Many Hong Kong company executives are now thinking of what they can do to prepare for Hong Kong’s “new normal” – the post-Covid-19 pandemic economy. In fact, Hong Kong companies can navigate the post-pandemic future by examining their company positioning, operational business impact and developing a well structured crisis management plan while working from home and digital collaboration tools are set to become mainstream for business in the new era. As working from home and social distancing will become the new trend, some traditional work processes, especially human related, have to be reviewed.

We may notice that more and more multinational-businesses start to think of outsourcing Human Resources tasks as a way of cost saving initiative. However, some employers may be worried that HR outsourcing will reduce human touch, lose the connection and engagement between company management and their employees if HR tasks are managed off-site. However, professional outsourcers know how to overcome that. What’s more, the merits gained from outsourcing outweighs its drawbacks. The biggest gains come from outsourcing somewhat repetitive tasks that require a lot of time, but don’t necessarily need a lot of training, guidance, or personalized knowledge.

Another common counter argument about HR outsourcing is: it will result in loss of in-house expertise. To a certain extent, this could be true but outsourcing does not mean you do not need to have your staff as a point person to check on those outsourced tasks. It is all about priority, particularly for a startup or SME, the priority of building up the domain expertise in their focus industry is always at a higher priority than building up HR skill sets.

Some may criticize on less availability when HR service is outsourced. Yes, there is a high chance that a response won’t be as quick from an external company as it could be from an in-house HR person. From another angle, it is about how to select and communicate with the outsourced partner, such as whether a performance clauses / KPIs are in place to keep track of the outsourced HR activities.