By Zephrina Cazaubon,
Founder and CEO

Ascension BPM

Like any business leader, I’ve been frustrated trying to find the right people. And once you find them, it’s sometimes even harder to keep them on engaged and onboard. It’s a common headache for many leaders and it has only become more challenging following the pandemic and continued challenges with economic cycles seemingly ignoring traditional trajectories.   

HR leaders have demonstrated impressive resiliency during the past two years – having dealt with The Great Resignation and the constant pursuit of hybrid work environments that blend the work/life balance. But the challenges won’t melt away, even with the prospect of a partial or full recession.

In its 2023 State of People Strategy Report, Lattice, a company that produces people management software, found that the HR department’s top priorities will be retaining the talent organizations have in place, replacing talent acquisition at the top of the HR pecking order.

Most organizations aren’t ready for this shift.

The message is clear: you can’t hire your way of a recession. Recruiting has gone from HR’s highest priority to its eighth. Most organizations don’t have the budget and the luxury of time to build a high-performing HR team.  

A solution is hiring an outsourcer adept at managing your talent. This is a far cry from staffing and recruiting agencies. These firms tend to have large pools of labor to draw countless candidates and if they cast a net wide enough, they’ll certainly find ideal staffers for your organization.

But will they be able to retain them? Not likely.

This high attrition not only impacts your bottom line, but it also affects your relationship with your customers. Institutional knowledge and familiarity with your products and services walk out the door with high attrition and the recruiting and training costs climb while your net prompter score drops out of sight.       

A fresh approach is emerging, and it is no surprise it’s being delivered by business process management (BPM) outsourcers. They can smooth out the wrinkles of your talent management by focusing on some key components.

Attracting Talent   

With hundreds of leads for every available position, attracting candidates with the right skills and competencies is among the top talent acquisition challenges. By outsourcing recruitment, you can gain access to the recruiter’s database of potential candidates.

While in-house HR teams are limited by a lack of time and traditional sourcing methods, recruitment providers can tap into newer and more unconventional hiring channels such as social media, events, trade journals, niche job boards, and email campaigns.

Your recruitment provider can also help you build an employer brand (EB), ensuring that candidates align with your brand image, strategic goals, and company vision.

With access to a dedicated audience, strategic efforts to showcase company culture, and a systematic talent pipeline, organizations have improved chances of attracting the right talent.

Pre-hiring Background Checks

It is crucial to establish stringent vetting processes to safeguard your organization against hazards posed by employees.

Your BPM partner should not only scrutinize resumes, but it should also identify high attrition-risk candidates. Additionally, they may leverage social listening tools to identify behavioral traits that may hamper team productivity or negatively impact your company’s reputation.

Ensuring Cultural Alignment

The concept of cultural fit is gaining unprecedented importance in the workplace. To maximize productivity and minimize employee attrition, it is becoming crucial to hire employees who embrace your company’s work culture, values, and goals.

Unlike in-house HR teams that rely on resumes and traditional assessment methods, recruitment providers conduct skill-based hiring assessments, including simulation exercises, gamified assessments, and behavioral interviews to gauge workplace skills and culture fit. With these, you have significantly higher chances of accessing outsourced candidates who can seamlessly integrate with your work environment.

Bridging Linguistic & Cultural Differences

Linguistic and cultural differences pose significant challenges in outsourced talent acquisition and retention. These barriers hinder communication, cause misunderstandings, and trigger feelings of disconnection from the team and organization.

BPM partners are well-versed in cultural nuances and can help HR teams form clear communication guidelines for cross-geographical teams, factoring in cultural, linguistic, and time zone differences.

Payroll and compliance management

Managing cross-border payroll taxes, employee benefits, international labor laws, and legal compliance can drain your HR resources. It is best to outsource these functions to a provider who can act as a PEO (Professional Employment Organization) or Employer of Record (EOR).

A BPM HR Advisory firm assumes the hiring-related responsibilities on your behalf, including key processes such as documentation, pre-hiring background checks, onboarding, payroll, benefits, and compliance. This ensures that you have a local presence in the recruitment market without having to set up local entities for hiring.

Technology and Analytics

Digital technology and analytics are irreplaceable in overcoming talent acquisition challenges in an international market. Talent managers use technology in various ways to streamline processes and improve retention.

These processes are critical in enabling workforce planning, strategic staffing, and aligning a workforce with the company’s long-term goals.

To conclude, outsourcing your HR function to a  PEO/EOR to a BPM partner is an effective way of tackling talent management challenges and reducing the burden on HR departments. The right BPM provider can attract and retain top talent while ensuring transparency and efficiency.