HR services

HR services FAQs

Learn more about HR services and why they’re important to the success of your business.

What are human resource services?

HR services are administrative and strategic capabilities designed to help businesses manage people more effectively. Options range from help desks and consultants that provide support as needed to HR outsourcing and PEO solutions that help simplify HR, reduce administrative burdens and support compliance so employers can focus on their business operations.

• HR help desk
  This technology platform features a help desk to answer one-off questions and navigate everyday HR and state or federal compliance responsibilities. Step-by-step best-practice guidelines, essential forms and documents, and related policies are provided.
• HR outsourcing
  Everything you get with an HR help desk is included in HR outsourcing, plus a dedicated team of specialists who can handle some or all administrative duties on your behalf.
• Strategic consulting services
  HR experts help you identify critical issues and use actionable insights to drive business growth across the spectrum of human capital management (HCM), including compliance, talent strategy, change management and communications.
• Professional employer organization
  PEOs provide comprehensive outsourcing services that manage human resources, employee benefits, regulatory compliance and payroll. This arrangement is considered co-employment, which means the PEO contractually shares certain employer responsibilities and risks with the client. ADP TotalSource is the nation's largest PEO.

What HR services are typically outsourced?

Business commonly outsource HR services that are highly administrative, pose compliance risks or require specialized expertise. Specific examples include payroll processing, benefits administration, talent acquisition and regulatory compliance. You can outsource these services piecemeal, or you can seek more comprehensive coverage from a PEO, which will manage the full scope of HR for your organization.

What are HR employee services?

Of all the HR services, payroll and benefits are the most important to employees. Organizations competing for talent know this and update their benefits regularly to retain valued members of their workforce. Beyond a competitive salary, your HR department can appeal to employees by offering:

• Health benefits
• Retirement savings plans
• Family leave
• Flexible work options
• Professional and career development benefits
• Student loan repayment programs

What are the different areas of HR?

HR services span the full employee life cycle: recruitment, onboarding, payroll and tax administration, benefits administration, regulatory compliance, performance management, learning and development, workforce engagement, and succession planning. Your business can manage all these functions in-house, outsource select services or rely on a PEO to handle them comprehensively.

What is HR optimization?

Optimizing your HR processes requires that you understand your people – what they do, how they do it and why. To accomplish this, you’ll need to properly analyze your data:

1. Gather the right data
   Use an analytics tool that will collect enough data to provide broad, useful insights even if you don’t know how you’ll use them in the short term.
2. Understand what the data means
   Truly effective HR analytics isn’t just about combining lots of different data. You need to look at your workforce insights in the context of your business goals.
3. Put the data to work
   Make data-driven decisions to improve your policies, operations, finances and more.

How many types of HR are there?

HR capabilities fall into one of two roles – administration or strategy. Daily administration includes processing payroll and taxes, filing reports, maintaining compliance, managing data and updating policies. Because they can be repetitive and time consuming, some businesses elect to outsource these tasks.

The second role of HR is to plan larger strategic goals, such as acquiring talent, improving engagement and retention, applying best practices, benchmarking success and creating a culture of success. By partnering with a payroll service provider or a professional employer organization (PEO), HR professionals have more time to focus their efforts on these big picture projects.