Today I fired the entire Socialtext team. Then I fired myself. We are all pretty happy about it.
We were subsequently hired by Administaff, the largest Professional Employer Organization (PEO). They are much better at employing people than we are.
With a back-to-back agreement with the company, we essentially outsourced HR and enabled our employees to gain benefits only Fortune 500 companies get. By pooling risk and purchasing power, they negotiate better rates and provide better services (with employee choice) than is possible for a small company. I did this before with Trinet and there are other PEOs out there.
Some of our goals included making Socialtext a supportive place to work, while letting people work where they work best. Without this partnership it would be an administrative nightmare, as our team is spread across the states. We also want to make Socialtext family friendly, so we elected for a significant portion of dependent co-pay. Now everyone has great PPO or HMO medical, dental, vision and life insurance, a 401k and a bevy of options.
I blog this administrata because not all small companies know that you can achieve economies of scale and scope for such a large line item. In the bootstrapping phase we even had to go uninsured (stupid) for a brief period. Needless to say, my wife is pretty stoked. I am because the payroll service means my hand doesn't hurt signing checks twice a month, but that is a good pain to remember.
