Welcome back to Q4! The rush to wrap up one year and plan for the next, all before the holiday season starts, is real. How can you carve out time for your year-end HR duties, and leave some left over to consider the big picture and evaluate some impactful changes for the new year? It’s the hardest thing to take this time to zoom out and work on your business. It’s also the most impactful. Whether you’re running HR in-house or alongside a Professional Employer Organization (PEO), let’s dive deeper into four areas you’ll want to review in the coming weeks. What Belongs on Your End-of-Year HR Checklist? This is the time of year to take an honest assessment of your long-term goals and visions for your business. How will HR help you get to where you want to go? Here’s where to start your review. Compensation and total rewards Check your benefit and compensation offerings to stay on pace with your market. Inflation, wage growth trends, and local market shifts all play a role in setting competitive pay ranges. Are your pay bands still in line with what employees are looking for? Are your pay bands still in line with what the local market comparison indicates? This is where communication creates shared understanding and drives engagement. READ MORE: Total Compensation Statements On benefits: What did employees elect to use this year? This is also a great time to review plan participation and enrollment, while also talking to employees and assessing any new additions to your benefits package. Goals and performance benchmarks Were the goals you set for teams and employees last January met, or are they on track? Year-end is the natural checkpoint to grade your own efforts in goal-setting for the organization as a whole. READ MORE: SMART Goal Setting The goals that are set at the top of the business should cascade down across teams. End-of-year planning is an incredible opportunity to set the foundation for the year ahead, keeping in mind how everyone will contribute to those top-level goals. Succession planning and key-role risk What roles would leave an impactful hole in your business if someone resigned tomorrow? Where is institutional knowledge held, and where could it be shared or transferred? Year-end is when owners tend to remember these types of conversations that need to be held to connect with top employees and assess their long-term goals and outlook at the company. READ MORE: Strategic Succession Planning Policy and handbook review Have any compliance changes popped up recently that your policies haven’t caught up to yet? Make sure you start 2027 on fresh footing. Have you reviewed your employee handbook within the last 12 months? If not, this is a great opportunity to do so. This is the time of year to revisit the fundamental tools that support your HR strategy. For smaller businesses, maybe this is the year you create your first employee handbook to codify the processes that have been run by leadership for years. This is a great place to start supporting your future HR needs. READ MORE: Build Your First Employee Handbook Compliance Changes on the Horizon Between federal and state compliance changes, it’s a lot to stay updated on. As you’re thinking about 2027 HR planning, here are a few updates you’ll want to keep in mind. Federal retirement plan limits are rising again. The IRS is expected to make a modest increase to the 401(k) contribution limit. Early 2027 projections point toward $25,000 as the new maximum. HSA limits are also set to increase, with the family contribution cap rising to $9,000 for 2027. One direct takeaway is to check your plan documents, payroll systems, and employee communications to update these listings with up-to-date limits. New York shifts to an inflation-indexed minimum wage model. Starting in 2027, New York minimum wage will no longer follow a fixed schedule, instead increasing annually based on a three-year moving average of the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). For WNY employers, that means wage planning now requires more frequent tracking and monitoring, compared to steady, predictable future increases. Paid Family Leave benefits are increasing. The maximum weekly PFL benefit for claims starting in 2027 rises to $1,287.91 based on the updated New York State Average Weekly Wage. Why Year-End Planning Works Better with a Partner HR is an expansive function, and you might see some patterns across the board. There are systems that run throughout the year, processes that determine how those systems operate, and administrative work required to keep those processes running. It’s a lot for any team to handle, and it’s exactly why PEO partners are so valuable for small businesses. Partnering with a PEO means you get a whole team of HR professionals supporting your business – for the cost of a full-time HR hire or less. Instead of relying on one HR generalist, or on the collective knowledge of your leadership team, a PEO can provide a dedicated HR business partner and supporting experts to help you navigate compliance, benefits, compensation and payroll, and the supporting technology to make it all happen throughout the upcoming year. Want to make that all tangible to business growth metrics? According to NAPEO industry research and data, businesses that partner with a PEO grow twice as fast, with 12% less employee turnover, compared to businesses running HR without a PEO. Don’t Miss the Opportunity to Work on Your Business The new year is a light at the end of the tunnel that will arrive quicker than you’ll expect. Don’t miss the opportunity to close out one year and step confidently into the next. It takes the insight to know where to focus, and a partner willing to join your business in the work. For more than 30 years, Employer Services Corporation has built a trusted reputation as a PEO helping businesses grow in Buffalo and beyond. Learn about how our HR consulting services and PEO partnership can help you keep the full picture of HR in view, now and throughout the year ahead. Want to explore the options and get to know our team first? Contact us to schedule a conversation soon.