HR outsourcing in Ukraine: what you actually hand over
HR outsourcing sounds like “hand over the paperwork and forget it”, but in practice everything turns on one question: what exactly do you hand over, and what stays inside the company. If that is not settled at the start, six months later nobody is keeping the military registration records and there is no one to sign leave orders. Here is the breakdown.
What is usually handed over
- Employment contracts. Drafting, amendments, side agreements, termination paperwork.
- Personnel orders. Hiring, transfers, leave, business trips, dismissals, disciplinary actions.
- The staffing table and its amendments.
- Timesheets, including the hours used for payroll calculation.
- Leave records. The schedule, remaining days, compensation on termination.
- Sick leave and maternity leave. Documentation, insurance record calculation, dealings with the Pension Fund.
- Military registration records. Lists, notifications, dealings with the recruitment centre. The area that burns most often.
- Personnel files and document storage, together with the rules on access to personal data.
What always stays with the company
A provider cannot and should not take on four things.
Decisions about people. Who to hire, whose pay to raise, who to let go. We prepare the paperwork for your decision, we do not make it.
The signature. Orders are signed by the director or an authorised officer of the company. A signature cannot be outsourced.
The factual record of who worked when. The timesheet is filled in from your data. If a department head does not say that someone was travelling, no provider can guess it.
Communication with the employee. Explaining to a person why their pay is what it is belongs to their manager or HR, not to an external accountant.
Three formats to choose from
Full HR administration. Everything on the first list. It suits companies of up to 50 people, where a dedicated HR administrator does not pay for itself, and representative offices of foreign firms with no Ukrainian back office at all.
Payroll only. Your HR keeps the personnel documents, we calculate pay, taxes and filings. Often chosen by companies that have an HR person but no payroll accountant.
A one-off clean-up. Not ongoing support but an HR records audit and the fixes that follow. A sensible first step if you are unsure about the state of the files: find out what you have before deciding what to outsource.
What drives the fee
Headcount is the starting point but far from the only factor. Effort is driven more by turnover (ten hires and leavers a month is a different job from a stable team), the number of departments and work schedules, shift and night work, business travel, and whether the company employs foreign nationals with work permits. The start-up stage is priced separately when the files need to be put in order first.
Personal data: the part people forget
Outsourcing HR means transferring employees’ personal data. That has to be documented: a contract with processing terms, a list of people with access, and a procedure for destroying the data when the engagement ends. If you have a foreign shareholder, they will almost certainly ask about this during a group audit. A competent provider raises the subject rather than waiting to be asked.
Where to start
Before handing anything over, look at what you are handing over. The simplest way is an HR records review: a list of what is missing and an assessment of the exposure. Then decide between full HR administration and payroll outsourcing alone.