There’s no doubt that it takes time and careful thinking for an organisation to decide on outsourcing hr activities to a PEO. However, once you’ve made that decision, it’s prudent to carry your HR team along and get their full buy-in.
This is because to reap the full benefits from HR outsourcing, your in-house HR team must be fully committed to the process. If your team isn’t thrilled about the idea of working with a PEO, it’s a situation that must be well handled.
We’ve frequently found that incorrect assumptions about what it means to work with a PEO are the root causes of anxiety among in-house HR professionals. Consequently, taking the time to develop strategies to help your people overcome their resistance to HR outsourcing is crucial for the initiative’s success.
Bear in mind that brushing their concerns under the carpet won’t help, and nor will ignoring them. Instead, having thoughtful conversations with your HR team can help lessen the tension and ease off their anxieties.
How well your company’s leadership handles this transition can go a long way to generate trust or distrust in your system. A great place to start is to address the following questions that are most likely to inspire worry in the minds of your HR team:
- Are they considering a reduction of headcount?
- Will it affect my job?
- Do they think I can’t do my job?
- Is my job on the line?
It’s best practice and respectful to address these concerns among your people because it’s natural for them to feel anxious about the prospect of handing off some of their job responsibilities to an HR provider.
Outsourcing hr activities to PEO will bring about changes in your organisation. As a result, it is best to approach the transition with change management techniques.
Take the Change Management Approach
Research has shown that change often provokes both rational and emotional reactions. Therefore, taking the time to address both types of responses is essential to supporting your HR team and helping them prepare for the new arrangement.
Though it will require some effort on your part, if you consider your HR team valuable, then the extra effort you make is worth it.
Empathising with them will make a world of difference. A good angle to come from is to help them understand:
- Why it is necessary to bring a PEO onboard
- How the services of a PEO will impact their work
- How you’re prepared to help them adjust
By helping them envision the future with the professional input of specialists from a PEO, you’ll make it less threatening and more exciting for them to embrace the change.
Help them realise that having a team of professionals on their side handling the daily tasks and advising them on complex issues will free up their time for more strategic and revenue-generating tasks— the tasks that make HR indispensable.
When vision comes, so does buy-in
The key to getting the buy-in of your people is to strengthen their understanding of the value of working with a PEO.
In addition to talking about the future with enthusiasm, assure your people that it is okay to ask questions. Give everyone multiple opportunities to express their concerns in group conversations or one-on-one interactions with management.
Your focus should be on ensuring transparency and promoting a sense of job security in your team. Please do all you can to ensure that your HR team understands that this move is happening to empower them, not replace them.
This is not to say that you will sugarcoat the truth. Instead, admit that the transition process might be uncomfortable at the onset, but with a commitment to the process, things will get easier, and work will become more efficient.
Here’s Why HR Outsourcing Enhances Your HR Team’s Performance
Most HR professionals we’ve worked with didn’t go into HR for the continuous routine of managing endless paperwork. The chances are that your HR team is well trained and eager to be more strategic.
Help them realise that the coming of a PEO will mean the actualisation of their desire to be strategic. The best PEOs are structured to handle the tactical but essential HR processes that oil the wheels of organisations.
As a result, crucial processes like recruitment support, training and development, payroll management, benefit plan management and performance management are made less cumbersome or entirely removed from the to-do list of your HR team (if that is what you’d prefer).
Once engaged, an HR outsourcing company like Workforce Group lightens the administrative workload of your HR team and enables them to focus on crucial activities like:
- Culture management
- Leadership development
- Talent development and succession planning
- Employee engagement
More effective with support
Once a PEO takes over, one of the first things that begin to happen in your organisation is that your HR leaders will become more involved in working with other company leaders to manage their concerns proactively.
For instance, if a line manager reports a trend of declining performance in his department, in collaboration with the experts from the PEO, your HR can develop an action plan for that department to identify the causes of dwindling engagement and fast track performance.
A PEO doesn’t just help to handle routine HR tasks. From time to time, as tricky and complicated issues arise in employee relations management, a PEO is on hand to help your HR staff address them. This is why signing up with a reputable PEO is crucial.
Good PEOs have specialists in different aspects of HR to help navigate the complexities of employment issues. Some of these issues are:
- Strategic hiring and firing decisions
- Workers’ compensation claims
- Payroll taxes
Not only does a good PEO provide your organisation with specialised HR services that are not easily assessable as your business evolves, but they also adjust those services to suit the varied lifecycle of your organisation.
Ultimately, this will ensure that your HR team has the resources and support it needs to work more efficiently every step of the way.
With HR outsourcing, every employee wins
The benefits that a PEO affords an organisation extends beyond supporting the HR team with performing routine tasks. The value that a premium PEO brings reverberates throughout the entire workforce.
For instance, working with a reputable PEO provides your employees with access to a more robust healthcare package than your company may be able to afford them. PEOs can negotiate this wider variety of healthcare benefits by leveraging the economies of scale.
By communicating what they stand to gain to your people, they’ll be quicker to get on board and give their full support to the incoming PEO.
In Conclusion
To get the benefits that a PEO can bring your business, it is beneficial to have the buy-in of your HR team. This is because they will be largely responsible for managing the PEO, and a PEO requires time to manage.
To help with the transition, a reputable PEO should have a comprehensive process to help you and your team settle down as fast as possible.
If you’re looking to engage a PEO, you may wish to verify if they have a process to ease the transition period. Again, it’s worth the effort to ensure you’re getting the best PEO for your company’s needs, one with the solution for where you are now – and where you want to be.
If you need further clarifications or require the help of our senior and experienced consultants please reach out to us at hello@workforcegroup.com.
