Interns For Your Business

Offering students an internship to gain hands-on work experience is a beneficial opportunity for everyone, if executed properly.  To ensure a positive outcome for both parties, the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) recommends keeping these six requirements in mind when creating internships if the position is unpaid:

• The training should resemble an educational program where the internship provides students with real life educational experiences that can only be gained outside a classroom.  Students should be able to apply what they have learned in the classroom to their experiences in the workforce.
• The employer should structure the internship toward an educational goal, including ongoing instruction and supervision.
• The training is for the benefit of the trainee and is not intended as a way for businesses to take advantage of free work.  The experience will increase the intern's chances of being hired in the job market and/or allow them to earn academic credit.  A key point, according to  SHRM is, "unpaid interns who fall into the category of 'trainees' rather than 'employees' frequently perform tasks that are useful only for training purposes and that provide little to no benefit to the employer."
• Trainees or students should not displace regular employees nor be entrusted with the same work as a regular employee or a recently departed employee; nor may the employer lay off an employee to be replaced by a student or trainee.
• Employers should have a policy with strict supervision of interns and assign a mentor.  Supervisors should actively participate with interns.
• The employer should derive no immediate advantage from the activities of trainees or students.  SHRM suggests that "a key caution is if the employer is the primary beneficiary of an internship, for example, and the employer reduces costs or accomplishes necessary tasks through the intern, the DOL will consider the intern an employee under the FLSA.  If the intern is the primary beneficiary of the experience, the DOL is much more likely to consider the intern a trainee."

"Please note trainees or students are not entitled to a job at the end if the training.  To ensure that the intern has no expectation of employment, the DOL recommends that an employer draft a written agreement with the intern stating that the intern should have no expectation of employment and should not presume any guarantee of employment after the internship.  Though an employer should make it clear that an intern is not entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship, employers should not be discouraged from offering jobs to interns.  

The employer and trainees/students understand that trainees/students are not entitles to wages for the time spent in training.  before beginning the relationship, employers should draft a written agreement stating that payment for the intern's services is neither intended nor expected during the internship."

This article should not be construed as legal advice.