FAQs on HR Outsourcing

HR Outsourcing (or fractional HR or fractional HRO) is when an outside vendor provides a company with services normally provided by an internal HR team member. These services might include leave administration, personnel file audits, employee relations, performance management, employee investigations, HR workflows to improve departmental efficiency, employee handbooks, or supporting less experienced HR staff much like a CHRO, VP of HR or HR Director might do.

Your HRIS provider’s primary business is maintaining and updating their HRIS to maintain clients or obtain new ones. Similarly your broker’s primary business is selling insurance. When these entities provide outsourced HR, they do so to distinguish themselves from competitors in their primary business area, not because they are positioning themselves in a different market, thus their services tend to be generic and delivered by people without substantial experience in the field. This usually becomes apparent early on when the agent assigned to your account cannot come up with comprehensive advice that’s tailored to your particular business operations, regulatory framework, or corporate culture.

In contrast, our primary business is outsourced HR, and our approach is always tailored to your particular business goals, operational structure, challenges and regulatory landscape. We develop long-term client relationships in which we serve an integral role in facilitating their goals and objectives. We conduct a comprehensive initial assessment to determine where you need support and provide you with a detailed plan of what we have found and what we can do for you. We know that a strong HR function is integral to business growth and we provide that function in whole for you or through effective leadership and oversight of your current HR team, working to build their skills and experience so that they can grow in their roles and better serve your company. CHRO strives to develop a partnership with clients that meets them where they are and helps them to get where they want to be.

Yes. We help clients by covering for HR generalists, HR Managers, HR Directors or other HR leadership positions. We can also cover for highly specialized positions such as a labor relations or labor law compliance specialist or support the employer’s bargaining committee in preparation for, and during, collective bargaining sessions.

We love helping your HR team members grow in their roles. We provide them with HR leadership, investigate your current operational workflows and mentor your team on how to modify these workflows or implement new procedures to increase the efficiency of your HR department and ensure legal compliance with the complex maze of labor laws that apply to every business. Our goal is to make your HR team’s jobs easier so that your team is not overwhelmed, bottlenecks are reduced, and your team members are confident in the administration of various HR functions.

A lot depends on where your company or its employees are located. For example, any company with 15+ employees is subject to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Smaller companies may also be subject to similar mandates based on state and local laws which mirror federal statutes. While the basic tenet of these laws is easy enough to understand—no discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, religion or disability—the administration of these laws can be highly complex. While a company with 15 employees probably does not need extensive policies and internal workflows to guard against unlawful discrimination, they should have someone experienced with the administration of these laws to guide them through disciplinary action, promotions, or demotions, so that they are not blindsided with having to respond to an unexpected EEOC charge. CHRO provides fractional HR packages based on your employee size to make this expertise accessible to any sized company

It depends. We have heard horror stories about third party providers not following up on inquiries for several weeks, or doing nothing but collecting forms and handing them back to the employer without any cogent advice or assistance. That’s not us. Our leave administration service is entirely end-to-end and flexible enough to adapt to your time tracking system and current operational workflows. We give employers a variety of customizable options from using our leave inquiry contact information to using an employer designated telephone number and email for leave requests. The employer can initiate the leave request or the employee can contact us directly, minimizing any delays. We take care of providing the mandated notices, communicating with the employee’s healthcare provider,, collecting fitness for duty forms and facilitating return to work. We also offer a combined ADA/FMLA/PDA service because of the complex interaction between these statutes so we can ensure you are compliant across the board. Finally, we provide employers the option of CHRO maintaining custodial control of all documents with medical or disability related information so that the employer is never on notice of the employee’s underlying condition unless they expressly request this information from CHRO. This approach reduces the risk of costly ADA or FMLA claims, and reduces the risk of inflated judgments or settlements

Yes. We have helped clients over a range of industries and each industry was once new to us. We take the same approach with every new client—we research their industry, work with them to identify all applicable industry regulations, and ensure that these regulations inform our services whether we are developing recruiting workflows, responding to an ADA accommodation request, or guiding you through disciplinary action. Even when we have had previous experience in an industry, we still revisit its regulatory landscape at the inception of our relationship because regulations change all the time or vary from state to state. Visit our HR Compliance Corner for a discussion of challenges faced by companies in various industries.

No. Workforce chaos usually arises when your HR staff is inexperienced, or you have had a lot of turnover in HR or at the management level. This means you usually won’t see a reduction in chaos without investing in HR and supporting your management team.

An experienced external HRO can often give you invaluable guidance and support during chaotic trying times. CHRO responds to this symptom by first identifying urgent matters that must be addressed, and then engaging in a comprehensive overhaul of numerous aspects of people management including job descriptions, onboarding, employee handbooks, inter-departmental workflows to maximize cooperation, and conflict resolution efforts. Once this internal structure has been developed we help employers identify their desired corporate culture (which is different for every company) and implement a series of organizational development strategies to facilitate this corporate culture. Companies can be transformed within a year or two (depending on size) with the right expertise and consistent effort.

No. Any given business challenge has multiple HR solutions, however only one or two of them are going to be a good fit for your company. A solution that is optimal for a company with 1000+ employees will likely bankrupt a company with 50-100 employees. A seasoned HRO is always going to do their legwork in understanding your company, its unique challenges, the comfort zones of your key employees. and your scope of flexibility. This way we can design a solution that is both practical and cost effective to implement, without turning your employees’ lives upside down, bringing production to a standstill, or triggering an exodus of company talent.

We take our role as your partner very seriously. If you are uncomfortable with a given strategy, then our job is to come up with a better one—usually one that is more gradual or discreet, or if a strategy cannot change (such as for regulatory reasons), then our job is to build messaging around it that is received positively by the workforce and key players involved in facilitating change. Our goal is to work with you to build your company, strengthen your foundation or lay the internal support structure you need to achieve your next growth target. This is always a unique approach that revolves around your company’s unique characteristics. Visit our section on HR Tips and Updates to see our approach to Outsourced HR.

Although you might perceive that your managers are effectively addressing your workforce challenges, this may be because they are unaware of issues due to lack of HR expertise. For example, managers can rarely tell you if an employee situation is fraught with legal risk, or if their hiring practices are compliant with FLSA mandates. This means, you don’t realize there is a workforce problem until you get notice of a lawsuit or agency investigation—a much costlier problem to address than simply managing internal processes appropriately. Managers can also be ineffective in grooming or supporting other managers or their subordinates. In contrast, HR is there to provide you with executive coaching, manager training and support, and to address any issues raised by any employee in a way that minimizes risk for the employer.

Complete our Workplace Diagnostic Questionnaire so that we know your industry, site locations and employee arrangements. We shall contact you within one business day to set up a no-cost confidential consultation.