Managing EOR Compliance Efficiently

How one media company reduced administrative burden and ensured EOR compliance with Workwell North America

For media companies, workforce flexibility is essential. Industry pros can move between projects, work on a contract basis and even work on multiple projects simultaneously. This can be challenging to manage from both a compliance and administrative perspective. Increasingly, media companies are turning to outside partners that can serve as an Employer of Record (EOR). These partnerships ensure compliance, reduce administrative burdens, and, overall, can streamline the management of an extended workforce.

One media company specializing in short form and sponsored media content needed a new solution for contingent workforce. In addition to payrolling and managing timekeeping, the company sought a workforce solutions partner that could bake compliance into a fully managed, robust Employer of Record (EOR) program. The company partnered with Workwell North America on a program that would track contingent workers across projects, ensure compliance across multiple states, and offer full contingent worker management and administration, including timekeeping, onboarding, worker project history, payrolling, compliance and benefits administration.

Challenges

Like many media companies, this production house faced several challenges in managing an extended workforce ranging from a lack of internal resources to keeping up with the evolving nature of the extended workforce.

Contingent Worker Project Tracking. The client needed a worker management solution that allowed workers to log their time to multiple projects, even simultaneously, as well as document their work history so that alumni employees could be re-engaged for future work.

Administrative Burden. The company didn’t have the in-house expertise or bandwidth to supplement where the existing provider was falling short in contingent worker management and administration, including timekeeping, onboarding, maintaining worker project history, payrolling, compliance and benefits administration.

Compliance With Emerging Labor Laws. To ensure EOR compliance with ever-changing employment law regulations, the client needed a solution to make mandatory training, including anti-harassment training as well as other policies and procedures, easily available and accessible to all contingent employees. The client also needed better practices for classifying exempt vs. non-exempt employees.

Administration of a Multi-state Contingent Employee Population. The client needed an EOR partner that could manage wages across states, and that could accrue sick time and overtime in accordance with local laws.

Solutions

Workwell North America assumed responsibility for the client’s existing EOR compliance and services, providing a full suite of solutions to help the client manage its expanding global workforce. Workwell North America’s proven transition project plan ensured that the workers experienced minimal disruption, with streamlined onboarding and benefits continuity.

A Full Suite of EOR Services. As the company’s full service employer of record for its contingent workforce, Workwell North America managed timekeeping, payroll, benefits administration, on/off-boarding, and compliance. Workwell North America provided a higher level of accountability overall to other EOR services available that only process time but do not manage the workforce.

A Dedicated EOR Account Manager. Workwell North America assigned a manager to administer and manage the client’s contingent workforce. This partnership allowed the dedicated manager and supporting Workwell North America team to become experts in the client’s business and become an extension of the client’s team, communicating with talent in their own language, which created efficiencies in managing constant change.

A Single Source of Truth with Talient. To facilitate timekeeping, payrolling, compliance, on/off-boarding, and benefits administration, the Workwell North America team tailored an instance of Talient to meet the client’s needs. This helped the client in many ways, including:

• Self-serve Roster Management. Using Talient allowed for quick and easy ending or extending of workers’ time on projects as needed on a self-service basis as their business needs changed. The client also kept their alumni contacts in Talient which they could reactivate themselves, on-demand.
• Facilitated Multi-Jurisdiction Wage and Overtime Compliance. Electronic timekeeping greatly facilitated payrolling employees. Overtime calculation was built into Talient, which virtually automated overtime compliance across jurisdictions.
• Multiple Project Code Tracking. Talient gave the client the ability to assign workers to multiple projects at once and to keep track of timekeeping, onboarding and compliance requirements for each project. This information also flowed through to invoicing and budgeting applications, which simplified these functions and eliminated the need for error-prone manual processes.
• Compliance with Mandated Training. Certain jurisdictions required new training, for example, the State of New York required anti-harassment training, which Workwell North America made readily available to the entire contingent workforce through Talient.

Access to Workwell North America’s In-house Legal Counsel to Ensure Compliance. As the company’s EOR, Workwell North America provides ongoing legal protection for the client’s business, including partnership with Workwell North America’s in-house legal counsel, which helped the client in several ways, including:

• Local Employment Law Compliance. Workwell North America’s in-house counsel worked with the client to correct hundreds of job postings to be in compliance with new and emerging local labor laws, including designating exempt vs. nonexempt roles. The teams worked together also to ensure workers were paid the correct minimum wage based on location and continuous monitoring of state and federal requirements as they changed.
• Systematize Compliance. In addition to updating job descriptions to accurately classify employees, Workwell North America provided support with crafting compliant descriptions from the start that did not require further legal review.
• Accurate Worker Classification Pursuant to New Laws. In onboarding the client’s existing contingent workforce from its previous EOR service, Workwell North America ensured all formerly 1099 contractors were correctly reclassified as W-2 employees, further shielding the client from risk relating to compliance.

Results

The combination of providing the client a full Employer of Record suite of services, including a dedicated account manager and an approach to compliance, payrolling, and change management that was made easy through Talient allowed the client to manage its business with ease as well as grow its business. Workwell North America helped the client obtain the following results:

• Reviewed over 200 jobs to create descriptions, exempt classifications, and pay standardization
• Onboarded over 1,000 workers across 200 projects in under 30 days
• Exceptional FLSA exempt classification, maintaining wage and hour compliance within the media industry
• Project code tracking and integration with bid and budgeting systems
• In 2022 onboarded >275 new hires and paid >450 unique individuals
• In 2023 to-date, onboarded >100 new hires and paid >300 unique individuals
• Project tracking over hundreds of active projects, with each person being redeployed on an average of four projects or more