Growing a business is exciting. Moving from the office in the basement of your home into a brick and mortar online retail space had been the goal since the day you began your new company. The upscale care packages you offered to online customers started out as a simple choice between just a few gift items. When that initial inventory quickly sold out you had the pleasure of using the profits from those first sales to order the next set of gift items. That second set of gifts sold out nearly as quickly and it became clear that handling the care package assembly in your home would no longer be possible.
The progress through your business plan has gone pretty smoothly. One part, however, quickly became a challenge that was too difficult to manage yourself. While you have always had a great feel for the kinds of luxury gift care packages that your online customers would want the most, the human resource benefits administration was confusing.
And while it was fun and exciting to have to hire an assembly staff of ten new employees to help you stay caught up with rapidly increasing numbers of orders, the small group health insurance plans to choose between. When you reach the point of needing to hire a team of part time employees to help you meet the extra orders during holidays like Valentine’s Day and Easter, the process became even more complicated. Part time employee health benefits seemed even more confusing than dealing with the full time benefits regulations.
Human Resources Software Helps Business Owners Manage Payroll and Benefits Services
As businesses grow, they have two basic options for dealing with the increase in their number of employees. They can outsource the administration of benefits and payroll, or they can find the best human resources (HR) software package and do the work themselves.
Consider some of the tasks that employees have to manage:
- 98% of full time employees have access to paid sick leave.
- 99% of full time employees have access to medical benefits.
- 77% of full time employees are given paid holidays as part of their HR packages.
- 77% of full time employees are given paid vacations as part of their HR packages.
- Paid leave is the most commonly provided benefit to employees by their employers.
And while all of these companies are providing all of these benefits, they continue to look for ways to more efficiently manage the distribution of these benefits. One option for a growing company is to outsource their HR tasks. another is to do what many small and large businesses are doing and update their human resources software package:
- 13% of businesses have a single HR system.
- Instead, the majority of businesses use three to four different HR applications. Often one is used for Human Resource Management System (HRMS), another for learning, and another for recruiting.
- 57% of companies anticipate making a major new or additional human resources software purchase in the next 18 months.
Every company, no matter its size, has to deal with the administration of salaries, as well as benefits. In fact, the main purpose of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Acts is to require organizations to offer the correct amount of health benefits to their employees when their staff equals 50 full time employees. Even if some of those 50 employees are part time, the health benefits are still required.
In addition to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Acts, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) guarantees that employees will also be given 12 weeks of job-protected, unpaid leave during a 12-month period for several reasons. The unpaid leaves included in the FMLA are: birth of a child, care of an immediate family member or a spouse, or self-care for a serious medical condition.
HR Software Tracks the Proper Distribution of Benefits
Most business owners really want to spend their days creating the products and services of their trade. Often, they are not interested or capable of managing all of the tasks that are involved in the payroll and human resources departments.
The upscale care package company owner wants to spend time selecting products that will attract new customers and let the human resources software manage benefits and salaries.