Chris (00:02.93)
I want to thank you for joining us today. Today, think we’ve got a great topic. One of the things that we know is that HR today, HR teams are greatly overworked. And so we want to talk today about ways that maybe we can help those teams to where they’re not so overworked and we give them a little more support at an economical rate. And so I’ve got Emily Frederick with my HR MyHRConcierge with us today. I appreciate you joining us

Emily (00:31.498)
Thanks for having me, Chris.

Chris (00:33.388)
And she works with all of our groups. She’s over that support function. So she talks with a lot of different HR team members through just the normal course of her day. And I thought she would be a great resource for this. So yeah, so I think it’d be a great topic.

Emily (00:50.528)
I’m excited. Yeah,

Chris (00:53.038)
And so as we talk about these HR teams, and specifically, when you look at these small to mid -size companies, typically they may have one person, maybe two that are in the HR department, but a lot of times also they’re, they may not just be doing HR, they’re doing accounting, they’re doing payroll, they’re doing a lot of other things as well. And

I think that breeds a lot of angst and stress, you know, for these individuals.

Emily (01:29.078)
Yeah, absolutely. Most of our clients are just an HR department of one is what I would call them. And so they handle a little bit of everything and that really turns into a lot. There was recently a survey, it was done in 2023 by a company called Sage and they surveyed, they got over thousand HR respondents from mid to all the way CEO level, C -suite level.

Chris (01:36.156)
Yeah.

Emily (01:58.966)
They asked their feelings on working in HR and Chris, 95 % of them said that HR is just too much work. That they spend too much of their day doing things that don’t feel productive to them, don’t feel especially anything that gives them that internal motivation. 62 % said they’re considering leaving the profession altogether. But of all the respondents,

Most of them said that they still love HR and they love what they consider to be the purpose of HR. They just get really stuck in those administrative tasks and functions when what they really want to be doing is focusing on people and strategy. And instead they’re mainly

Chris (02:51.666)
Yeah.

Emily (02:55.69)
They’re being forced to deal mainly with compliance issues and that just feels tedious, I

Chris (03:03.24)
Yeah. And I can see that because if you think about what we’ve been through the last few years between the pandemic, all those changes, all those regulations, and then you look at today specifically, there are so many companies, you know, years ago, and we’re not talking about the 90s, we’re talking about four or five years ago. If we were looking at a 20 man group, 50 man group, typically

the most part, they’re going to be in one state. Now, we talked to, I was talking to somebody the other day that was a 20 -man group, and they had, I think they were in 15 states. They were basically all remote. And so, I think a lot of that angst comes from, okay, I’m based in, you know, Georgia. How do I know and keep up with what’s happening in California and Illinois and Washington and Oregon and all these other places because I have employees

And I think I do think that’s a huge, I could see where that gets very stressful, specifically if they don’t have the resources and the support for

Emily (04:12.662)
Yeah, and so I think that is one of the big questions is how can those teams be better supported so that they aren’t stretched, they aren’t having to think through, especially compliance issues in 15 different states when, again, like you said five years ago, you only had to deal with your specific location. And even

Chris (04:32.584)
Mm -hmm.

Emily (04:40.47)
In a lot of places, keeping up with your locations, changing laws, changing requirements was a full -time job. But now you’ve got additional places all over the country and employee, like you mentioned before, employment laws are changing faster now than they have in decades. We’ve had bigger changes in the last five years than probably 20 years before

Chris (05:06.588)
Yeah, absolutely. And you think about that, you know, some areas where that can hurt is not hurt, but cause complexity, just simple things like an employee handbook. Whereas, know, used to, again, it’s federal state. Now we’re talking federal state, federal multistates, and then also municipalities.

Emily (05:32.086)
That’s right.

Chris (05:34.108)
So yes, I could see where that gets extremely, extremely complex.

Emily (05:41.878)
For sure.

Chris (05:42.152)
And so one thing that we see, and I think I kind of get your thoughts, is what are some ways or some areas that they can get this additional support to help them through this stress so that it’s not just a party of one that’s having to do all this, but yet maybe they have some economical ways that they can

allocate and outsource some of these functions so that it just gives them that support they

Emily (06:17.236)
Yeah, there are. So back to that survey, what so many of the respondents feel burnt out on is the administrative tasks, the day to day administrative compliance issues. So you’re looking at things like maybe recruitment, but onboarding benefits, payroll. And I mean, there’s more that can go under that umbrella of benefits. You’re looking

or ACA compliance and administration.

those things can easily be outsourced to another company that is better equipped to keep up with the ever -changing laws and the new compliance requirements. And they’re outsourced easily. know, a company might be able to find a single group to handle all of any or all of the things that they would like taken off of the plate of the HR person.

you can also sort of do it a la carte. You might have a company that just handles your payroll or a company that just handles your benefits and then those things are mostly inexpensive and can be just just handed off, handed off and then that person doesn’t have to deal with

Chris (07:44.136)
Yeah, no, and that’s a good point. And I think that’s become a lot more, I think a lot more people are doing that. for instance, know, historically payroll, I mean, ever since I can remember then, you know, in the workforce, it was generally outsourced, right? Because it was something that was very common. I know when we started this business, what, 15 years ago, and we started helping these companies with HR,

It wasn’t as prevalent. And so, you know, it’s kind of gotten over the years. I think a couple of things have happened. One, you see these payroll companies that are kind of spreading out into other services. see it just becomes people becomes more aware of it and how it works. It’s not as much of an education because they kind of understand the process. We see it being much more, you know, much more awareness about

Kind of the same thing with Cobra and those things. And I think it really makes sense to, whatever ways, whatever, deficiency is not the right word, but whatever needs that they have, those gaps that they need to fill, to do that through those processes, I think really, really is helpful. And I think it also from economics, I’m gonna count it, so I always go to economics.

From an economic perspective, if you think about it, if you go and you’re hiring a HR professional to come in and provide these services, whether that’s COBRA or ACA or just general compliance or any of those things, it’s not just the salary, right? So maybe you hire somebody for $50 ,000. It’s the recruitment process.

which generally you’re looking at 20 to 30 % probably for that. And that’s not just a fee. So that doesn’t mean I’m gonna go pay a headhunter that amount. But if you think about the time involved, you think about maybe you have to put that ad on LinkedIn, whatever that may be. You’ve got training. Again, you may not send them out to take a Carnegie course,

Chris (10:05.276)
there’s going to be training, right? You have time, have to build the training programs, all those different things that go into that, which would be several thousand dollars, as well as a loss of production. We know that when we hire folks, they don’t step in and just start. Generally, you can be talking three to six months to kind of get them going.

Emily (10:25.685)
Now it takes nine.

Chris (10:32.808)
And if you look at a $50 ,000 person, you’re talking a lot of money. And so one thing that does happen as well from an economic perspective, one, you’re not having to put that full head count on your payroll. But also, so you don’t have that cost, you can get it fractionally because a lot of these companies, it’s not a one -to -one relationship. They have one consultant that works with a lot of different companies. So you’re only bearing a fraction of that cost.

But also, you know what, when that person goes out on leave, or maybe they just decide to leave, you as an employer or you as a company don’t have to worry about that. You don’t have to go source that. That’s right. That’s right. And so, you know, I think that really makes sense. And it just gives them a lot more access to your point to expertise.

Emily (11:17.536)
That’s right. Because you’re getting a whole team.

Emily (11:32.5)
And I think the expertise is the biggest part of it. Like we’ve already discussed. It’s so hard for anyone to keep up with all of the compliance issues. But if you have it because you have other things to focus on, right? So even as an HR leader in your own company, you have your company’s culture to worry about. You have your employees and their morale. You have things, strategic goals to advance, advance the bottom line for the company to make the company profitable.

And so HR leaders or HR employees don’t want to spend their day focusing on every single compliance update that has come in, especially some of these states that have multiple every single year, but they can have a team that is entirely focused on those things and is going to make sure that they’re aware and they’re compliant in their multiple different procedures.

Chris (12:26.184)
Yeah, no, absolutely. And so, you know, the other thing that can happen as we talk about, you know, we’re talking a little bit about headcount and having these is growth. It’s just you have a lot of flexibility there because, you know, if you go from 50 employees to 100 employees, there’s a lot of work to that. Hiring and firing

Emily (12:49.555)
Absolutely.

Chris (12:51.688)
you know, because if you hire, you know, if you hire, if you need 50, you can’t hire 50. You got to hire 75 because you know, there’s going be a percentage of them that aren’t going to make it. And at this point, it’s that, it’s that partner, that outsource partner or support partner is the one that that’s got to bear that flexibility in that

Emily (13:12.542)
Yes, yes. And so you’re not hiring an additional person to hand manage the onboarding and the payroll and all of that for those employees because you have your team set aside that is ready to grow with you and they are there and just flexible.

Chris (13:28.466)
Yeah. So the other thing that you touched on, which I think was important, is just culture and employee satisfaction. And I think that’s twofold. One, if you can take some of these compliance administrative tasks off your plate and focus on strategy, culture, obviously it’s going to be a better

a better place to

Emily (13:59.614)
Absolutely. Your employees are happier. And another thing that we really see quite often is that one of the things that we do for our employees, for our client customers is we help manage, help them create great policies for their employees that will lead to better employee satisfaction. So you have a team that’s able to help you work through.

some of the changes that need to be made. Maybe a company is just really old school and they haven’t changed anything in the last 20 years as far as the way they handle their people. With a team like ours, you sort of get that person who sees a lot of cultures and a lot of different ways that things can change and they can help bring the company

Chris (14:37.224)
Yeah.

Emily (14:54.814)
maybe into more current times, maybe adapting a little bit more, and they can assist with helping their employees then feel more satisfied at work in all of their various functions, not just their HR

Chris (15:10.716)
Yeah, and that’s true because I know a lot of employers that we talk to, for instance, specifically with the handbooks, you know, there’s no telling how many. It’s like, well, do you have your handbook in Word? Well, no, I’ve got it Word

Emily (15:24.032)
Yeah.

Chris (15:25.768)
You know, that hadn’t been around for what, like 20 years? And so it hasn’t been updated. And I think, you know, one of the things as it relates to employees is they just want to know what you expect. Tell me what you expect of me and what I can expect of you. If we can have the rules and the guardrails, we’re good. It’s the nebulousness because there’s so many times where I hear people and they go, wow, we kind of do

Emily (15:38.078)
Yes, absolutely.

Emily (15:46.73)
Yes.

Chris (15:53.819)
this sometimes and this sometimes. I think that’s where a lot of the cultural strike comes in because they don’t know where they

Emily (16:02.612)
Yeah, and they don’t have their procedures nailed down so that just like you said, the employees know what to expect, know what’s coming. You know, I know what’s coming at all different times of the year. I know when my annual review is going to be. I know when compensation increases might happen and when it’s a little bit out into the ether, a little ambivalent, people just get nervous and anxious.

Chris (16:26.268)
Yeah, no, absolutely. then also, you know, there’s a compliance component to that too, because while we want to let them know what they can do, we also have requirements, you know, to tell them. So it goes to that as well. So tell me this. So you work with a lot of these groups that have that one, two -man HR team that are just stretched

we talked about a lot of different things. I mean, what, what are those areas, that you see that, that, that we can use to support, you know, that if I, if I’m an HR person and I’m going to my owner, my president, whatever that may be, and I’m trying to figure out how do I, how do I put these things together? How do I, how do I, how do I solve my gaps, solve my stress?

I mean, what kind of advice would you give to them to say, hey, here’s some options and some ways to maybe you want to look into

Emily (17:32.018)
Absolutely. The biggest bulk of I think our value to our clients is to be the resource that they can come to for compliance questions. So if you never know what is going to come up in a day, it could be something related to a specific leave of absence that is required.

a requirement that the company has to offer a specific leave of absence and they just don’t know how to manage it. They’ll come to us and we can walk them entirely through that process, explain to them what their employee is entitled to, and then what their requirements are for them as the employer. Or something that comes up a lot is, I had someone quit our company today.

but they still have their company vehicle, they haven’t turned it back in, what do I do? And we can just help walk them through situations like that because there are laws and there are regulations around all of those different things, even though sometimes they seem like they should be common sense, the law is not necessarily common sense. And our support team gives them someone to help walk them through various situations. That’s the main part of our day.

And it’s actually my favorite part of our day. I love being able to assist in those types of conversations. But there are other things too. Benefits administration is huge. Not every person working in a small company knows the ins and outs of when someone can elect benefits outside of open enrollment, when they’re able to drop someone from their coverage. But when we’re administering benefits for our client companies, can

again walk them through that or we can just take it all on and be the person that that handles all of those

Chris (19:28.936)
No, yeah, and that’s helpful because a lot of what to your point I guess a lot of where that benefit comes from is the sounding.

is somebody to talk scenarios through because I know I’ve been at companies prior life where I didn’t have that. And so you end up Googling and what we found is Google’s not always right. I know that’s blasphemy, but it is true. It’s not always right. And so it’s having that knowledgeable vetted resource. And I think I think you’re right. I I think that could really relieve a lot of stress from

these HR professionals that otherwise don’t know where to

Emily (20:11.334)
That’s right. sometimes when there have been days when I’ve talked through a big scenario with a client and they just finished off by saying, thank you for listening. I don’t have anyone else I can talk to about this situation, but I can’t talk to anyone at work about it. And it’s a nice feeling to be able to help work them through

Chris (20:32.22)
Yeah, no, absolutely. And so, and I can see where that really helps. you know, the other things you mentioned like benefits administration, one thing through, you know, that I think could really help support these HR professionals is like benefits administration software, which a lot of times you can get through different avenues, right? Maybe your broker gives it, a lot of times brokers will provide

HR companies can provide that. Can you talk a little bit about the efficiencies and those things that you see from things like systemically from the benefits administration in particular?

Emily (21:16.508)
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we use a process in which when an employee is onboarded into the company, then automatically an email is generated that tells them when they’re going to be eligible for their benefits, which benefits they’re eligible for, and they can just walk through a portal, helping them choose benefits, compare and contrast the different benefit offerings, the costs, all of

And then for our clients, we receive their election notice and then we actually do the enrollments for our clients in many cases. And then similarly, if that employee were to be terminated, they would be terminated out of the online portal. We get the notification and then we terminate their benefits. And in most cases, we also make sure that the COBRA information is sent

so that the company is compliant with yet another requirement that they would have to deal with.

Chris (22:17.094)
Yeah, and that’s a good point on COBRA because you would not believe the number of people, and I know you talk to them too, that we talked to that I didn’t know how to send out anything for

I, I, what do you mean,

Emily (22:30.772)
Yeah, and not only do you have to send it out, but there’s a timeframe in which it has to be done or you’re not compliant anymore either. you know, there are all of these specific rules and regulations around how long an employee has to elect the Cobra, how long they have to pay for the Cobra. And it’s, it’s a lot that most, I’m sure, you know, someone who is specifically a benefits administrator, that is their entire job for their company, they know those things.

But when you have an HR team of one, benefits administration just may not be something they’ve ever put a lot of time into learning and they don’t know all of the nuanced laws.

Chris (23:10.79)
Yeah, because it’s hard to know everything. And so you definitely need to do that. so yeah, so Cobra is one that we hear a lot where people aren’t doing and maybe aren’t. even that really, and everything that we say, obviously we do a lot of these things, but everything that we’re talking about, some of those they can get. So for instance, like Cobra, in a lot of instances, your carrier may do it for you free, right? So it’s not even something you have to pay for.

But you do need to make sure that you ask for that. And so, and to have them do that. Now, if they don’t, obviously folks like us, groups like us can help them with it as well. You know, another thing I wanted to talk about specifically as it relates to knowing everything is ACA, our favorite topic. So, you know, the number of groups that

Emily (23:44.723)
Mm

Emily (24:02.645)
Yes.

Chris (24:09.436)
that I’ve talked to this year that did not know they had a reporting requirement is phenomenal. We have, okay.

Emily (24:20.118)
Because yet again, the law changed, right? The goalposts changed recently. And so who notifies them? Who tells them? We don’t know.

Chris (24:29.416)
That’s right. That’s right. you know, we’ve been filing back. I mean, this year, I think we filed back into 2019 for some groups, those things. And so, you know, and there are resources for that. know, if you actually, if you’re ACA, you probably have health benefits. Your broker should be a good resource there that you can use to keep you up to date on what’s going on. Hopefully, they’re always a good resource.

But also just from a reporting perspective, to your point, it changed this year in that you had to eat small groups had to e -file this year for the first time where they had to they could mail in their forms in prior years. But, you know, that’s something that, you know, again, that’s one of those non core functions that you could certainly support and maintain compliance with the smaller groups, because even though, you know, we work

You know, we’ve worked with clients that had, we had a client that had six or 700 employees that have one HR person, right? So when we talk about a team of one, we’re not talking about an employer that has five employees. We could be talking about groups that have 600, 700 employees. It just depends on how they’re

Emily (25:54.922)
Yeah. And then they get this requirement that even if they’ve done it before, say they did it last year or two years ago, they do it one time every year. And it’s one of those things that the knowledge on around how to do it. They have so many other things going in, in their HR brain for the rest of the year. It’s gone. The minute it’s done, it’s gone. And so.

when they have to do it the next year, it takes, they have to relearn how to do everything. And it, it, it, it’s very overwhelming for our, for a lot of our clients, even they, if they’ve done it multiple years in a row, coming back to that time of year, it’s a very overwhelming

Chris (26:42.312)
That’s right. And there’s no telling how many clients I’ve talked to that are prospects that have called in and said, well, Susie left in 2021 and, you know, Joe, the new person didn’t know we had to file. So they filed through 2021, but when they had that turnover, it just never connected because to your point, it’s a one time a year thing. And so, you know, again,

Utilize brokers, utilizing support mechanisms or companies kind of like what we do, what others do can greatly assist.

Emily (27:22.59)
Yeah, and if they’re signed up for a service like ours, they’re at least going to get reminders starting earlier in the year. Be ready, this is coming. Be ready. We’re going to have to have this information from you. So it doesn’t come all at once, that they have to figure out they have to do it, and now it’s due in two days.

Chris (27:28.935)
next

Chris (27:41.626)
Right. No, that’s exactly right. And the other thing, you know, is technology. We talked about benefits administration software, but one thing too is a lot of times that creates efficiency, but also when you outsource that to, again, you can get that from your broker, wherever you get it. You can save money because again, if you’re getting it from

provider such as that, what they’re doing is they’re buying one license and they’re allocating it over many. Whereas if you’re buying it and doing that yourself, you may have to pay 10 grand for a license and it’s a one -to -one. So you’re paying the full 10 grand instead of some small fraction

Emily (28:28.15)
That’s right, for something you use for two weeks out of every

Chris (28:32.284)
Yeah, yeah. you know, as we kind of are, you know, coming down to a close, I mean, what are the, is there anything else that you would like to, you know, for these groups, these teams of one or two, you know, to kind of think about as they are trying to determine how to relieve some of stress.

Emily (28:57.578)
I just, I think it’s important to know that there are ways to get support into your HR job. There are ways that you can release some of the tedious day -to -day functions that take a lot of your time and energy, but aren’t what you want the main focus of your day to be. And those…

those services, services like ours, are relatively inexpensive, especially when it comes down to keeping the HR person happy and not making them feel completely burnt out so that they’re one of the 62 % that are considering leaving HR. And you can look into a service like ours for a relatively low cost per month and it alleviates a lot of other stressors.

Chris (29:52.742)
I think that’s perfect. I that’s perfect. Well, I appreciate you joining me. You always do a great job and we’ll definitely do some more. And yeah, again, I just really appreciate you jumping on and we’ll see what our next topic is. All right, thank

Emily (29:58.628)
Yeah, thank

Emily (30:10.474)
Looking forward to it.

Chris (30:17.03)
Okay, that is it. Let me see where my mouse went. Of course I, where is it?