Organizing a float center internship – DSP 04

Float On swears by its internship program.

We’ve been running it for seven years, and it brings us a lot of joy. Running an internship program is also work, and you have to be sure to do it legally.

In today’s episode, Ashkahn and Graham will talk more about the legal requirements and why we love our internship program.

US Government Fact Sheet: Internship Programs Under the Fair Labor Act

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Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)

Graham: So, today’s question coming in is, “I’ve heard you guys run internships, can you tell me more about that?”

Ashkahn: So, we’ve been running a quote-unquote “internship” pretty much since we started. Since the day we opened, and I’ll explain “quote-unquote” in a second here. There’s a lot to know, actually, about internships, and they’re awesome, and they’re fun to run, and they also take some work to run. At the end of the day, we’ve had one since we opened almost seven years ago now, and we definitely think it’s been worthwhile enough to keep around this entire time.

Graham: So, one thing you should know right off the bat about internships is that there are laws about it. You need to make sure that you’re following the laws about it and a lot of those laws mainly involve making sure that you’re not just engaging in slave labor … Is essentially what they’re for.

Ashkahn: Yeah. Basically abusing employment law. They don’t want you calling what would be an employee an intern as a way of getting around various overtime laws, or minimum wage laws, or all sorts of stuff like that. That’s kind of the intention, I think, of most of the rules around it.

Graham: Nor do they want you doing an unpaid internship that just has the intern doing the same mundane tasks over and over again, and not actually learning anything at all from it.

Ashkahn: So yeah, let’s talk about it. And actually the federal government has a little document that kind of explains the general rules around internships.

Graham: A lot of these tend to be really what’s upheld in all the different states as well. They have to be upheld in the different states, but a lot of states don’t build too much on top of this. We’ll talk about the general characteristics of internships. We’ll talk a little bit about what we do, and of course, with all of that, definitely talk to a lawyer in your area, because your local laws can differ a lot.

So, the main thing though, is this list of six items from the federal government, which says … I’ll just read them here, they’re kind of interesting. Number one, “The internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in an educational environment.” So, it needs to be educational.

The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern, not for the benefit of you, the float center owner, or your rooms, or your tanks or anything like that.

“The intern does not displace regular employees, but works under close supervision of existing staff.” So they can’t just be running off, doing their own thing, and like, cleaning salt in a corner somewhere.

Ashkahn: Yeah, and you can’t have two employees on shift, except when you have interns, and then you can have one employee on shift, because the intern’s there. That would be you actually kind of replacing where you would need an employee with an intern.

Graham: “The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern, and on occasion, it’s operations may actually be impeded.”

Ashkahn: Yeah. I would almost say that’s the best kind of spirit of what they’re trying to get across with all these internships, as best as I can tell. If it kind of feels like the internship is more of a burden for your business than necessarily a help. You’re doing it on the right edge of correctly, in terms of the legal point of view.

Graham: There’s a couple more here, but let’s pause there for a second, because I think this is where a lot of people have the idea of internship wrong. I think the reason they have it wrong is pretty much because internships have not been run legally for a very long time. Like, decades before this. Only recently, in the last decade, the government has started to crack down on improperly run internships.

Ashkahn: And there’s a lot of volunteers, right? And that’s a distinction that needs to be made. So, you might be used to seeing volunteers, where these same rules don’t really apply. Volunteers can specifically be there to do work, and replace work that employees would need to be doing. But the catch is that only non-profits are actually legally allowed to have volunteers, so if you’re a for-profit business, volunteering is not one of the tools in your tool belt.

Graham: Yeah, hence the “quotes” early on. It was a good couple weeks there where we were running a volunteer program before we realized that we absolutely were not allowed to do that, and shut the entire thing down, and kind of re-launched it later as a legitimate internship. Whoops. The things you should probably be tested on before they [the government] gives you a business license, or something.

So, yeah, there is this confusion I think. And it comes a lot, too, out of the movie and film industry, and television too. For a long time, you know, they got by on a lot of interns. And I think when people think of interns, they almost think of the really excited person bringing people coffee, right? And in those industries specifically, you had this a lot because there’s kind of no good way to break into it. So, they could have unpaid interns, who, all they needed to do was impress the director. And as long as that’s what they’re doing, and they’re kind of there, then they have a chance to move up in the TV or film industry.

So, that’s been portrayed so many different times also on TV and in film, that I think that’s the impression that we have of interns, which, again, is very much not right. So, that’s point number four.

Point number five is, “The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship.”

Ashkahn: So they basically don’t want you dangling the promise of a job over someone as a way to get them to do whatever you want for three months, right? It’s like, hey, yeah, I know I’m making you work like 12 hours a day for this internship, but if you make it to three months, I’ll give you a job. So, that’s the basis behind that rule.

Graham: And the last one is, “The employer and the intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages for the time spent in the internship.”

Ashkahn: Yeah, so, that one’s pretty straightforward.

Graham: You can pay them, of course, but you don’t need to. So, that’s it.

Ashkahn: All that kind of adds up to a much more vague set of rules than maybe you’re used to hearing from, like, federal regulation. Again, it’s not a list of … They have to work this many hours, or they have to do a performance criteria review of 20 questions at this point. It’s a lot more like, here’s … if your internship feels like these things that we’re saying about internships, you’re probably doing it legally.

And if it feels more like your interns are saving you on employment and you’re getting kind of free employees out of it, then you’re probably not quite doing it correctly.

Graham: And even the other things that are required are wishy-washy as well. So, there should be some kind of review built into it after a set amount of period. So, maybe after three months you and the intern sit down and the intern reviews you, the business owner and the business. And you review the intern’s performance.

Ashkahn: And this one might be more state based. We found that rule specifically in Oregon’s kind of internship rules.

Graham: At least for us in Oregon, there’s no exact guidelines, even, for that. It can be done verbally. They have papers that they recommend you fill out, but that’s not an exact requirement for it. The specifics kind of vary as well on that front.

Ashkahn: Then, there’s also a limit on amount of time, at least here, that you can have interns. I think it’s 18 months. It’s something that we’d never even come up against, because having an intern for a year and a half is such an intense amount of time.

Graham: Yeah, so, I guess with all this in mind, how do we run an internship, and why, I guess at this point is probably what you’re thinking. Why do we run an internship?

Ashkahn: The why is … You know, there’s a few different aspects to it. One of course, is that I love teaching people about float tanks, getting people in the float center, and being able to actually show them what’s going on, is one of the reasons that we’re here. Another big reason is to get people floating who maybe can’t afford it.

And this is an important distinction, which is that built into our internships, floats are actually part of the curriculum.

Graham: Yeah, so they’re actually required to float over the course of their internship as part of their education.

Ashkahn: As opposed to giving floats as compensation for, you know, interning a set amount of hours, which sounds a lot like you’re paying the person in floats.

Graham: Which means taxes, and employment paperwork-

Ashkahn: W2’s.

Graham: All sorts of weird stuff.

Ashkahn: So, again, at least at Float On we build it into the curriculum. They’re expected to float, so that they learn what it’s like to be inside a float tank, just like they learn what it’s like to take care of the float tanks on the outside.

Graham: And we do, we do teach them about taking care of float tanks, and, you know, we do get some benefit out of it too. They help us change filters, and wipe things down, and we specifically make sure that they go through each one of those things twice, and only twice, so that someone’s not, like, doing something that they have gotten used to and they don’t feel like they’re learning much out of anymore. There is still some benefit for us there, but it is still very hands-on too.

We’re there showing them how to do it, walking them through it, and at the end of it they actually do learn how float-tank maintenance takes place.

Ashkahn: I think one thing … I can’t remember if this was federal or Oregon specifically, stated this even more clearly, but somewhere in the rules we are reading, they wanted the information that the interns were learning to specifically be transferable to other businesses too. So, you can’t really teach them things that, were they to go somewhere else would be of no use to them. So, at least with float centers, if you’re teaching float tank maintenance, that is knowledge you could take to another float center at least, and it would still be true.

Graham: And probably to, yeah, general pool maintenance and stuff like that too.

Despite us being a really specific business, that still is definitely encompassed.

Ashkahn: So, you know, that kind of is that nice happy medium that we found between, them coming in and helping us with cleaning and stuff like that, but also it actually feeling like a learning environment where they do come out of it at the other end with some knowledge. The nice part about that too, is, at the end of someone’s internship, they’ve now floated a handful of times, and they know how the float tanks work, and they operate and everything like that.

And that means they tend to be some of the best float evangelists out there. If someone asks that person about floating, not only have the floated four or five times, and they have a much richer kind of knowledgeable experience about the float itself, but if someone starts asking like, oh, you know, it sounds kind of weird, you’re hopping in with someone else’s water, isn’t that dirty?

Then you’d be like, actually, here’s how the filtration system works. They’re really armed with a good group of knowledge to be able to tell people exactly about this and that and answer people in a much more educated way than your customers would.

Graham: Right, I mean, like, other than the actual staff of a float center, our interns probably are the best educated of any of our floaters, even more so than our most regular members who have been floating with us for years. Just because the interns actually know the ins and outs, and how the pump system works, and those little details.

Ashkahn: And, while you’re not allowed to promise them that they’ll have a job at the end of their internship, you are allowed to offer them a job at the end of their internship, if you like them. And so, it’s ended up being a really great source of employees for us. Because if someone comes through your internship, first of all, you know that they love floating. It’s pretty much the reason why they’re in your internship to begin with.

Graham: You know that they’ll put up with you.

Ashkahn: You get to see them do the actual work they would be doing were you to hire them. And you get a much longer period of time to get to know who they are than, you know, a thirty minute interview where someone has their interview face on.

Graham: For us, some of the interns we’ve hired had been hanging out for six or seven weeks interning with us, or even more, sometimes up to months. During that time, you really do get to know a person. Plus if they are willing to hang out for months at a time, without being paid, for them, in order to learn about the float tanks and to get in to float themselves, that’s kind of the person who you want to be in your float tank center all the time.

Ashkahn: And while no hiring method is perfect … I mean, we’ve tried everything from our internships, to Craigslist, to asking our current employees for recommendations, and all of those processes have gotten some people that are great, and still with us, and other people that were terrible and were with us for, like, a week … Despite all that, there’s no perfect method out there. The internship does seem to do a better job at getting us good people to hire than the rest of the methods.

Graham: Even right now, I think about half of our shop staff has come through our internship at some point.

Ashkahn: So, yeah. They’re crazy, and sometimes you want to pull your hair out, because it’s just that one extra thing that you don’t really want on your plate some days. But at the end of the day I think it’s been really great for us, and great for the people who get to float, who otherwise wouldn’t have an opportunity to.

Graham: Yeah, absolutely.

Ashkahn: All right, well, as we always say, you can’t catch them if you don’t have your hands open. So, keep your hands open.

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