HR Functions

Top 3 Most Time-Consuming HR Functions

HR professionals have seen many changes over the years, but the basic HR functions remain the same. It’s up to you to manage employee information and performance. Creating a successful employee management strategy can get bogged down by the top 3 most time-consuming functions though.

 On average, HR professionals spend 40% to 60% of their time on compliance and administrative tasks. This includes:

  • New hire recruitment and paperwork
  • Benefits submission and compliance
  • Legal compliance documentation

The paperwork and compliance reviews involved in HR are a small fraction of the HR functions necessary yet require a large time commitment that smaller businesses don’t have the resources to commit. Even larger corporations look for technologies that can free up some of this time to ensure other important aspects of the business are taken care of.

What does this time constraint look like for an average company?

New Hire Tasks

With an ever-changing workforce, you spend a large portion of your time on new hire tasks. It’s up to HR to participate in recruitment efforts such as advertisements and job fairs. This is a vital task, as the average job vacancy costs $98 per day.

It’s also your responsibility to deal with initial interviews. On top of this, you’re responsible for the new hire paperwork that keeps your company in compliance with the Department of Labor and IRS.

To complete these tasks, you need clear job descriptions to attract the right talent. Clear job descriptions seem obvious, but only 36% of job seekers say they get clear descriptions for new positions. You also need to understand the new hire documentation requirements.

Completing these recruitment and hiring tasks can take up large chunks of time and resources if you don’t have the right tools. On average, it can take up to 41 days to hire for an open position. This doesn’t take into account the time to onboard the new hire.

Accessing a dedicated platform for creating and managing these important new hire documents can save time and money towards your daily HR functions.

Benefits Compliance

Another time-consuming aspect of your job is keeping up with your company’s benefits packages. Part of retaining quality employees is offering competitive benefits as part of their compensation. 51% of employers see health and wellness benefits as essential to retaining employees for the next three to five years.

This means working with multiple organizations and filing compliance paperwork for each package that can take hours to complete for each submission. To complete this requires understanding the regulations involved in providing benefits, such as healthcare and wellness programs.

You need to know how to calculate costs and requirements to make some of these benefits affordable for your employees.

You also need to know filing dates to ensure you complete all paperwork on time. Without automation, companies can spend countless hours filling out the appropriate paperwork and tracking deadlines.

Ongoing Legal Compliance

Everyday legal compliance is also an important HR function to maintain. Keeping up with employee protection laws protects your company from costly lawsuits or fines.

It’s up to you to keep up with and inform on regulations regarding

  • Compensation
  • Corrective action
  • Safety standards
  • Staffing & Termination procedures

And other employee protections. It’s your job that all policies, procedures, and protections are accessible and easily followed by all employees. This goes for in-house as well as remote workers.

This also means it’s up to you to keep up with documentation such as employee handbooks. You want to make sure all policies included in the handbook meet compliance requirements and are easy to follow. You also need to make sure policies and procedures are updated regularly to meet new compliance regulations and company needs.

Reducing HR Time Constraints

Do you know how much of your time is spent on these compliance and administrative tasks? While HR functions are primarily administrative, there is more to your position than documentation. There are many tasks you need to complete on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis to keep things running smoothly.

Finding the right resources such as automation tools for your needs is your best bet to reduce stress and free up time for other important HR tasks. You want tools that can help you create and manage important documentation that you can easily update when needed.

You also need tools to help you keep up with coming updates to regulations or due dates. You need an easy way to develop documentation to easily distribute to employees. What you really need is a partner willing to guide you through required HR functions.

HR Service Inc. has provided the services that make HR functions simple for more than 20 years. To learn more about the services and solutions available to simplify your life, contact us.

 

Written by: Penny Clark, Content Specialist

Scroll to Top