Every day Human Resource Departments are being asked to do more with less and that is creating stress on them, their organizations and ultimately the resources they are responsible for…their employees. HR leaders are searching for ways to more effectively run their departments. While there are many ideas out there, one such idea has received a lot of positive momentum recently and that is outsourcing or partnering with a benefit expert to offload many tedious, complex, and confusing accountabilities associated with benefits enrollment and administration. Businesses spend a substantial percentage of their revenue on their employee benefits that is why brining in an expert that can help you steer through benefits enrollment, technology and administration is becoming a crucial strategy today.
The Merits
Outsourcing benefits administration comes with many advantages. It allows you to shift the workload, freeing up your HR team for other critical tasks. While this saves valuable time, it also frees up their mindshare. While this may seem like a small thing, it takes a lot of time and attention to keep up with all that’s needed to manage benefits enrollment, keep up with the latest technology, and all the rules and regulations associated with benefits administrations. Finally, outsourcing benefits also helps you reduce your liability associated with offering benefits to employees.
How to Get a Good Administrator
You should have a good selection strategy when choosing the ideal administrator. Ensure you opt for an administrator who uses the latest technology and shows the aptitude of keeping up with the latest trends. When seeking bids on coverage, ensure you state how your plan design looks like as well as your administrative requirements. Moreover, you should find a way of measuring the administrator’s performance. Check on areas such as accuracy and timeliness. The best way of measuring performance is by inquiring from your staff if they are content and happy with the service.
Difference Between Co-Sourcing and Outsourcing
Co-sourcing implies that your business maintains access to reviewing and making changes to the present processes in the hands of the outsourcing firm, as the organization handles things such as data transfers, benefits enrollment and recruit on-boarding. Outsourcing assists firms with scarce resources to efficiently manage their benefits administration with fewer resources.
When Should You Outsource Your Benefits Administration?
When accuracy and timeliness of the benefits administration begin to slip, then you should start outsourcing. As your business starts to grow, its payment and payroll requirements become complex and subject to more regulatory and employee scrutiny. You need to get an adequately functioning payroll process that meets its demands without errors or delays, such as outsourcing. Additionally, in case you are promoting more people to senior positions only to see them putting more time on corrective measures and coordinating, then you are spending more money on payroll than you would when using an outsourcing firm.
It would be best if you opt for an administrator who can provide updates on progress and reports to allow you to measure their performance. Watch out also for indicators for the need of hiring an outsourcing agency. These indicators may include a top-heavy payroll team, a high training budget and so on.
