Staff leasing is a form of outsourcing service wherein you hire a third-party provider to perform certain job functions. Apart from staffing, the provider also takes care of setting up the working space for your leased team, replete with all the necessary equipment and facilities to ensure that employees are productive and efficient at work.
It’s also the responsibility of your staff leasing partner to oversee the business operations on your behalf.
Through staff leasing, you and your team can focus on key management aspects, which can help fuel growth and generate income for the business. The benefit of leasing is that you can expand your business even overseas, for example, you don't need to apply for Singapore citizenship if you want to expand your business operations there, you can outsource your workforce there to manage your business operations. Here are primary outsourcing benefits that should motivate you to consider staff leasing:
1. Staff leasing allows you to scale up or down as needed.
With staff leasing, you can hire just a few staff or a small team first, if that’s just what you need. You’re not obligated to sign up for something that you don’t need just as yet. At the same time, staff leasing is a great business strategy for when you need utmost flexibility in scaling your workforce depending on your evolving needs or on the number of available resources you have.
So as your business expands, and the need for more support staff arises, you can then turn to outsourcing to augment your offshore team. Professional Employer Organizations (PEOs)—or companies that offer staff leasing services—have a large pool of talent available that can be tapped immediately in case you need more leased employees.
2. Staff leasing is a money-saver.
Staff leasing is ideal for startup companies that have a limited budget but still need to begin operations at full speed.
It’s true that you need to put your business ideas out there in the market as quickly as possible, making it necessary to have the best talent on board. However, you also know that getting the most qualified professionals don’t come cheap. You’re in a constant bid to attract the top-performing talent who can help you gain a competitive advantage over other players in your industry.
Thus, you might find yourself incurring huge costs on employee salaries and benefits. But why pay too much when you can get the same caliber of talent through staff leasing. Since PEOs are usually located in countries that have a lower cost of living than their clients, they can connect you with a talent pool whose salary brackets fall within reasonable amounts but with work that meets world-class standards.
3. Staff leasing offers efficient solutions for human resource management.
The human resource department performs many functions, including recruiting, onboarding, training, and engaging of employees. Unfortunately, not all aspects of proper employee management can be handled effectively.
It’s possible that you may fall into this trap as you set sight on other priority business activities like sales, marketing, customer service, and several others. However, HR experts will tell you that it’s not a great recipe for business success.
This dilemma wouldn’t happen, though, if you were to take advantage of the services of a staff leasing company. Staff leasing providers have a well-defined HR structure, so there’s already a system for all HR processes.
Here’s a breakdown of how you and your staff leasing partner can approach HR duties:
On Hiring
Employee leasing comes with that much-needed guarantee against bad hires. Businesses agree that the impact of bad hires isn’t limited to financial losses, but that it also extends to lower levels of productivity and staff morale.
Apart from having an established set of pre-employment procedure, what makes staff leasing effective in preventing bad hiring decisions is your involvement in the screening and selection process of recruitment.
Once you’ve communicated your exact workforce requirements to your staff leasing provider, the outsourcing company will be closely coordinating with you with a list of shortlisted candidates. At this point, you may want to participate in interviewing the candidates to gauge their fit for the role, as well as for your business model.
On Employee Training and Assessment
In terms of training, you may choose to have a hand regarding the modules, resources, or timeline that will be used to make sure that your offshore team will be capable of delivering the results you expect.
Moreover, you will still be able to exercise your control over your hired employees since there will be someone from your company—a manager or a team leader—who will be monitoring their performance. This person will also be able to identify any challenges among team members and decide with the outsourcing company on what course of action to take to make things better.
It’s worth noting that upon hiring, the employees will be under the care of the leasing company. Therefore, all matters regarding compensation, benefits, and the like will be the responsibility of your staff leasing provider.
From the above examples, it’s quite easy to see that staff leasing ensures continuity in all HR tasks, which is a good thing if making your employees happy and motivated is a top concern.
Other Factors to Consider
When making business decisions such as whether to employ staff leasing or not, it’s important that you weigh the pros and cons to allow you to have a balanced perspective about the subject.
In a staff leasing arrangement, you’re sharing with your provider, not just the responsibilities, but also the control over certain decision-making processes. If you and your outsourcing company have conflicting rules and policies, you might need to find a middle ground to resolve the differences or look for a provider that would bode well with you.
It’s also more challenging to establish a long-term relationship with leased employees since you may be hiring them only for a temporary project. In such a case, you will have to keep on adjusting your employee development programs now and then.
Parting Shot
All things considered, staff leasing can complement your business model and be instrumental in hitting your targets. Before hiring an outsourcing partner, make sure that you understand everything it entails—how it’s set up, what to expect, and what things you may need to give up.
Ross is known as the Pambansang Blogger ng Pilipinas - An Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Professional by profession and a Social Media Evangelist by heart.
