The real cost of your HR function when you have between 10 and 50 employees
The HR function in an SMB is a budgetary paradox. Too important to ignore, too light to justify a full-time senior position. And yet most business leaders keep hiring as though the volume warranted it.
An internal HR position costs at least €55,000 per year
Take an HR assistant in the Paris region. At least €30,000 gross annually. Add employer contributions, health insurance, office space and equipment. You're at €45,000. If you want someone autonomous on payroll and recruitment, move up to €55,000 without negotiating.
And how many months per year do you actually use that profile at full capacity? Honestly. Outside of recruitment periods, payroll takes three days a month when properly tooled. HR admin adds two more days. The rest of the time, your HR person produces reports nobody reads or manages wellbeing initiatives with no measurable impact.
When you model the real cost over three years, the numbers are unambiguous. For the price of a single internal HR position, you fund three dedicated offshore team members. The ratio is not up for debate.
Your accounting firm doesn't do HR
Many small business owners think their accountant handles payroll. Technically, yes. In reality, they enter variables that someone must prepare, verify and submit every month. That someone is you, your office manager, or nobody.
Payroll errors happen when nobody is tracking absences, bonuses and overtime. The firm isn't going to chase your managers for the data. They produce pay slips based on what they're given. If the inputs are wrong, the pay slips are wrong. And employment tribunals are unforgiving.
A dedicated offshore HR team member does exactly that preparation, verification and follow-up work. They consolidate the variables, chase managers, check for anomalies before sending everything to the firm. Your accountant receives a clean file. You receive accurate pay slips. The cost of that peace of mind: under €800 per month.
The time you waste doing HR yourself
If you're running an SMB with 20 employees and you're the one handling contracts, amendments, occupational health appointments, certificates and declarations, ask yourself one question: how many hours per week?
The usual answer: between four and eight hours. Per week. That's an entire management day lost to repetitive admin. That's time you're not spending selling, negotiating or building structure. You're spending it filling in forms.
A business leader doing their own HR isn't saving money. They're destroying value. Every hour spent on an employment declaration is an hour generating no revenue. Offshore HR outsourcing doesn't replace strategic expertise. It absorbs the operational volume that slows you down every week. And it does so at a cost that makes the calculation obvious.
What an offshore HR team member concretely handles from Madagascar
The word offshore triggers concern when it comes to HR. People picture payroll errors, data leaks, a lack of legal context. The reality is simpler: 80% of the HR function in an SMB is process, not law. And process delegates perfectly.
Payroll preparation and variable tracking
The offshore HR team member doesn't replace your accounting firm. They feed it. Every month, they collect absences, leave, bonuses, overtime and meal vouchers. They consolidate everything into a standardised spreadsheet, check for inconsistencies and chase managers who are behind.
Take an SMB with 30 employees across three sites. Without someone to centralise, the business leader receives information in dribs and drabs, often on the 25th of the month in an incomplete state. The firm follows up. The leader chases data. Pay slips come out late.
With a dedicated team member plugged into your HRIS or even a simple shared Google Sheet, the variables are ready by the 20th. The firm has everything. Pay slips land on time. Zero stress. This process doesn't require French legal expertise. It requires rigour, consistency and someone for whom it is the only job.
Operational recruitment: from sourcing to shortlist
Recruiting a maintenance technician or a field sales rep isn't rocket science. It's time-consuming. Writing the job posting, publishing it on five job boards, sorting through 80 CVs, pre-screening 15 candidates by phone, scheduling interviews. That's 20 to 30 hours per hire.
An offshore HR team member takes ownership of the entire pipeline up to the shortlist. They write job postings from your brief, publish them, screen according to your criteria and conduct pre-qualification calls by video or phone. You only see the three or four profiles that deserve your time.
As shown by commercial outsourcing in Madagascar, the model works when the team member is dedicated to a single client and integrated into their tools. In HR, it's identical: access to your ATS or your recruitment inbox, validated templates, process locked in within two weeks.
Day-to-day personnel administration
Employment declarations, employment contracts, amendments, employer certificates, probation period tracking, occupational health appointment management, personnel register updates. None of these tasks require physical presence. All of them require that they not be forgotten.
The real HR risk in an SMB isn't legal complexity. It's oversight. A probation period not renewed in time. An occupational health appointment expired for six months. An amendment that was never signed. These oversights are costly the day an employee raises a dispute.
An offshore HR team member maintains an up-to-date dashboard with all upcoming deadlines. They alert you before each one. They prepare documents using your templates validated by your lawyer or accountant. You sign. That's it. Legal expertise stays with your advisors. Day-to-day execution runs at €800 per month.
Why this model holds up and where it doesn't work
Offshore HR outsourcing isn't a gimmick. But it isn't a magic solution either. There are specific conditions for it to work, and cases where it's the wrong call. A serious business leader wants to know both.
The one team member equals one client model changes everything
The classic problem with HR outsourcing is the provider that pools resources. A shared assistant across five clients who never truly knows your collective agreement, your habits, your managers. They execute without context. Mistakes accumulate.
The opposite model works: a team member recruited for you, trained on your processes, working exclusively for your company. They know your team leaders by name. They know that Paul in accounting always sends his absences in late. They anticipate.
This is exactly the principle underpinning full back-office outsourcing: a dedicated team member integrated into your tools, managed within a structured framework, delivering as if they were in your office. The difference shows within weeks. The person knows your business. They are not interchangeable.
The limitations to understand before signing
Let's be clear. An offshore HR team member doesn't replace an employment law specialist. If you have complex tribunal disputes, negotiations with employee representatives or an ongoing restructuring, you need a specialist lawyer, not an assistant.
The model also doesn't work if you have no existing HR processes. Outsourcing chaos means relocating chaos. You need a minimum framework: contract templates, a tracking spreadsheet, even a basic payroll process. If you're starting from scratch, allow two to three weeks of structuring before the team member can work independently.
Finally, confidentiality. HR data is sensitive. The offshore team member must work on a secure infrastructure with controlled access. A workstation running a 2019 antivirus on a public Wi-Fi connection is a non-starter. Infrastructure matters as much as competence.
The calculation that closes the debate
Put the numbers side by side. A full-time internal HR position: €4,500 per month all-in. An outsourced HR firm in France: €1,500 to €2,500 per month for pooled part-time support. A dedicated offshore team member: under €800 per month, full-time, on your tools.
For an SMB with 15 to 40 employees, the HR volume doesn't justify the first option. The second gives you a provider managing five other clients in parallel. The third gives you someone doing only your HR, forty hours a week.
The gain isn't purely financial. It's management time recovered. It's payroll running without stress. It's recruitment moving forward even when you're travelling. For the price of one French employee, you deploy three dedicated team members. In HR, just one is often enough to transform the day-to-day reality of an entire SMB.
Your HR function is costing you more than it produces
Every month you handle payroll yourself, every time you push back a hire due to lack of time, every amendment sitting unsigned on your desk, you are accumulating risk and destroying value.
A full-time internal HR position isn't suited to your volume. A pooled provider doesn't know your business. And you weren't hired to fill in employment declarations.
A dedicated offshore team member at €800 per month doesn't solve every HR problem. They solve the 80% that's slowing you down. Payroll runs. Recruitment moves forward. Admin stays on track. You lead.
The SMBs that made this choice a year ago aren't going back. The rest keep losing a day a week to tasks that don't deserve their hourly rate. The calculation is done. The question is how many more months you're willing to wait.
