As a small business owner, you are the Chief Everything Officer.
From sales to marketing and from hiring to firing, everything seems to fall on your shoulders.
Small business owners spend hours each week on administrative burdens such as payroll. If you could get those hours back to focus on your core business needs and revenue-generating activity, you would.
To achieve that goal, you have three options: hire, delegate, or outsource.
Hire a Full HR Staff
Hiring an internal HR team sounds like a great idea. It can solve your problem of having too much on your plate. You need to work on your business, not in it. You need to spend more time focusing on your core business needs. An internal HR staff might help with that need.
But hiring people takes time.
You have to craft a job description, post it, review applicants, schedule and conduct interviews, then make a hiring decision. In the end, you have to trust that you have made the right decision.
Then you have to do it all over again for another HR specialist to handle a different need.
After it's all done, you could have spent several thousand dollars and more than a month finding each employee to hire. That's before you even start training them on your systems, your policies, and their daily duties.
Then there is the problem of salaries. The price of hiring a full in-house HR team is cost-prohibitive for most small businesses.
Delegate
Delegating to trusted members of your staff helps you stay focused on the big picture and tackle the countless tasks you have to get done.
But delegating HR tasks to untrained employees is never a good idea.
Non-compliance with employment laws creates a situation ripe for your business to fall victim to heavy fines and employee lawsuits. Whether someone has a discrimination claim or a payroll error, this can be extremely costly for your business.
Delegating complex HR tasks to untrained staff is a recipe for disaster. Employees quickly start looking for new work after just one payroll error. Not only can this put your small business in hot water with regulatory agencies, it can become even more costly when you have to replace those employees who left.
Outsource HR Tasks
You have a third option. You can outsource HR tasks to a Professional Employer Organization (PEO). A PEO can provide your business and existing HR team with support by taking on these administrative duties. By being a trusted advisor for your compliance needs, you can rest assured that your business will remain compliant.
Outsourcing HR tasks is not meant to replace any of your existing HR staff if you have some on your team. A PEO will complement your existing employees.
However, if you do not have any HR staff, a PEO can take on all of your HR and payroll needs.
It's important that you choose a PEO that helps your business achieve a positive ROI. Many payroll services cannot offer a positive ROI because they only take over payroll duties and nothing else. Your business will not see any direct cost savings in benefits or workers' compensation.
That’s where a PEO’s advantage become self-evident. PEOs are the only HR outsourcing solution that can provide you with a less expensive and high-quality benefits plan than you could find yourself. The same is true when it comes to workers’ compensation.
The Right PEO can Keep Your Head Above Water
There are more than 180 federal laws enforced by the United States Department of Labor. You cannot expect your internal HR team or untrained employees to have a pulse on the regulations affecting your business.
Partnering with a PEO, you gain access to trusted experts who will work tirelessly to help you stay business compliant, avoid costly fines, and provide your business with a positive ROI. A PEO could make the best solution for your business.
To learn more about PEOs, download our free eBook "What is a PEO?"
