A growing number of businesses are utilizing temporary staff to meet fluctuations in demand. And while these resources are necessary for your company to hit its revenue and production goals, they also come with a cost: more employees for your human resources department to keep track of.  

Payrolling services, often referred to as employer of record services, can reduce burdens on internal HR teams and help companies manage their contingent workers more efficiently.  

What is an Employer of Record? 

An employer of record is a third-party partner that handles payrolling responsibilities for temporary staff and, as part of that process, takes on burdensome costs like taxes, unemployment insurances, workers’ compensation expenses, and employer benefits, while protecting the company from sensitive co-employment risks. 

In a recent Acara poll on LinkedIn, 43 percent of respondents said they are currently utilizing an employer of record. 

Payrolling can be a great option for organizations that need of contingent workers but whose internal HR teams also need to focus on other important business priorities. 

Here are five compelling reasons to consider payrolling/employer of record services: 

1. Cost-Effectiveness

Everything in business has a cost—and those costs can add up quickly when bringing on full-time employees. Benefits and taxes such as Social Security, Medicare, state unemployment, healthcare, insurance, and 401(k) plans can tack on an additional 18 to 20 percent to a base salary. When you outsource payrolling, your organization won’t be required to cover these expenses; they’ll be covered by the employer of record instead. 

Related: Case Study: A Master Vendor Solution: Streamlining Recruitment Operations for a Global Transportation and Defense Company 

2. Payrolling = Speed

Companies don’t always have the luxury of time when bringing on contingent staff, and the administrative lag of employee onboarding can slow the process by days or even weeks. By engaging with a payrolling provider, your organization can take these onboarding tasks off your plate so your new resource can hit the ground running. 

3. Day-to-Day Efficiency

As companies look for ways to make their organizations leaner and more operationally efficient, many hiring managers and HR leaders have been forced to take on additional tasks in their day-to-day roles. Once staff members become overburdened, assignments can become neglected and slip through the cracks. Using their valuable time to onboard and offboard employees is not always the best use of these critical resources. Partnering with a strategic payrolling partner can eliminate these hassles and allow your HR department to tackle more pressing business concerns. 

4. Insulation from Co-employment Risks

In today’s day and age, organizational compliance has proven critical to overall workplace success. When utilizing a payrolling provider, all payrolled personnel will be known as employees of your employer of record. This can be pivotal in insulating your organization from potential co-employment risks. An employer of record can help to solidify employment relationships and eliminate confusion surrounding the resource’s actual employer. 

5. Trial Period

Payrolling services enable you to test out your resource on a short-term contract. This will help you examine the quality of their work and determine the value that they provide to your organization. Some payrolling providers like Acara will even offer a free conversion after 520 hours worked, allowing you to bring the payrolled resource on as a direct employee at no cost. 

Related: Infographic: Employer of Record Workflow 

Summary 

Payrolling services can greatly benefit your organization’s bottom line. From greater cost savings and increased operational efficiencies to protection from co-employment risks, there’s never been a better time to pursue payrolling for your contingent workers. 

Interested in engaging with Acara as your organization’s payrolling provider? Get in touch with us today. 

The post What Exactly Is Payrolling? Why Do I Need It? appeared first on Acara Solutions.

Are You Ready to Roll?
Ready to Roll is an expedited employer of record (payrolling) service that utilizes contingent workers who have recently finished an assignment or were furloughed or laid off due to COVID-19. These workers are prescreened, which allows the payrolling process to be completed in as little as one to two business days. Ready to Roll gets you qualified employees fast, which will help your business get back to normal as we move beyond Coronavirus.

A typical onboarding process takes 3-5 days, but with Ready to Roll, we bypass background screenings and drug tests getting the worker to you in 1-2 days.

How Do Employer of Record Services Work?
With employer of record services (also referred to as payrolling), Acara acts as a contingent worker’s official employer while that worker performs services for you. As the employer of record for your contingent hires, we assume all employee classification responsibilities, absorb all relationship management and clerical duties, and protect you from sensitive co-employment risks.

Why Choose Employer of Record?
In addition to alleviating administrative tasks and insulating you from co-employment risks, our Employer of Record services save you money and time, and give you control.

• Cost Savings
  Acara’s employer of record services do not incur recruiting or advertising costs. We pass these savings to our customers by offering the services of payrolled workers at reduced markup rates.
• Insulation from Co-Employment Risks
  Because all payrolled personnel are Acara employees, our customers are better insulated from potential co-employment risk. Our employer of record services solidify employment relationships and eliminate confusion regarding the contract worker’s actual employer. All employment matters are directed to Acara—our customers’ management is not involved.
• Control
  Acara ensures that all our payrolled personnel understand that we will terminate employment at any time at the request of our customers. Our payrolled workers adhere to the policies our customers prescribe, including work practices, hours, and overtime.
• Assumption of Statutory Payroll Liabilities
  Acara requires its payrolled workers to complete and sign both a W-4 Form and Form I-9 prior to commencing employment. We assume full obligation for withholding all applicable federal and state payroll taxes. We also pay all state and federal unemployment insurance and provide workers’ compensation coverage.
• Agility
  Because all associated administrative responsibilities are Acara’s, our customers enjoy a reduction in the paperwork involved when hiring contract workers. Additionally, Acara can access its accounting and payroll databases to generate customized reports that comply with customer specifications.
• Trial Period
  Employer of record allows you to test out the contract worker and determine if they are a good fit for your organization. If after 520 hours, you decide to bring the worker on as a direct employee, we’ll convert them from our payroll to yours at no cost.

Contact us today to learn how Acara can get your business rolling.

For more information on Ready to Roll, download our workflow chart to learn about each step in the process.

The post Employer of Record Services Get Your Business Ready to Roll appeared first on Acara Solutions.

So, when we say payrolling, what exactly are we talking about?

As it relates to contingent staffing, payrolling is the provision of longer-term tempo­rary workers where the resources have been identified by the client themselves (possibly through internal referrals or an internal recruiting department), but are referred to and become the employees of the supplier providing the payroll services.

Here are some of the reasons why companies payroll workers:

• Cost savings – Working with a staffing industry partner whose WC, SUI, and other variable statutory costs are lower than your company’s in-house figures. And benefit and pay rate evaluations offer enhanced savings opportunities.
• Reduced administrative overhead and headcount – A payrolled worker is the employee of the supplier and thus the company need not monitor the payment of taxes, unemployment, workers comp, etc., as these are handled by the employer of record. There are also fewer direct employees on the books.
• Project-based work – If you know that someone is only going to be working for a defined period of time, why go through the hassle of onboarding them?
• Trial runs – Many companies like having probationary periods for new hires before making them full time employees and going through their internal onboarding process.
• Time savings – Hiring and onboarding is a time sink. Whether it’s the HR Generalist, Manager, or Administrator leading the onboarding process, that time could be used to focus on other core business functions, including recruiting strategy and securing other key talent.

Important factors to consider when considering low-cost payrolling solutions:

• Consolidate – To secure the lowest possible price, it’s best to consolidate your payrolled headcount to one vendor. Also, with only one vendor, you will only receive one invoice and Accounts Payable will love you for that!
• Ease – One of the primary reasons to payroll is to save you time. Ensure your payrolling partner has an easy process.
• Focus on candidate experience – The onboarding experience is important for any new hire joining your company. Your payrolling partner should share your focus on candidate experience and have a process that combines both quick onboarding and high touch.
• Compliance and financial stability – You will want to ensure that any vendor you choose is compliant with all state and federal regulations (e-Verify, liability insurance, etc.) and has the financial stability to pay its workforce on time, every time.
• Benefits – The benefits your payrolling partner provides will matter to your payrollees, so ask vendors to share the details of their offered benefit packages. They should include a medical benefit option, direct deposit, weekly pay, online timekeeping, 401k, etc.

Looking at contingent labor spend and putting a new program in place can seem like a large undertaking. We don’t all have time for yet another project. But when we consider the financial savings, the consistency of compliance measures, and the improved onboarding experience, it’s well worth the time spent. Want added value and to save yourself a touch more time—engage a payrolling partner that will do much of the heavy lifting on your behalf. While we all clamor to draft internal communications, develop process flows, and hold meetings with key stakeholders to facilitate change management, a solid partner just may be able to help!

Learn more about Acara’s payrolling (employer of record) solutions.

The post Payrolling Defined and Why It’s Critical appeared first on Acara Solutions.

This year’s HR Technology Conference & Exposition was a large-scale event focused on HR technology across all functional areas, including:

• Talent Acquisition
• Performance Management
• Employee Engagement
• Diversity and Inclusion
• Payroll
• People Analytics

Attendees included:

• HR Tech Service Providers
• HR Tech Startups
• HR Practitioners
• Analyst and Research Firms
• Tech Decision-makers

While AI continued to be a major topic at the event this year, there was an extra emphasis on employee experience, engagement, HR learning providers, and talent analytics.

Today at #HRTechConf 2:00 come to booth 1319 with @IBMWatsonTalent to see @BersinAcademy HR in the Age of AI. #ai pic.twitter.com/QqQlDnHqbq

— Josh Bersin (@Josh_Bersin) October 2, 2019

Here’s a recap of the tech trends we’re seeing in the HR space. 

1. HR solutions are everywhere.

While there were many vendors and solutions at HR Tech worthy of our consideration, here are five promising solution tech leads that warrant further exploration.

Exago is a business intelligence (BI) solution that embeds self-service ad hoc reporting, dashboards, and analytics to your existing applications. The difference is that Exago is designed to look, feel, and behave like it’s native to your application.

Jobma is an affordable, per-instance video recruiting option that lets you conduct video interviews with candidates in two ways: as a one-way video interview or as a live video interview, each of which can lend to speedier recruitment efforts.

Kronos produces a variety of workforce management and HR technologies for small and medium-size businesses. With so many specialized products to choose from, you’ll need to see which options are best for you.

Solve by Human Capital Management Institute and Visier both deliver BI services that help you set goals, manage your spend, measure productivity, analyze data, and more.

Workato is a “universal cloud API platform for integration of all systems.” In other words, you can use Workato to automate multiple functions across your business from a single location.

HR Tech 2019: 10 innovations for a more inclusive world: Today’s innovators delivered their ideas via fast-paced, five-minute “TED Talk” style presentations. https://t.co/nUUs21TAUd @hrexecmag pic.twitter.com/N58UyeYKKh

— HR Tech Conference (@HRTechConf) October 4, 2019

* * * RELATED: 3 Tech Tools for Recruitment and Retention by Carl Kutsmode * * *

2. Microsoft is making moves in HR.

Microsoft elaborated on how their solutions work together by demonstrating their core HRIS, “Dynamics 365 Talent.” This HR tech tool integrates with several Microsoft products that your organization may be using (LinkedIn Talent Solutions, Microsoft 365 and Teams, Workplace Analytics, Azure, SharePoint) to simplify tasks and automate processes.

Learning about the HR Tech solutions from @Microsoft, including their core HR Dynamics 365 Talent. #HRTechConf #HRTechConference pic.twitter.com/yxGWwqOgKY

— Frank Gullo (@frankgullo) October 2, 2019

3. There is no shortage of HR management systems.

HR Tech featured several HRIS and LMS providers that provide core HR, talent analytics, and learning services. Here are four:

Cornerstone HR Suite gives you a centralized view of your people and data so you can take control of workforce management with a more modern experience.

Utimate Sofware (UtltiPro) uses cloud-based systems and AI to help you manage HR, payroll, talent, time and scheduling, engagement, HR service delivery, and more.

Workday offers medium- and large-sized businesses a single system for planning your workforce, recruiting talent, and managing it all.

SAP SuccessFactors is calling for a revolution in HCM with its take on Human Experience Management (HXM): cloud HR software and services that cover the gamut of HR tasks.

“The story and what we’re trying to solve now is very different than just counting numbers.” -Carin Taylor of @Workday on the evolution of #data on #diversity #hrtech #HRTechConf pic.twitter.com/jZNLDZwmDU

— Human Resource Executive (@HRExecMag) October 1, 2019

For more tech takes from me, Frank Gullo, let’s connect on Linkedin, or follow me @frankgullo on Twitter. And don’t forget to follow Acara Solutions Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.

The post 3 HR Tech Trends You Need to Know appeared first on Acara Solutions.

We learned that indirect buyers of goods and services are driven by cost savings, so here are two good ways to save money on your labor purchases.

1. Invest in a payroll program.
   Are you dealing with temporary workers? Interns? Part-time employees? That’s just the tip of the employment iceberg. Your diverse workforce is designed to help you meet fluctuating production demands and remain competitive in your industry, but only if your administration tasks—such as labor tracking and spending—are simple and scalable.With a flexible payroll program through an experienced provider such as Acara Solutions, you don’t have to act s the employer of record, manage employee classifications, or take care of sensitive co-employment issues. At Acara, we take care of all that so you don’t have to. Your opportunity to leverage extra time and resources, paired with Acara’s competitive rates, means making a positive impact your bottom line. Don’t forget to investigate these other important factors to consider when weighing your low-cost payrolling options.

2. Explore centralized purchasing.
   According to the Purchasing & Procurement Center, there are pros and cons to centralized purchasing, which is when a business creates a single department to handle all of its purchasing activity. Benefits typically include “efficient inventory control, lower staffing costs and a decrease in overheads,” but let’s compare the positives with the negatives.

If you’re looking to free yourself from the burden of payrolling and save money on labor costs at the same time, you may want to invest in a payroll program from someone like us.

Or, if you think you can sustain a centralized purchasing program on your own, go for it—just make sure you know the pros and cons.

Want to reduce your labor costs with Acara Solutions? Contact us!

For more news, notes, and tips from Acara Solutions, visit our resources page. And don’t forget to check us out on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

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