Vendors and their purpose

- Anacapa Pet Hospital has a problem they've never faced before. They're a small family business of 20 years, and they only have one vet on staff at a time. One of them is Jeannie, who's pregnant and can't be near any of the X-ray equipment. They don't have the money to hire a permanent vet but still need support during the next several months of Jeannie's pregnancy. Typically, this would be addressed by the HR department, but since the hospital is too small to have their own HR staff, they decided to partner with an HR vendor who provides human resources assistance on demand. The HR vendor instantly provided an answer on how to address the issue and proceeded to find a temporary vet who could fill in as necessary. Now, there's several reasons why hiring an HR vendor can be a good choice from a business operations perspective, especially for a small company. Let's talk about what some of these are. First, it's very hard for small companies to have that expertise in all areas of operations. Therefore, the use of vendor outsourcing has become an increasingly popular way of getting advice on many subject areas within HR. Some of these areas include benefits, payroll processing, 401k, and workers' comp. Now, second, cost savings can play a big factor for small companies when they choose to hire vendors. The larger HR vendors can bring cost savings to smaller companies by sharing their resources for a reduced fee. If the small company had to pay for these same services in-house, the cost would be much greater. And third, HR vendors also play a major role in business operation by providing expert advice. Like the example above, the HR vendors can really help to free up the HR staff time on administrative items, allowing them to focus on more strategic HR tasks. If items like benefits, payroll, taxes, workers' comp, and 401k are being managed by a vendor, the HR team can focus more on strategic HR initiatives such as staffing or company culture. HR vendors can also provide expert advice when companies have special assignments or problems. Examples can be vendors that provide training resources online or in person, consultants with specialized knowledge in change management or workforce alignment, and also legal and accounting services when needed. As you can see, vendors can play a major role in business operations of a company in many ways. Not only can they provide substantial cost savings, but can also be helpful during times of need.