in 2018
$14 Million in fines were issued in 2019 for Form I-9 violations
76% of paper I-9s have at least one error
The average penalty for a single non-compliant I-9 is $1,862
What’s one of the largest causes of I-9 errors? Manual process and the mistakes that happen when completing forms and transferring them to your systems.
“No matter how careful we are and how much we train our employees, we’re human and we make mistakes.
And what happens when an employee comes to work for 2 or 3 days, and you forgot to put the resident card number on the back of the I-9, and you get an I-9 audit, what’s going to happen?
You’re going to get a fine, and they’re going to go through all of your I-9s.”
- Olivia Juarez, HR Manager, NWFM
A Better Solution
Accurately completing I-9s could be relatively simple if you have a small, year-round workforce. But for ag employers who have large workforces, often hire many workers at once, and have workers spread out over numerous locations, creating and maintaining accurate I-9 records is far more time-consuming and difficult.
“...as you can imagine in peak season when you get 20, 30, 40, 50 hires in a day; the time it takes to input that could be hours, maybe days, to get that accomplished.”
- Steve Bradbury, Payroll Manager, FirstFruits Farms
Wouldn’t it be better if your onboarding process could
Eliminate pen and paper. When you eliminate pen and paper, you’ll eliminate manual processes which, in turn, reduces the time and effort needed to complete forms and record information. In addition, you’ll reduce errors and mistakes that eliminate the possibility of severe fines.
Save you time. You need a solution that allows you to save time and streamline your onboarding processes. For example, the solution should enable you to export data to your systems seamlessly. When you’re able to save time, your business, as a whole, will be more efficient and productive.
Securely store worker information. The solution should allow you to store your data and employees’ information securely in a way that lets you easily access the documents whenever you need them. This improves your compliance processes and that the right information is always at hand when you need it.
Ganaz’s HR Onboarding module does all these things. Designed with agriculture in mind, it has all the features you need to simplify your people management processes and save time, money, and effort.
“With the Ganaz program, it fills everything, it won’t let you go from one step to another without making sure that everything is filled out correctly; so that itself saves you money long term.”
- Olivia Juarez, HR Manager, NWFM
To learn more about Ganaz’s HR Onboarding, and how it can help you, schedule a quick 15-minute discovery call today.
About Ganaz
Ganaz HR Onboarding is a feature of the Ganaz People Management Platform driven by customer feedback.
Founded in 2017, Ganaz is a Public Benefit Corporation. The company offers a wide range of tools and services under its Ganaz People Management Platform designed to build well-being and prosperity for workers and industry by creating software that addresses shared pain points between employers and employees.