It’s a Challenging Time for HR and People Teams Looking to Grow
As inflation and global issues continue to take their toll on companies across the nation, the impact on HR and people teams has been notable. These difficulties follow many other notable issues such as the ongoing labor shortages, increased competition for talent across multiple industries, and rising costs of all types — all of which impact the daily work of HR professionals that are already managing a full plate of responsibilities and tasks.
To make things more challenging, the flurry of dealmaking and investment activity over the past year has dramatically slowed, with many venture capital firms telling their portfolio companies to focus on resilience and withstanding what lies ahead. The tech industry is also in a state of change, with headlines revealing a host of challenges for leaders and their teams to navigate.
For HR teams, this state of uncertainty creates additional workload in answering questions from employees, managing a consistent and increasing stream of work as new people are onboarding and others depart, and managing a host of other organizational changes. But in order to withstand this dynamic and oftentimes chaotic season, companies need to be focused on growth — which means HR teams need to be focused on work that supports that growth. For companies wondering how to overcome HR challenges, there’s never been a more important time to explore and experience the value that a professional employer organization (PEO) provides.
Wherever you are, we’ll be there to help: Explore industries that benefit from PEO services.
How a PEO Helps You Overcome HR Challenges
First, what exactly is a PEO? A PEO is an HR partner that contractually assumes some of the risk associated with the HR function. Much of the strategy, support, and daily tasks of this discipline are handled by their team versus being managed in-house by your HR team. As we’ll explore below, this is a significant benefit for your team in that it allows them to re-prioritize their time and effort on what will truly move the needle for the business.
Workload
Right off the bat, your HR team might be overextended or understaffed. HR isn’t always the most populous team, even for larger organizations. Often, HR teams can be anywhere from several people down to just one person tasked with managing everything. Whatever the size of the team, each person has his or her hands full every single day. Trying to get new initiatives launched or focusing on growth can be difficult because your HR team will already be overwhelmed just managing daily tasks. A PEO helps in two ways here: 1) they extend the capabilities of your existing team, and 2) they take over many of those daily tasks that are keeping your team from their goals.
Go deeper: Learn several more advantages of the PEO model for small and growing businesses.
Expertise
Not every HR team member has decades of expertise in multiple industries. Additionally, new complexities like multi-state compliance for remote workers can be tricky to navigate without a thorough understanding of employment law, local tax codes, and so on. When you work with a PEO to overcome HR challenges, you not only get a full team to support your daily work but also benefit from their knowledge. At Cognos HR, for example, our experts have decades of HR experience in multiple industries and have access to the information and resources you need to efficiently support employees and the organization as a whole.
Case in point: Learn how working with a PEO helped this company offload its back office functions to grow its revenue many times over.
Talent
While a PEO can be involved in developing job descriptions, participating in the interview process, and assisting with onboarding, it’s up to your organization to make the right hire. But supporting that talent once it is aboard is more crucial today than ever. This also applies to HR roles, too. Not long ago, there were more HR roles open than ever with companies struggling to fill them, which means the HR teams they had in place were more slammed than ever. With a PEO supporting your hiring efforts (for HR and otherwise), you can more efficiently acquire, onboard, and retain the talent you need to grow.
Hiring the hirers: Learn how a PEO supports the growth of HR teams.
Benefits
If you’re in HR, you know this fact better than anyone else: benefits matter more than ever. Candidates are looking for benefits programs that go beyond the normal package inclusions to feature helpful options like lifestyle benefits. These include consistent bonuses, childcare services, commuting cost assistance, subscription services, health and wellness offerings, tuition reimbursement, and more. And with the ongoing talent shortage, it’s important to consider these options when competing for and retaining talent. A PEO provider can help you gain access to stronger benefits programs, develop strategy, management open enrollment, and more.
What’s in your benefits package? Get expert insights on building the right benefits program to help you overcome HR challenges.
Cost
Last but not least is the cost factor. As your organization grows, you’ll need to expand both the HR team itself and the technology they use to support the organization. Doing all of this in-house is time-consuming and costly. But with a PEO, you gain access to both the expertise (via a dedicated team) and the tools (via included HRIS technology solutions) you need to scale. These are available to you at all times, so there’s no need to invest countless hours and resources into finding talent and tools, onboarding a larger HR team, implementing costly technology platforms, and so on — it’s all ready to go for you right from the start.
Tools of the trade: Explore the technology offerings available to you via a PEO provider.
Cognos HR is Uniquely Positioned to Support Your Growth with a Personalized Approach
Unlike smaller, SaaS-based HR solutions providers that don’t give you dedicated experts to support your needs (or the larger institutional service providers that hit you with hidden costs and lengthy service timelines), Cognos HR combines experience with dedicated representatives to manage your HR function. We are consultative and service-focused, meaning we learn about your organization so that we know how to best help and advise you. Whenever you have a need, our team will be there to help — yet we also partner with you strategically to ensure you’re making the best decisions for your organization and your employees.
Get in touch with us here to learn more about our capabilities and to get started.