Keeping Your Business

If you’re like most restaurants, you’re both living and working in a fast-past environment where there isn’t much time for the small details, if any. You deal with busy schedules, emergency situations, your staff, their schedules, your home life, and then some. Now COVID has added supply chain and employee shortages to your long list of “to-do’s”. In many cases, you may not even get to your inbox to check business and personal emails until late into the evening. Unfortunately, there are still things that need to be done before the new day begins, so you work into the night to make sure items are completed to ensure the business runs smoothly. Does this sound like you? How long can you continue to operate this way?
Staying busy can be a great problem to have, but if you don’t have the time to manage important HR items in-house, then consider the options available to you through a third party to remove this headache. These options include selling to a larger entity (acquisition), joining a PEO, or hiring an HRO to outsource the responsibility. Each option is designed to help you with the insurances, HR, payroll, and compliance aspect of your business—but an HRO provides the most flexibility along with that support.

A Day in the Life of the HRO Client

The HRO model is designed for the owner that wants to stay the owner. It is a service that removes much of the administrative burden and time involved so that owners can be more invested in their company, their employees, their culture, and their customers.

The benefits to using an HRO firm can be best explained through the lifecycle of an employee. Consider the following, and put yourself in the shoes of the owner or person that would need to manage this entire process:

• Recruiting/Onboarding—first you need to find the right person for your team. Someone to help you get the word out, file through the scores of resumes, and only send you those candidates that meet your qualifications. Then it’s onboarding. I9, W4, reviewing the handbook, tobacco policy, drug policy, every other policy, benefits explanations, waiting periods, elections, questions… That’s right, you never have to deal with any of this—you’re still working with your team, serving your customers, and making your business money.
• Payroll—likely using the payroll system to onboard, the employee’s info is all in the system and verified—benefit elections have been entered—deductions are confirmed. These deductions are often missed when the insurance broker has to tell the owner what the deductions are, and then the owner has to tell the payroll team. Instead, the HRO manages this all at once. The only time the owner is needed is to read the confirmation.
• Benefit-Administration—congrats—your employee just had a baby, but now we’ve got to make sure the baby is covered on the insurance. No more chasing employees or paperwork—the employee calls HRO directly, and the owner is notified after everything is completed successfully.

As you can see, utilizing the right HRO can free up significant time, not to mention ensuring these important responsibilities are being managed by qualified people. Employees are properly onboarded, benefits are properly communicated and enrolled, and payroll deductions match. This is the way it should be—easy. You won’t find yourself in a co-employment contract requiring your team to take benefits you didn’t pick or have to relearn a new company culture due to being acquired. Your employees won’t have to pick benefits that will likely not be to par when compared to the local insurance options. And most importantly, you will be freed up to reengage and take your company to the next level, just as you had envisioned before getting bogged down in all of the administrative work. •

PRLA has partnered with FocusHRO, and we’re ready to learn how we can help you today! Insurances for both your employees and for your business, we’re here to assist you with all things HR. Visit www.FocusHRO.com/PRLA to get started.