A PEO stands for a Professional Employer Organization, and they work with small businesses to help them with managing their payroll-related taxes, human resources and employee-related administration, and accessing benefits.
A PEO company is a subcontracting firm that will help your small business in human resource administration, compliance, risk mitigation, training, and development. For small businesses, a PEO company is the perfect solution for their human resource and administration needs. Why should you work with a PEO company? Because a PEO company helps your small business with many duties, including services such as employee leasing, employee compensation and human resource, payroll, unemployment and payroll taxes, administrative outsourcing, employee health insurance, employee regulations, and employee benefits packages.
There are many benefits a PEO company can with, the majority being human resources that helps streamline your HR practices, such as:
- Handling the paperwork – As a partner of a PEO company, you are released of most of the HR paperwork, so that you can focus on putting time into your business.
- Offering comprehensive and affordable employee benefits – With a PEO company, you enter into a co-employer agreement, and the PEO takes on your employees as their own. Your employees are grouped with the other employees in the PEO company to leverage for buying power with benefit providers to get reasonably-priced employee health care and benefit plans.
- Update government regulations – To remain out of trouble with the law, you always need to stay current on any rules. A PEO company looks out for your business to make sure you are still in line with state and federal regulations.
- Allowing you to focus on your business – When you enter a contract with a PEO company, you can let them handle the employee-related duties and focus on building your business.
Meeting with PEOs
First, you need to research and comply with PEO companies to see which company is the right fit for your business. When you’ve decided, you meet with your choice for a more in-depth meeting where you will review pricing and instructions on how the PEO’s services will work.
Implement a PEO
It typically takes 30 days to implement a PEO company. It starts at the beginning of a payroll period, and during this time, multiple steps need to be completed, which includes collecting and verifying I-9 forms for each employee, onboarding and enrollment meetings, and a selection of benefits.
Enrollment and Setup
Once the initial enrollment meeting is completed, the PEO company will begin enrolling your employees immediately. The PEO company will set the timeframe for the enrollment. Typically, the timeline is 7 to 10 days to complete the selection of benefits.
PEO Timeline
The time frame you can expect for a PEO company to set up is typically 30 days from start to finish. Usually, this is the timeline that you can expect from start to finish when onboarding your company.
- Step One – researching and getting quotes for PEO companies; this step should take one day
- Step Two – scheduling proposal reviews; this step takes three to five days
- Step Three – meeting with the chosen PEO company; this step takes six to ten days
- Step Four – Review the agreement with the PEO company; this step is 10 to 15 days
- Step Five – implement PEO services; this step takes 15 to 30 days
