All companies deal with HR issues. For a growing startup, they can be one of the biggest headaches. Technology companies in Silicon Valley face particular challenges.
Specifically, tech companies face a challenge finding the talent they need to succeed. The demand for technical jobs is only increasing over time, and the skills shortage places companies in heavy competition for the best talent. Silicon Valley’s high cost of living can make it even more challenging to find the talent you need to grow.
So, how can a professional employer organization (PEO) help your tech company handle HR issues and retain the talent you need? Here are some of the things a PEO can help with.
Want More? Subscribe to our Blog
Payroll Services and Tax Management
Nobody particularly likes doing payroll, and nobody likes paying taxes. A PEO can take this off your plate. As small technology companies often have DIY HR (the owner does most of it) or one HR person, removing payroll from the equation saves a lot of time which can then be spent on growing your business in other ways.
On top of that, a PEO has the unique ability to remit payroll taxes for you, instead of only telling you what they need to be. This means you don’t have to worry about either the time it takes or the risk of paying the wrong amount and getting into trouble.
Unemployment Claims Management
Another HR matter nobody likes to deal with is unemployment claims. Unemployment claims involve a lot of paperwork to ensure everything is set up correctly. A PEO can handle all of this for you. Again, this frees you to deal with more important matters. If you do have an HR person, they can be working on making your tech company the great place to work you know it can be.
Health Insurance and Other Employee Benefits
Many tech companies don’t provide good health insurance or benefits. In the days of the boom, that worked fine. With increasing skills shortage, however, there is no way to attract and retain top talent if you don’t provide competitive benefits. A PEO can add your team to their master benefits plan, allowing you to get better health insurance than you could afford on your own, and for a lower cost.
They can also handle administering benefits for you and can allow you to afford other benefits, such as dental and vision, disability, and a retirement plan. All of these make you more attractive to those scarce data scientists.
Risk Management
Tech companies already face a lot of risks, especially small companies launching a new product. You don’t want to add HR risk on top of that. A PEO can reduce your risk by handling compliance (particularly in California, where employment law can be tricky) and ensuring that you avoid fines and lawsuits that can come from things ranging from a simple payroll error to a potential discrimination suit. Good risk management is something you already know you need and extending it to HR is vital.
Workers’ Compensation Claims Management
Because the PEO becomes the employer of record for your people, they can also handle workers’ compensation. Hopefully, you won’t have a claim (and they will help you avoid it with safety training), but if you do, they will manage the claim for you. You can trust them to liaise with the insurance company if needed and make sure that an injured person gets proper compensation.
Oh, and they can also design a return-to-work program that will help increase productivity and reduce the value of claims.
Robust HRIS
We’ve left the most important thing for last. As a Silicon Valley tech person, you know better than anyone why a good tech platform is imperative. You might not be an expert on human resources information systems in particular, but you know how important they are.
Because the PEO adds your employees to their system, you can be sure that they are using a tested, robust HRIS that provides the best data integrity, privacy, and usability. Also, because they operate on a larger scale, they can afford enterprise-level software that might be too expensive for you to buy on your own.
Handling HR is particularly challenging for fast-growing tech companies. By outsourcing to a PEO, you can let the experts handle it while you focus on creating the very best product you can. To find out more about how Execustaff HR can help you, check out our blog.
