Increased HR outsourcing delivers busy departments administrative, strategic help

More HR professionals reported outsourcing tasks to vendors in 2022 than in 2021, according to the results of HR Dive's 2nd annual Identity of HR Survey.

Reports of service vendor use rose in nearly every category. Payroll processing saw the largest year-over-year jump; 61% of respondents said they used such vendors in 2022, while 53% said so in 2021. Staffing companies commanded the next largest increase, followed by executive recruiters and benefits outsourcing/consultants. D&I consultants was the only area that saw a decline.

Percent of respondents that IT Outsourcing Services Company HR functions year over year

The uptick in outsourcing raises a question about the state of HR: Why are HR departments using increased vendor support?

Widespread outsourcing could signal shrinking departments: Vendors supply organizations with essential HR functions that a fully staffed department would normally carry out. Of course, increased outsourcing could evidence another trend. With fewer administrative tasks, HR departments equipped with vendor support may assume more strategic work. Or departments busy with administrative workloads can assign strategic goals to consultants and experts.

To investigate why more HR departments are soliciting outside help, HR Dive spoke with HR consultant Adam Calli. Calli said he's observed an uptick in vendor use among his clients, and he speculated that IT Outsourcing Services Company could stem from cutbacks or strategy �" it just depends on the business.

Preserving HR functions despite cutbacks

Employers bringing on vendors may be supplementing HR departments that shrank due to pandemic cuts, Calli hypothesized. COVID-19 prompted many companies to lay off workers. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded a spike in separations between February and March 2020. While separations returned to normal levels by May, they've been steadily increasing over the last two years. And HR departments weren’t spared from these, Calli pointed out.

As employers recover, many may hesitate to add back overhead, positioning outsourcing as a convenient, temporary solution. "Companies know they still have needs for HR services, and outsourcing is a good way to fill the gap until they decide to rehire direct staff," Calli said.

While HR Dive's data did not speak to the relationship between layoffs and vendor use, it revealed patterns between department size and outsourcing. When categorized by department size, vendor use responses tended to break down according to the representation of the sample size. But the data showed a few significant deviations. 

Total respondents by department size

Departments of 2 to 5 were the most common.

Outsourcing by HR department size

Smaller HR teams were more likely to outsource HR functions.

Relatively more respondents in departments of 1 to 5 people reported using payroll vendors. The pattern flipped with outsourcing responses in executive recruiting, D&I consultants and staffing companies. More respondents in larger departments reported using those vendors, while fewer �" and in several instances far fewer �" participants reported using them in smaller departments.

Author's Note

More details: https://codeares.com/it-outsourcing-services-company/

Reviews

[Spamalot]

So the crap writing aside, these fools thought they could keep me from seeing this by blocking my account. But I know a LOT more about computers than they do. So I did a review of them on their Facebook page, talking about the level of ethics and respect for rules that the company displays. I asked them to dump all their spam from the site. Most decent people would, but these people may not be smart enough to do that. If they don't, We can hit them where it hurts, by posting a record of their level of ethics on their page and other review sites where potential customers might look.

This could be fun. Right? Here's the letter I sent them:
************
Because you decided to post spam on the Writers Café website, in an area reserved for poetry and fiction, and then spit in our face when we asked you to stop, I’ve returned the favor and posted a record of your behavior and level of ethics as a review, here.

If you contact your SEO or whoever is dumping the spam, and have that account closed by end of day, 8/4, and can assure me that it won’t happen again, I’ll pull the review. If not, it stays. And for every spam of the site by your people there will be additional reviews on a social media site where people who might use your service will look.

Writers Café is NOT your site to play with. It will cost you nothing to behave honorably. But if the spamming continues it WILL cost you business. Keep in mind that we have more members who can review you than you have review space.
***************
The Review:

What decent company invades a website for writers, and dumps monumentally bad spam into the area reserved for the member's fiction and poetry> What trustworthy company mislabels that spam as a "story." None.

But they've done it 5 times. And when we complained and asked them to stop, their response was to block those to complain from commenting on the spam on the site.

Trust people like that with your business? I can't speak for anyone else, but no way would I trust people like that.