HR advice from HR consultants

Outsourcing HR may not be as costly and complicated as you think.

HR outsourcing will help you establish an efficient, cost saving development structure to allow your business to grow and prosper.

Benefits and challenges

With an HR expert like PeoplePointHR on your side, you will save money on recruiting, training and developing HR professionals whilst being supported by a commercially minded, dedicated senior HR adviser and with access to a team of employment law and HR professionals.

We help businesses flourish by ensuring our highest quality of staff management.

We help improve performance, reduce absence and staff turnover and establish time saving and compliant processes across your business.

When will HR outsourcing become a profitable solution?

There may come a time when you find that your company’s HR department requires a change in the way it functions so that it is better suited to support your company and employees.

To help you decide whether or not HR outsourcing could be a good idea for your company we have set up a list of benefits of HR outsourcing, and its challenges.

Benefits of HR outsourcing

Commonly-cited benefits from outsourcing HR to HR consultants:

• Saving costs on salaries of HR professionals

You will no longer need to employ HR professionals, saving you money on salaries and office space.

• Outsourcing your HR needs allows you to focus on company priorities

HR matters can take up a lot of time, especially if you are not trained in the field. By outsourcing your HR, you are able to spend more time on revenue-generating activities.

• Specialist HR expertise which is not available internally

If you run a small business, it is highly likely that you won’t have much knowledge or experience in handling HR related matters.

An HR outsourcing company will be able to provide you with expert advice from a team of employment law and HR specialists.

• Access to improved HR technology

This is particularly true when it comes to small businesses that tend to have less-sophisticated automation and internet systems.

HR outsourcing companies often have their own advanced technologies and solutions. Such technology could potentially cost a fortune if you wished to buy it independently for your business.

• Controlled legal risk and improved compliance (general and sector specific compliance)

HR outsourcing providers will always be up-to-date on the most recent employment law changes and will ensure that your business complies with them.

 Potential challenges of HR outsourcing

There are also a number of potential challenges and considerations that are useful to bear in mind when considering outsourcing, including the following:

• Data protection concerns when you outsource any services

Often, service providers use web-hosted software to store sensitive employee information, including payroll data and addresses.

In the event of a security breach or crash, your company and employees could be left in a difficult situation.

• Accessibility of your HR consultants

HR representatives in the workplace are often the first choice for employees to turn to when they have an issue, as they may not always be comfortable discussing issues with their employers.

Outsourcing HR could take away this personal touch and could leave employees feeling disconnected from their company and employer.

• HR problems may take longer to resolve

This is due to the fact that resolving an issue will no longer be as simple as popping into the HR department office – administrative and IT errors could lead to a timely and frustrating delay which might infuriate your employees.

• The standardisation of HR processes

The standardisation of processes carried out by the provider may be more in line with their preferences rather than your organisation.

• The review process of your outsourcing arrangement

The need to constantly review the success of the outsourcing arrangement against specified metrics. The rationale for outsourcing HR services may change as your business grows, and there may be instances of services needing to be brought back in-house.

How PeoplePointHR combats these challenges

The HR consultants at PeoplePointHR treat your business as their own. This means that they take exceptional care of all your HR needs and ensure your business is protected from any risks.

We understand business owners will have data protection concerns when they outsource any of their HR roles. At PeoplePointHR we treat all your personal information as private and confidential and ensure the safety and security of such information. We further ensure that we store all your data safely and by experts on GDPR compliance.

As our consultants work with you, you won’t need to worry about complacency of our HR consultants or long waiting periods when you have a question or problem.

We offer our HR consultancy services 24/7 and

have the ability to support you remotely as well as onsite.

Our clients never have to wait

We will never leave you waiting as we understand how important it is to deal with any HR issues swiftly.

It will feel like PeoplePointHR is a part of your company. We adjust to you, and align our processes for full efficiency of our consultancy services.

Our HR consultants are experts in their field and proud of what they do, which is why we can promise you our highest level of consultancy service at all times. We measure ourselves against strict key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure that our service level agreements are met at all times.

Alternative solutions to outsourcing HR to HR consultancy companies

You may be curious as to what alternative methods there are which you could use rather than HR outsourcing.  However, most companies use these solutions in conjunction with HR outsourcing.

Examples of HR outsourcing  alternatives include:

• Employee self-service systems(ESS) and manager self-service (MSS) systems

To make your HR tasks more manageable you can purchase an ESS system. An employee can access, add to, or edit their own personal details through an ESS system. Manager can use an MSS system to get an easily-accessible overview of their employees’ details.

You will need to be very careful on the software you purchase. As some will not match your requirements, and will end up costing you more.

• Offshoring instead of outsourcing

Offshoring is remarkably similar to HR outsourcing; however, the provider you choose will be based in a different country to your business.

This method is generally in use by companies in an effort to save on costs. It can however create additional issues for business owners. Issues include data protection errors, unavailability, slow processes, lack of flexibility from the provider and compliance with UK legislation.

• Sharing HR outsourcing services

HR shared services are most commonly in use by larger organisations with many departments, including finance, IT, marketing, reception etc. Shared services are when one human resource provider regulates the business operations and HR issues across all of these departments, or in some cases, across several organisations.

• Buying in consultancy

You may wish to seek the specialist help of external HR consultants to advise you on implementing complex or specific HR processes on an ad-hoc basis. Generally, these consultants will only assist in the setting up of certain functions and it will be down to the internal HR team to manage these functions.

PeoplePointHR does offer these services, however will always stress the importance of continuous and reliable HR support for each business.

Which HR tasks can I outsource?

PeoplePointHR offers a large range of services and will create bespoke solutions that work best for you.

Some key areas our HR consultants support businesses are:

• Creation of bespoke HR documentation, including handbooks and employment contracts
• Offer access to over 400 helpful HR documents, templates and guides you can access at any time
• Support you with our commercial approach to performance and absence management
• Guide you and train you and your members of staff to provide the highest quality of leadership development
• Support you in dealing with issues such as disciplinary procedures, grievances and managing equality and diversity
• Support you through difficult times with redundancy management and dismissal procedures

Most common forms of HR outsourcing

According to CIPD, payroll is the most commonly outsourced HR element in the UK, due to it being a more process-driven task and consequently ideal for HR outsourcing. The second most frequently outsourced task was the provision of advice on specific matter. These complex HR matters need to be handled with care and expertise. It is especcially important to outsource these tasks if employers only have little experience in HR.

Additional functions which can be outsourced (and tend to be better suited to outsourcing) include high-volume recruitment, staff background-checks, drafting employee handbooks and policies, sexual harassment training and compliance checks.

In 2017, UK businesses in the private sector spent a total of £2.42bn on buying HR outsourcing contracts, Arvato reveals. Six years before, in 2011, this overall cost was £4.04bn. The number of businesses opting to outsource their HR functions will only grow further as the benefits of outsourcing HR will become more known. 

PeoplePointHR HR consultants for your outsourcing needs

Our HR consultants are here for you night and day to ensure your HR operations are running as smoothly as they can.

With our high level of expertise and our commercially minded approach we help you use your HR procedures to get the best out of your people, boost your profits and ensure full compliance with the law, so you will never end up in front an employment tribunal.

We are happy to answer any questions you may have about our HR outsourcing solutions, or answer any specific HR questions you have. Speak to one of our expert HR consultants on 0330 555 2555.