Natasha is a leading HR expert, entrepreneur, author and sought-after media commentator for outlets such as Sunrise (Channel 7), ABC Radio and The Australian Financial Review. Natasha co-founded Employee Matters in 2011 to help Australian businesses achieve success through their people.
At Employee Matters, we are often faced with potential clients who have a difficult decision to make. Do they:
Carry on without specialised HR support as their business grows and try to manage it in-house;
Invest in hiring an expensive HR Manager with the level of skills and experience needed to support their growth;
Outsource their HR needs to a specialist HR consultancy which can grow the service as their business grows?
Here is a video to help you compare in-house HR capability vs an outsourced HR service:
Should you decide on outsourced HR, your next steps are to:
Consider the HR service you will need now and as you grow;
Understand the details and scope of the service;
Choose an appropriate HR consultancy to partner with.
As with most things in life, all HR services are not created equal, so let’s look at the kind of service you will need.
1. Reactive v Proactive v Great HR
A good reactive HR service should provide you with timely and accurate answers to your HR problems as they arise. You have a people issue, and the service will give you the advice you need to solve that issue. So far so good.
However, what happens the next time the issue arises? Do you have to go back and ask your HR consultant to repeat the process again and again?
A good proactive HR service will ensure this doesn’t happen as they will not only advise on fixing your current issue, but they will also recommend actions you can take to prevent the issue from arising again. This could include developing a policy, a process, or training your managers on how to respond in similar situations.
A great HR service will do much more. They will examine your organisation's strategy, culture and values, and work with you to drive great results through your people. The consultant will partner with you in your entire business journey, developing and implementing an HR strategy across all areas of your organisation to ensure this success.
2. Call Centre or Dedicated Account Manager
Some HR consultancy providers will offer a ‘help line’ approach to HR as part of their services. On the right occasion and for the right needs, this can be a useful approach to getting quick answers to relatively straightforward questions.
As we have seen, however, this reactive approach has its limitations. You will often be speaking with someone who does not know your organisation's history, culture, values or the personalities working for you. You may have to waste valuable time getting your HR consultant up to speed so they can give you the best advice possible.
Having a dedicated HR consultant who knows your business and your people, and is with you every step of the way in your HR journey, is an invaluable resource. Even though you are not directly employing them, your HR consultant should operate very much as part of your team, getting to know your management team and your people, such that most of your people don’t notice their HR person is not one of your employees.
3. HR Planning
The purpose of any good consultant is to supply the expertise that you don’t have in a way that meets your needs. As HR is not your area of expertise, this can mean helping you with issues where you don’t know what you don’t know.
A great HR service will take a look under the hood of your organisation and immediately spot the risks and opportunities you face, then create a plan that shows you your risks, opportunities, and how to act on both.
Your HR plan needs to align with your overall strategy, identifying the risks to your business and the areas that will drive real value from the great people you employ. Your HR service should be able to understand your business quickly, give you a clear picture of actions to implement, and help you prioritise your needs.
When you are looking to bring outsourced expertise into your business, you need them to be clear, confident, knowledgeable, and to ‘hit the ground running.’ Ensure your HR service will match you up with an HR consultant who is all of these and more.
At Employee Matters, we recruit HR experts who have at least 10 years of experience, and usually many more. This gives you and your team the confidence that they can move quickly to make a great contribution to your organisation and provide the support, coaching and mentoring that your managers need in as specialised an area as HR.
5. Sole Operator or Larger HR Consultancy
While it is crucial to get the right kind of service with the right type of consultant, using the four points above, understanding the depth of the service offering is also important.
There are many great HR consultants in Australia working as sole operators, providing a great service, sometimes (but not always) at a lower cost than an established HR consultancy firm. So why go with a more established and larger firm? Consider these three things when making your decision:
What is the sole operator's capacity to work in your organisation? What happens when they need to take leave, or when they are working with another client and you have something urgent come up? A larger firm will have other great consultants to call on in these circumstances;
Even the best HR consultant cannot know everything about every area of HR. A larger firm can have a range of consultants with expertise in different areas, which can mean your issues are dealt with quickly and efficiently;
Does your sole operator have the resources to invest in the range of tools, templates and frameworks that your business may need? A great diagnostic tool such as Employee Metrics requires significant investment to create and maintain, and this may be beyond the resources of a stand-alone HR consultant.
At Employee Matters, our Account Management model and systems allow you to have a single point of contact for your HR needs, backed by a vast range of talent and experience, systems, templates, and other resources. This means you will always have someone with you on your HR journey.
Summary
Outsourced HR is a great solution for organisations that need a level of knowledge and experience that is often unaffordable if they hire someone directly. By thinking carefully about a holistic HR solution that will meet your current and future needs, and by clearly identifying the services your potential HR provider can offer, you will ensure you obtain great HR at a fraction of the cost of hiring an in-house HR Manager.
To chat about your needs, and how Employee Matters can help you in providing an outsourced HR Service that meets your needs, why not Book a Free Call
