10 Key Areas When Outsourcing HR Can Make a Helpful Difference/Impact

If your HR team is limited, non-existent, or stretched to capacity, it’s time to look for solutions. External HR partners can offer specialized expertise, fresh perspectives, and additional bandwidth to tackle both urgent challenges and long-term initiatives. Whether you're a small organization with limited internal resources or a larger company navigating change, outside support can help you stay compliant, competitive, and focused on your people.

Here are some of the most impactful areas where external HR expertise can make a difference:

1. HRIS Implementation and Optimization

Implementing a new HR system is a major undertaking—but even after go-live, the work isn’t done. External HR experts can support full implementations along with module rollouts, data enhancement, and process automation within existing systems. Many organizations invest in robust platforms but fail to fully build out the features they’re paying for. Outside support ensures your technology is optimized for adoption, efficiency, and long-term value.

2. Leave Management

Managing employee leave—especially under FMLA, ADA, and state-specific laws—can be complex and time-consuming. External experts can help you stay compliant, streamline processes, and support employees effectively, reducing risk and improving the employee experience.

3. Risk Management, Claims, and Litigation

External legal and compliance professionals can help you proactively assess risk, respond to claims, and prepare for potential litigation. One best practice: Regular HR audits—especially when a new HR leader joins the organization or every few years. These audits help uncover blind spots, prioritize improvements, and align your HR practices with both compliance requirements and industry best practices.

4. Change Management

Whether you're restructuring, merging, or rolling out a new initiative, change is hard. Outside change management experts can help you craft communication plans, assess team skills, and facilitate team-building activities. They can also support new leadership transitions, helping incoming leaders onboard both technically and culturally to accelerate their impact.

5. Strategic Planning

External consultants can bring fresh perspectives and proven frameworks to workforce planning, succession planning, and talent strategy. They can also facilitate annual goal-setting sessions for leadership teams—developing 1-, 3-, and 5-year plans with clear objectives and initiatives that cascade throughout the organization.

6. Compliance and Changing Legislation

Employment laws are constantly evolving. Outside experts can help you stay ahead of changes, update policies and handbooks (including aligning across federal and state jurisdictions), and train your team to remain compliant.

7. Workforce Expansion and Legal Changes

Expanding into new states or countries? External support can help you navigate local labor laws, set up compliant practices, and avoid costly missteps.

8. Compensation and Pay Transparency

With growing pressure for pay equity and transparency, compensation consultants can help you benchmark roles, analyze pay gaps, and build fair, competitive structures that support retention and compliance.

9. Coaching, Leadership Development, and Learning Programs

External coaches can support leadership development, improve team dynamics, and help high-potential employees grow. But support doesn’t stop at the leadership level. Outside partners can help build in-house learning and development programs, including organization-specific training (e.g., industrial math, sales, lean six sigma), resource guides, and job instructions.

10. Onboarding and Employer Branding

Strong onboarding programs reduce time to proficiency and improve retention. External experts can help you design or enhance onboarding tools and processes. They can also support employer branding—developing communications and tools that position your organization as an employer of choice, both internally and externally.

No matter your size or stage of growth, your HR function plays a critical role in shaping your organization’s success. But you don’t have to do it alone. By leveraging external expertise in the right areas, you can reduce risk, improve efficiency, and empower your team to focus on what matters most—your people. Whether you're solving a short-term challenge or planning for long-term transformation, outside support can help you build a stronger, more resilient HR function.

If you need tools to assess your team’s current span of control, or want to make the business case for engaging outside help, check out MRA’s new whitepaper, Rethinking HR Capacity: External Support as a Strategic Advantage.