If there’s one thing that small business owners and managers are used to, it’s multitasking. Donning multiple hats is the norm for resourceful entrepreneurs. There does come a time in the life of every small business, though, when it’s necessary to expand beyond the original team members and allow for the kind of growth that’s the hallmark of a successful enterprise.
The first part of a growing small business that requires attention before all else is human resources. After all, with a larger staff come more demands on payroll processes, healthcare choices, and even basic onboarding procedures. That says nothing about the process of recruiting, screening, and hiring new staff members in the first place.
Fortunately for today’s SMBs, there are a variety of digital solutions to meet their growing HR demands. For SMBs that are about to be or already are in their first expansion phase, here’s a look at some of the features they should look for in their first HR SaaS solution, as well as a few of the popular current options.
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What To Look For
For an SMB that is conducting its first search for an HR SaaS solution, it’s important to understand which features will be essential to them as they grow. There are a number of SaaS platforms aimed at small business HR, and most of them share a common core set of features, such as:
- 401k Management
- Benefits Administration
- Payroll
- Performance Reviews
- Vacation Tracking
Any SaaS platform that performs these core functions for an SMB would make an excellent addition to their HR arsenal. Having access to these features helps an expanding business to maintain control over increasingly demanding HR tasks without missing a beat. There are, of course, additional features that some platforms offer that make them more desirable in certain situations. Here are some of the most popular options in the market today, and the additional features that help them to stand out from the pack.
Gusto
Aimed at SMBs with 100 or fewer employees, Gusto is an all-in-one HR SaaS platform that won’t break the bank. With service plans beginning at $45 per month, it’s a cost-effective SaaS solution that will scale with your business – to a point. The Gusto platform contains all of the basic features listed above, but also has one feature that many of its competitors lack: employee scheduling. Having the ability to maintain schedules for shift workers is a function that many SMBs can really use, making Gusto a great option for SMBs in the earliest phases of growth.
BambooHR
Not every SMB consists of– or intends to remain – an organization with 100 or fewer employees. For the SMB segment that has already outgrown a solution like Gusto, there’s BambooHR. It’s a solution geared towards slightly larger SMBs with up to 1000 employees. That helps to explain why it lacks an employee scheduling component, as mid-sized small businesses typically don’t have shift employees. It does, however, introduce a robust applicant tracking system that centralizes the talent acquisition process and makes sharing and evaluating potential hires much easier.
Zenefits
Managing a growing workforce provides more than enough impetus for an SMB to invest in an HR SaaS solution, but it’s far from the only reason to consider one. For SMBs looking to create an end-to-end digital hiring and employee management process, there’s a platform called Zenefits that has everything they’ll need. Zenefits contains all of the features you’d expect from an HR SaaS solution, but it’s much more than that. It aims to create a paperless and accessible system for employees and managers alike. It allows for digital storage of virtually every kind of employee data imaginable, from the results of a people search early in the applicant’s screening process all the way to benefits tracking and online scheduling approval. It’ll even create a dynamic organization chart of the entire business and generate reports on HR efficiency.
Grow Efficiently
Every small business owner knows that growth is the key to survival. It’s also true that rapid growth can overwhelm an SMB, often with disastrous consequences. HR SaaS solutions are one of the ways that growing SMBs can make sure they don’t become victims of their own success. With the right solution in place, an organization can expand without encountering many of the growing pains that are so common in the SMB space. With HR ready to meet the challenge, the sky’s the limit!
To learn more about the digital HR revolution, read Digital HR Moves Faster In Growth Markets.
If you are interested in even more business-related articles and information from us here at Bit Rebels then we have a lot to choose from.
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