HR work in a small company
For a small or mid-sized company of around twenty employees, the volume of HR work is not trivial: payroll, social insurance contributions, employment contract management, policy maintenance, and the handling of potential labor disputes each require dedicated attention. At the same time, companies of this size often find it difficult to justify the cost of a full-time HR professional.
HR work in a company of about twenty people is not as light as the headcount suggests. Payroll requires calculating individual income tax and social insurance and housing fund contributions every month, with the base and ratios kept accurate. Hiring and departures involve signing employment contracts, handling procedures, and adding or removing employees from social insurance. The company also needs policies covering attendance, discipline, and performance, and the ability to respond to disputes in accordance with the law. A missed social insurance payment, an unsigned contract, or an improper termination procedure can all lead to labor disputes and impose additional costs.
Cost comparison of three approaches
Small and mid-sized companies generally have three options for handling HR.
The first is a full-time HR hire. In Beijing, an HR professional with some experience costs at least 7,000-8,000 RMB per month including social insurance, or over 100,000 RMB a year. For a company of around twenty, a full-time HR's workload concentrates around the payroll cycle, and utilization is low the rest of the time.
The second is shared HR, a monthly-subscription HR service. For a fixed monthly fee, the company receives a dedicated online consultant, periodic on-site support, and a compliance back office, covering recruitment, payroll and social insurance, onboarding and offboarding, policy setup, and labor-compliance consulting. Because the consultant and compliance team are shared across multiple companies, the cost is usually significantly lower than a full-time hire.
The third is HR outsourcing, in which the entire HR function is entrusted to a vendor. This suits companies with substantial and ongoing HR service needs; the scope is broader, but the fees and the coordination cost are also higher.
The boundary of shared HR services
Shared HR does not replace all internal management decisions; it has a defined boundary. It mainly covers transactional and procedural work, including payroll, social insurance and housing fund, onboarding and offboarding procedures, contract templates, policy drafts, and employment-compliance consulting. These tasks are highly standardized and well suited to a professional consultant.
However, hiring decisions, promotion decisions, team structure design, and corporate culture involve the company's own judgment and values and cannot be outsourced. They are the responsibility of management; shared HR can offer advice, but the decisions remain with the company.
Provider selection
When selecting a shared HR provider, price is only one factor; service capability and compliance credentials matter more. The first is responsiveness: whether routine payroll and social insurance inquiries are answered the same day. The second is compliance credentials: whether the provider holds an HR service license and has professionals to support labor disputes. The third is continuity of service: some providers follow up weakly after signing, and a gap between pre-signing promises and post-signing service needs to be assessed before engagement.
CRBPO (Zhongrui Yuehua) offers an HR monthly subscription under the model of a dedicated online consultant, monthly on-site days, and a compliance back office, replacing an in-house HR team at a fixed monthly fee, backed by over twenty years of HR service experience.