Like your top salespeople, you want to devote your time and resources to activities that generate income, and delegate the rest. That's how RealStaffing hopes you'll look at time-consuming tasks like managing employee services.

Real estate is a unique industry, and that's why RealStaffing has put together a real estate industry-specific employee benefits and administration program that can save time, money and reduce liability for the owner/broker.

The brainchild of real estate entrepreneur and former Century21 productivity and performance vice president Tom Charron, RealStaffing is an independent real estate marketing representative of CSI Certified Systems Inc., a division of ServiceMaster. Employer services are supplied by CSI Employer Services from a marquee name list of preferred partners including Citigroup, Salomon Smith Barney, Travelers Insurance, Trustmark, Citi, and Colonial Insurance, among others.

Through these alliances, brokers and owners can take advantage of a fully outsourced human resources department; payroll services, including tax processing and filing; risk management; worker's compensation; Fortune 500 medical, dental, and retirement benefits; and Credit Union financial services, among other services.

Charron is moving fast with the concept, so fast that the company won't have its permanent Web site ready for another month. As soon as his agreement was in place with CSI, Charron wanted to get in front of brokers. The whole idea is to save broker/owners time and money, and give them the ability to offer broader and better employee benefits than they could otherwise. "Why wouldn't any broker or owner want to provide more benefits if they could?" asks Charron.

A former broker, Charron knows the bottom line first-hand. "I look at it from an owner's standpoint," says Charron. "Anytime I could outsource a nonproductive activity which would allow me as a broker/owner more time to create more business for my company, that is a winning situation."

There's just one catch. The most warm bodies in the office may belong to agents, whose administration is even more time-consuming and risky than that of employees. But, RealStaffing isn't for agents, because they aren't employees. "The benefits cover management, staff, support staff, but it is not designed for 1099 people," says Charron.

The reason is that the benefits are offered to employees only in an co-employer lease-back type of arrangement. What that means is that you share the employment of your employees with CSI, and they lease the employees back to you.

Don't let that concept scare you. You get the right to hire, fire, compensate, and direct your employees. But you turn over all the administrative headaches of having them to CSI. You benefit because their administration is done correctly, saving you time, money and liability. Your employees benefit because you can offer them a more attractive employment package as generous as you want to make it.

How it works is that as the co-employer, you get to leverage the buying power of CSI, which already administers benefits for over 13,000 leased employees for more than 800 companies. For example, CSI offers over 48 unique 401K products alone.

"The administration of 401K benefits is a nightmare for most brokers, and the paperwork is very difficult for small to mid to large size real estate companies," explains Charron. "So they end up farming out what they can. They may have one company do payroll and another company do retirement planning. We can do it all under one roof."

Charron knows that while the benefits of the program are worth it, the idea of lease-back employee management may be a harder sell. While leasing has grown in the automobile industry, it's a tough concept to apply to humans. The way to keep it simple is don't think of employee lease-back as a short-term lease, but as a long-term benefits package for employer and employees.

Charron prefers the term "PEO", which stands for professional employer organization. Unlike employee lease-back, which can include temporary or supplemental employment, PEOs build equity between employees and employer in a long-term employment relationship. The PEO assumes the employer responsibility for employment tax, benefit plans, and other human resource purposes. Through the use of a PEO relationship, client companies (brokers) make a long-term investment in their workers, because the PEO provides health insurance, retirement savings plans, and other critical employee benefits for their worksite employees.

"I'm hoping that PEOs will be a household word soon," says Charron.

Meanwhile, independent contractors such as agents are outside the loop, but that may change in time. "The employee model may well be the real estate model of the future," observes Charron. "Having services in place such as RealStaffing may make it easier for companies to play with the employee model for agents."

Published: June 6, 2001

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