By Leonard Toenjes

Q: I own a contracting firm. I am focused on construction and construction alone. I spend 60 hours or more on construction sites each week. I barely have time to do the other things and see this as a weakness. I am most concerned about our lack of human-resource offerings. There are third-party services that provide human-resource assistance. Do you recommend these and do you recommend one over another? How can I find out more?

A: Your situation sounds like the classic case of “so busy mopping the floor that you don’t have time to reach up and turn off the faucet.”

As happens frequently as a business grows, the principal who started the business and has specific expertise in a given industry, in this case construction, gets diverted into other issues such as payroll, benefits plans and attendance issues among the other daily people crises. It sounds like you have reached the tipping point where you need to take some of these duties off your daily duty list.

The time you take analyzing your schedule and determining the specific issues you can delegate to others is the most critical part of this exercise. Letting go of some of these human resource duties that you have held onto may be the biggest bridge to cross.

I would first examine the duties of current employees. Are there some of your human resource related duties that could be assumed by someone else in the company? In examining the job descriptions and duties of assistants, office staff and clerical support people, is there a logical reassignment of duties that could be handled internally? For example, could some attendance and benefits issues be handled by an administrative assistant?

If not, or if there is still a duty overload, outsourcing of some of these services is a good idea.

Look at Insurance Firms

Start with your current insurance carriers. Many insurance firms are branching out into a number of human resource management services, greatly streamlining the benefits processes and offering additional benefits such as health savings accounts HSA and some additional services that may actually save you time and improve your benefits package. Some of these firms even offer periodic educational seminars for your staff on various benefits issues.

If your current insurance provider does not have this service, I would contact other local insurance firms that do offer this service and review some bids. In addition, there are some payroll service and accounting firms are getting into this business.

As far as evaluating the firms, look for the cost per month per employee, the total benefits package that might be provided and any initial set-up fees. Certainly ask for references of other clients who you could contact for referrals. Pick a firm that has been around for a while and will have stability in the market. Making the switch is a task that you don’t necessarily want to undertake on a frequent basis.

Finally, I would never delegate the human-resource task of hiring and firing. Your most important asset is your people and your support staff.

Participate in every interview, every selection, and every performance review. This is time well spent. Get rid of as much of the other duties as you can.

Do you have questions on construction human resources, safety or management? E-mail them to Leonard Toenjes at ltoenjes@agcstl.org or craig_barner@mcgraw-hill.com. If Len picks your question, he will answer it in a future issue of Midwest Construction.)