Human resources (HR) professionals experience job fatigue that is due to constantly changing organizational and regulatory environments. This continuation of the HR fatigue series explains three realities facing HR professionals in today's climate and offers a solution that can benefit them.

- Reality 1: HR is a cost center, not a profit center.
HR has a critical role to play in the success of an organization, but HR must be extremely stringent in the allocation of resources because it is not a money-earning department. This means HR must allocate resources to the areas that can drive company profitability and streamline administrative time and resource-consuming activities.

- Reality 2: Attracting and retaining key talent is a challenge.
As technology continues to increase in all aspects of work and life, critical technical resources are becoming more difficult to recruit and retain. HR professionals need to spend more time strategizing about the most effective attraction and retention drivers for their organizations.

- Reality 3: Administrative costs must be carefully managed.
Healthcare reform adds an administrative burden to an already stretched HR organization. In addition, the continued rise in healthcare costs shifts a greater burden to HR professionals to find ways to reduce costs administratively.

Outsourcing health and welfare benefits administration can begin to solve HR fatigue and allow HR professionals to focus on business issues. Outsourcing benefit administration includes:

- Programming business rules to ensure accurate, consistent interpretation and implementation of eligibility rules, waiting periods, and documentation to prove employees meet requirements. HR professionals are no longer required to be experts to navigate this complicated process.

- Administering welfare benefits such as life, accidental death and dismemberment, and disability insurance, which is often complex and can be administratively burdensome, resulting in hidden costs for the employer. Benefit administrators work with the insurance carrier to interpret and program contingent benefits and evidence of insurability rules to streamline the administration of these benefits.

- Implementing electronic transmission of carrier and payroll files to enable efficient, accurate, and prompt benefit information for employees while eliminating administration for HR and finance departments.

- Interpreting and programming new regulatory requirements, such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), which can eliminate new administrative responsibilities for HR professionals.

When implemented correctly, outsourced benefit administration can reduce HR fatigue and increase an organization's productivity. For more information about Milliman's benefit administration services, click here.