When folks first start considering engaging with a professional employer organization (PEO), their first retort is that they are not the target audience because they already have someone in-house managing their HR functions. And even if they don’t, they may counter that they are currently managing just fine without one and can leave it up to the boss/manager/head accountant/fed ex guy to run the show for the foreseeable future.
As you’ll come to learn in our new series, PEO Insider, a PEO like Abel HR has literally hundreds of offerings that can be customized to meet your unique business needs, whether its augmenting an existing HR staff member, a whole team or taking over select HR responsibilities from folks who tackle these tasks as part of a side gig. Below, we explore just some of the perks of outsourcing to a PEO.
Keeping up on compliance
As we’ve touched on a number of times, one of the key benefits of a PEO is that we have in-house staff charged with sifting through all kinds of federal and state labor and employment laws and providing you with updates about what your business needs to do in order to be compliant.
When something of interest comes down the pike, we’ll communicate any and all relevant changes to you, including what it will impact, when it will go into effect, and how we’ll be managing it on our end. Where possible, we will even build it into our comprehensive online HR system so that you don’t have to do anything on your end to ensure you’re on the right side of the law. Further, we’ll keep our eyes out for updates and renewals so that you don’t have to!
System upgrade
If you’re striking out on your own for HR, chances are you’re doing so with a hodge-podge of HR software and systems. If you bring in a PEO like Abel, we provide a comprehensive HR solution that gives you your very own online portal where you can upload, store and access employee pay stubs, W2s, time worked and vacation tracking, and all manner of other HR functions.
Where we pride ourselves, however, is in our system’s ability to perform high-level analytics with just a few pushes of a button, so that you can get the information you need without having to jump through all the hoops. And yes, no one ever likes change, especially as it pertains to technology, but we’ll not only get you set up on the system, we’ll also train you on how to use it (more on that in a minute!) and be there to trouble shoot issues should the need arise.
Training the trainers
No matter what line of business you are in, at some point, you need to provide training. Perhaps its helping new staff acclimate to their job, helping your workforce understand a new IT system you are rolling out, or even providing required teaching for your state or industry.
Either way, training can be a cumbersome part of the HR professionals job, especially if they have to start from scratch to research the information, compile it in a way that is meaningful (and perhaps even entertaining), and then roll it out to the masses. With a PEO like Abel, we have a whole suite of training programs that we can share, and we can even toss in a qualified member of our staff to lead your office either virtually or in person and serve as a touch point after the fact to answer any and all lingering questions.
One for the books
While incredibly tedious, the employee handbook is a vital component of the HR role and one that we pride ourselves on providing. The employee handbook is a tough time to write, largely because it must encompass just about every eventuality that your business and employees may encounter, must be compliant with federal and state laws, uphold the standards of your industry, and basically set the standards for how employees are expected to behave while a member of your team.
Further, should you ever have to reference the handbook as grounds to discipline or let an employee go, you will need to feel confident that it could stand up in court. At Abel HR, we meet with you to discuss your company’s unique requirements and then help craft a handbook that will have you covered, cover to cover.
Benefits bonus
A huge component of any HR professional’s annual to-do list is to scout out, review, negotiate, and ultimately purchase the best benefit packages money can buy (or at least that the company can swing!)
It is a lengthy, and often frustrating process where your HR pro has to weigh the pros and cons of various plan offerings and identify whether it will work for your employee needs, whether it will be compelling to new hires, and whether it is within budget for your company and your employees.
When you partner with a PEO, your employees become our employees and we pool all of our collective member’s employees to create a larger pool that attracts offers from plan providers and encourages them to actually bid against each other to win our business. The result? A comprehensive benefits package that includes all kinds of bells and whistles at a bargain basement price that your HR rep, as a member of a small business, would have struggled to snag.
Safety first
While you never want an accident to occur on your watch, the reality is that it is the responsibility of your HR department to not only ensure a safe working environment, but also be prepared to do all the workup should someone get hurt on the job.
Knowing the often complicated process of responding to a safety incident, filing a workers compensation claim, and re-integrating the employee back into the workplace can prove a job in and of itself, especially if there is a question of wrongdoing on the part of the company.
However, PEOs like Abel HR typically have a safety officer on staff who is not only well versed in mitigating risk in the workplace, but will also take over the process of filing the workers compensation claim, performing an investigation, and implementing any physical or practice changes to prevent future incident. We will talk more about this aspect of the PEO suite of services in our next blog post, out Thursday!
