Exploring Professional Employer Organization Services and Their Benefits

Running payroll, managing benefits, and staying legally compliant takes time small businesses often lack. Using a professional employer organization (PEO) service transfers these administrative and legal HR burdens onto a team that specializes in them. This frees up clients to focus on their core business goals. However, not all PEOs are created equal.

What is a professional employer organization

A PEO professional employer organization acts as a co-employer that provides comprehensive HR services to client companies. Essentially, PEOs outsource important HR functions, such as payroll, benefits, compliance, and training while ensuring adherence to employment laws. This allows businesses to offload the complexities of HR, employee benefits, and payroll so they can focus on their core competencies.

PEO services are commonly used by small businesses and startups that do not have the resources to handle HR administration. However, companies of all sizes can benefit from partnering with a PEO to leverage economies of scale and access talent expertise. According to PEO professional employer organization industry research, the PEO segment continues to grow as business leaders recognize the options provided.

How does a professional employer organization work

The PEO performs various employee administration tasks, such as payroll and benefits administration, on behalf of a business. PEOs provide HR services through a co-employment arrangement that works as follows:

1. A contractual co-employment relationship is established between the PEO and the client company.
2. The PEO becomes the employer of record for tax purposes by filing payroll taxes under its identification numbers.
3. The client company maintains daily control and management of its personnel and worksite employees.
4. The PEO handles employee onboarding, payroll, benefits, and other HR administrative tasks.

Essentially, the PEO takes over the complex HR responsibilities so the client organization can direct their attention and resources towards growing their business operations and managing personnel strategy.

Services PEOs provide

So what does a PEO company do? it’s about offering a wide range of easy-to-use HR services. Comprehensive PEOs provide a wide range of seamless HR services including:

1. Recruiting and hiring: A key value-add of partnering with a PEO is leveraging their expertise in talent acquisition. The PEO guides job descriptions, compensation benchmarking, advertising openings on job boards, screening applicants, background checks, and coordinating interviews.
2. Payroll and tax administration: One of the most vital PEO services is handling payroll processing and tax obligations. This includes paying employees, filing quarterly tax returns, depositing payroll taxes, providing annual tax documents, and completing year-end tax forms.
3. Benefits management: PEOs administer health insurance, retirement accounts, paid time off, and other benefit programs offered to worksite employees. This includes managing carrier relationships, enrollment, changes, questions, and coordination of benefits during termination.
4. Risk and compliance management: PEOs continually monitor employment laws affecting their clients to ensure compliance. They also handle securing business insurance, tracking on-the-job injuries for workers’ compensation, and implementing workplace safety programs.

Training and development: Some PEOs provide access to online training platform covering topics like sexual harassment, discrimination, diversity awareness, and leadership development. This enables businesses to cost-effectively invest in employee growth.

Key benefits of using a PEO

The value derived from engaging a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) goes far beyond basic HR administration. When considering why to use a PEO, businesses should recognize that partnership ultimately leads to improved operational efficiency, allowing business owners to focus on strategic growth rather than getting bogged down in administrative tasks. The overarching benefits include:

• HR support: Rather than handling HR functions in-house, businesses gain a strategic partner to support recruiting, onboarding, employee relations issues, training, and offboarding. This provides immense time and cost savings.
• Payroll management: Accurate payroll processing is imperative for all companies. PEOs securely handle payroll funds, tax payments, filings, and data to ensure compliance. This provides client leadership teams confidence and peace of mind.
• Benefits administration: The costs of researching benefit plans, enrolling employees, and managing changes are extremely high. PEOs use collective buying power to secure affordable health insurance, retirement savings plans, paid time off, and other perks.
• Compliance assistance: Staying current with the intricacies of employment laws and regulations takes time and effort. PEOs continually track updates to guide client leadership teams to avoid penalties.
• Risk management: PEOs can coordinate safety programs to reduce workplace incidents. They also use large insurance pools to obtain affordable workers’ compensation policies to handle claims.
• Cost savings: Due to economies of scale from collective employees, PEOs can provide significant cost savings on payroll processing fees, group health plans, safety programs, training platforms, etc. These savings get passed down to their clients.
• Access to talent and expertise: Lastly, the top benefit cited from PEO professional employer organization partnerships is leveraging expertise from seasoned HR professionals. This allows leadership to focus on business growth initiatives rather than HR administration.

Partnering with the right PEO brings expertise and efficiency to a company’s HR and payroll. When evaluating PEO services, it’s important to understand your business’s specific needs and find a provider that can custom fit their solutions. With the right PEO partner, companies can get back to higher-priority business goals. Choosing Talentnet as your PEO partner helps your business grow with strong HR support.