Read the full post on the SharedHR blog.

I think we can all agree that people are a company’s biggest asset. In fact, according to Forrester Research, more than 85 percent of the market value of a typical Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 company today is the result of intangible assets, and people are the biggest component. However, employees can also be a company’s biggest risk when HR is ineffective.

This is an even bigger challenge for small to medium sized businesses (SMBs). Smaller organizations constantly struggle with managing the basics: time and resources. It is very common for one employee to wear multiple hats, helping in areas where they have little experience. One example we often see is the CFO being tasked with HR because there is no dedicated HR person on-staff. The lack of an HR resource takes time away from the CFO’s true job.

There are three issues that are further compounding this dilemma right now for SMBs. They are:

War on Talent

SMB companies are fighting for the exact same talent that large organizations are. Further, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics is predicting a shortage of 10 MILLION skilled workers due to an aging workforce, the retirement of the baby boomer generation, and a shortage of skilled workers. For an SMB looking to recruit and hire in this environment, providing employees with internet-based self-service access to their HR information and to corporate HR policies is mandatory, and increases the overall quality of HR management.

Compliance is Perpetual

The unfortunate truth is that SMB organizations must adhere to the exact same federal, state, and municipal HR compliance laws as large organizations. To make matters worse, SMB companies tend to have more HR compliance issues, such as...

Read the full post on the SharedHR blog.