State of the HR Industry- a Note from our CEO Mark Young

At 53 years of age, and as a leader of my sixth business, this is not my first economic crisis or downturn, and in each downturn I’ve seen the same behaviors emerge.

The first thing I have always seen from advisors that sell payroll, insurance, and other professional services is they push harder to sell the same products, and do so by “informing” their clients of the crisis and the many law changes, listing out all the details of laws and orders, but as always (because they cannot advise clients of legal issues), fail to create a package solution that would actually give their clients the legal advice they so need at a time like this.

During the 2008/09 financial crisis, I was responsible for 1,000 employees and had to let 30% of them go.  After paying over $75,000 in expensive legal fees for assistance, I got a call from our company’s health insurance broker to notify us that our health insurance premiums were going up.  Having little connection with our business and the economy, our employee count was going to be down 50%, so I asked our broker to “re-run the numbers”, as 5% of the terminated employees elected Cobra, and close to 400 employees would not be participating in the plan going into the calendar year 2009.

Fast forward 11 years, and we find ourselves in another economic crisis.  Over the weekend I read several articles from brokers, HCM providers and payroll software providers citing more of the same.  Everyone was hosting their own webinar about the FFCRA, the CARES Act, what needed to be worried about, but none of them provided a legal solution package, no on-demand and unlimited access to licensed attorneys who would be able to advise their clients and actually assist with completing the forms while working to keep your clients’ businesses afloat.  During this trying time, your clients need a little more than a “heads up” or a scare tactic without a solid solution. 

As we will stumble through April and May 2020, and open up some of the economy over the summer, we are likely to find ourselves in another economic recession, with still millions of workers unemployed translating to loss of revenue for brokers, HCM and payroll software providers.

So what should you do, be left guessing as to how to furlough non-essentials employees, terminate underperforming employees, borrow under the CARES Act – OR INSTEAD – add a service your clients want, need and deserve to get from you.  myHRcounsel’s online, on-demand Ask an Attorney portal provides immediate access to experienced, licensed attorneys on an unlimited basis, for a monthly flat fee.  Give your clients real solutions: actual legal advice, actual legal documents, all backed by attorneys and our legal malpractice insurance plus protected by the attorney-client privilege.

So rather than making more cuts, and replicating information your clients can already find out there from the myriad new sources, law firm blogs, etc. of the contents of these new COVID-19 related laws, why not give your clients real solutions, save your marketing dollars, and do something different in this crisis!  It will change how you survive the next several quarters and even the rest of 2020!

Lets change how they solve these tough issues!  https://www.myhrcounsel.com/subscribe