The human resources (HR) department of a company is responsible for many things. They are in charge of hiring and firing employees, dealing with payroll, training staff, breaking down employment laws, and ensuring interpersonal work relationships are in order. However, these tasks can be both hefty and time-consuming
Fortunately, outsourcing the HR tasks of your business can be a great way to revolutionise your company as a whole. While outsourcing has its pros and cons, one benefit of outsourcing is that it can give you the flexibility you need to pursue a growth strategy for your business, according to Info Entrepreneurs.
Apart from the latter, outsourcing human resources tasks can also help you avoid penalties from noncompliance; save more money when it comes to hiring, training, and paying for benefits for your employees; as well as save you time when it comes to maintaining HR functions.
If you’re interested in consolidating the tasks of the human resources department of your company, consider outsourcing the below small business tasks:
- Employee assistance
Productivity is one of the most integral aspects of an HR department and can greatly impact the overall function of your company. However, it’s difficult to remain as productive and efficient on the job as possible when your staff may be dealing with work and/or home life distractions.
Thanks to employee assistance or counseling programs, your employees can be aided with a plethora of issues ranging from mental health problems, to family issues, to substance abuse. With the inclusion of an employee assistance program, you can reduce staff absenteeism, improve employee retention, and reduce labor disputes.
- Payroll
Making sure all your employees are rightfully paid for their work on time is critical. Late payments are considered “no payment” by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). As a result, your company could be fined for not complying. Additionally, the FLSA enacts minimum wage and time-and-a-half overtime pay.
Outsourcing payroll services, you can not only better ensure payments are correct and on time, and thus, in compliance with the FLSA, but you can also maintain happy, productive employees and reduce employee turnover rates as a result. After all, payroll is a big motivating factor for staff; do it right by outsourcing your payroll services.
- Performance management
Performance management is an integral part of human resources. This task involves strategizing ways to make the work environment the most effective for employees, rating performance among staff, setting expectations for the workplace, and praising and rewarding good performance while finding resolutions for those lacking such.
When you maintain good performance management, your employees who are productive and good at what they do will be more likely to stay. Likewise, the employees who struggle to stay on top of their work can become better team members that will continue to strive for excellence in the coming years.
Many human resources departments find that outsourcing the task of performance management is effective. After all, performance management is quite a time-consuming process and is never really finished. Yet, it is a cornerstone component of human resources as performance management can keep employees the most efficient.
- Training
Boosting your employee retention, professionalism, and morale all begins with providing them the best, most relevant training. Keeping your staff up-to-date can not only better your workforce but your entire company as compliance and efficiency are improved while risks associated with your business are reduced.
By regularly training employees, both old and new, you can improve the skills and knowledge of your staff. As a result, this improves independence among your employees so that the top-notch members of your team won’t have to consistently be relied on by those who are less experienced.
However, many companies find that they have little time to efficiently train their employees and provide continuing education. Outsourcing this task elsewhere, you can be confident that your staff will be receiving the knowledge they need to thrive within your company.
- Benefits administration
Many of your employees may become flustered when it comes to understanding, enrolling in, and utilizing the benefits they are receiving. When you outsource benefits administration, someone else can make benefits enrollment, communication, and use easier for your staff to understand.
In the past decade, many human resources departments have been choosing to outsource the task of benefits administration. In the long run, employers find that they end up saving money when they outsource employee benefits to someone else who can provide the expertise and efficiency to take on such a duty.
- Employee relations
Managing the relations between employees and employers is important to keep a work environment consistent, fair, and communicative. Through this process, understanding employee satisfaction, encouraging collaboration among employees, and providing input to the company are integral for a safe, thriving workplace environment.
Specifically, issues and disputes such as work-life balance, inhumane working hours, unfair compensation, inadequate safety in the work environment, disagreements between employees, and the like are at the core of employee relations.
By identifying employer-employee relationships, some of a company’s biggest workplace problems can be resolved. In turn, your company can run more smoothly, and your employees will be more likely to stay with you long term.
- Risk management
As many know, risk management can be divided into two main sectors. Part of risk management has to do with recognizing people as a source of liability to your business. Secondly, risk management has to do with how those a part of the company handle risks appropriately.
Liabilities risk management may look for, for instance, might include improper ethics or morale among employees, lack of leadership, increased labor costs, penalties and fines, increased employee missed days, lost revenue during network downtime, and high turnover rates.
By discovering and finding solutions to risks that can directly or indirectly affect your company, you can guarantee that employee efficiency, productivity, and safety will be more likely to be present.
- New hire onboarding
After hiring new people as part of your company, it’s important that the integration is as easy as possible for both your company as well as the new staff. New hire onboarding is a task that you can certainly outsource to quickly and efficiently get new employees adjusted to their job and the duties it entails.
The process of new hire onboarding emphasizes teaching new employees the skills, behaviors, communication, attitude, and goals of the company they are now working for. By properly engaging in new hire onboarding, you can eliminate any confusions early on. When employees feel well-integrated into your team, they will be more likely to stay.
- Drug screening
A major part of keeping a company safe and its employees’ efficiency, morale, and proficiency up to par is regularly screening for drugs. Substance abuse among employees can increase their chances of dishonesty, turnover, injuries and errors, poor decision making, and engaging in theft on the job.
For your employees who abuse drugs, this can also have an impact on their overall mood, level of stress, dependency on others, performance of certain tasks, ability to show up to work on time and complete shifts in a timely manner, and satisfaction at work.
Finding out that one or multiple of your employees are engaging in substance abuse can also be signs that they may not be stable enough mentally, physically, or emotionally for your field of work. Often, drug use is a sign of an underlying problem like relationship struggles, the loss of a loved one, or mental health issues.
- Temporary staffing
Because an HR department has a plethora of projects and tasks that need to be completed, there may be times where temporary staffing is necessary. This is especially true when the associated projects or tasks are short term and wouldn’t make sense to hire long-term employees to complete them.
Choosing a staffing outsourcing services company to high temporary staff on your behalf, you can get the short-term employees you need quickly while leaving more time on your hands for other important business duties.
Temporary staff can serve your firm well during those times in need, and if all works out well and you have other roles to fill, you may consider making some of those temporary staff a permanent part of your company.
Temporary and permanent employees may come and stay; however, there may be times where you have to let old ones go as well. As you transition your current employees out and outsource their tasks elsewhere, take advantage of Outplacement Services to support your staff alongside their transition to a new career path.
Conclusion
With the wide range of tasks human resources departments are responsible for with so little time to do them, it makes perfect sense for businesses big and small to outsource their HR tasks. Doing so can give you more time to focus on the goals of your business, help you avoid noncompliance penalties, and allow you to spend les while saving time.
Employee assistance, payroll, performance management, training, benefits administration, employee relations, risk management, drug screening, new hire onboarding, and temporary staffing are just some of the many tasks you may outsource within your company’s human resources department.
