Why Change

Let’s face it: you didn’t enter into business to manage human resources. And yet, because HR is complex, precious time and resources are used up as you handle it in-house. Why is "do-it-yourself" HR so overwhelming?

Here are six main challenges that small businesses often cite:

1. Doing HR right can be time consuming

The scope and responsibility of HR is broad – covering both tactical and strategic activities. Unfortunately, the tactical HR activities can consume all of the hours in the day and steal time from the truly strategic activities. Doing HR yourself means allocating time for functions such as benefits planning, recruiting/hiring, on-boarding, training, managing personnel files, payroll/time reporting, employee relations, compensation philosophy, performance reviews, manager development, organizational design, annual merit evaluations, bonus/variable compensation, managing leaves and life status changes, and lots of HR administration and compliance issues.

2. Explosion of benefit plan choices

The explosion of benefit costs has created a huge burden for many businesses. Should your company offer traditional benefit plans, Health Savings Accounts, Flexible Spending Accounts? What about Life Insurance, STD/LTD, Retirement Plan and various Voluntary Benefits? If so, which ones will fit the needs of the employees and executives the best?  How much of the premium cost should the employee pay?  Which plans will make it more likely that you’ll get the talent you need for your company to succeed? Figuring out how to design and negotiate which plans will make you more competitive is no easy task.

3. Many 3rd party relationships to manage

You will have to manage a payroll vendor, federal and provincial tax authorities, health insurance brokers, health insurance carriers for medical, vision, and dental, and disability, as well as recruiters, WSIB, MOL, outplacement, legal guidance, and many others. Managing all these vendors also places a burden on the accounting team to reconcile invoices and pay vendors. 

4. Many regulations

The acronyms are numerous and adding up every year: EI, CPP, EHT, ESA, OHSA, WSIB, NEER, YMPE, HCSA, EPSP, etc.  And you will have to keep up with federal laws and labour laws specific to your province, plus ever-changing legislation.

5. Lack of negotiating leverage

Given the size of most small businesses, they simply do not have negotiating power when dealing with large insurance carriers and other vendors.  Unfortunately, the end result can be the lack of control over escalating costs.

6. Too much paper and inefficient manual processes

HR consists of multiple inter-connected business processes and multiple people involved in each process. Our clients tell us that in their former “do it yourself” approach, many of their processes were ad-hoc, requiring manual effort and quickly turning into paperwork nightmare.