As the Higher Ed community prepares for winter tem hiring, we must remember that the new Form I-9 is now reality and it must be used by January 21, 2017. Higher Ed has its fair share of challenges with different employee types (graduate students, rotating professors, remote employees, adjuncts, Foreign Nationals), a decentralized hiring structure, determinations that must be made as to whether to E-verify all employees or only those associated with federal grants, and other challenges of academic hiring (GTA, GRA, GPA).
Dubbed “America’s most complicated form”, the I-9 is filled with potential traps for the unwary employer. There are more than 80 common errors that can be made on the form, and internal studies have found that a typical organization completing I-9s using pen and paper will have errors on 55% or more of their I-9 forms. (source: Jackson Lewis PC) Let’s familiarize ourselves with some of the new Form I-9 changes:
- Validations on certain fields to ensure information is entered correctly
- Drop-down lists and calendars
- Embedded instructions for completing each field
- Area to enter additional information that employers are currently required to notate in the margins of the form
- A quick-response matrix barcode, or QR code, generates once the form is printed and can be used to streamline audit processes
- Requiring employees to provide only other last names used in Section 1, rather than all other names used
- Supplemental pages for multiple preparers/translators
You can’t afford I-9 mistakes. Simple errors and omissions can lead to government fines and penalties ranging from $216 to $2,156 per employee (as of August 1, 2016 per Jackson Lewis). Amy Peck, Jackson Lewis PC Shareholder, and Gordon Middleton, Director of Legal Compliance at Equifax Workforce Solutions, recently discussed the new Form I-9 along with the challenges that Higher Ed experiences with processing I-9 at a one-hour webinar. You can access the webinar recording here. Contact Pete Krieshok at pete.krieshok@equifax.com for more information on how Equifax Workforce Solutions is working with institutions in improving their I-9 processing.
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