Are you spending as much of your time as you’d like to doing what you do best? No? You need to ask yourself, ‘Do I need a PEO for my business?’. Now’s the time to find out!
When you start your own business as a solo operator, you have you share of worries, but as soon as you start employing staff, you begin to realize that taking care of them is a job all on its own. Yes, they’re lovely people, but you end up saddled with mountains of admin in an unfamiliar area with very specific legislative requirements to adhere to. Suddenly, the valuable time that you could use to make money in your field of expertise goes into navigating the minefield of personnel management.
You find yourself saying: “I didn’t sign up for this!” That’s when you should ask yourself: ‘Do I need a PEO?’
“I can’t afford an HR manager!”
When you reach a certain point, quite often marked by a drop in profits because you’re spending too much time doing things other than directing your business towards revenue-earning activities, you might decide to get an HR specialist. But managers are expensive. Many small and medium enterprises simply can’t afford to have a full-time HR manager, and even if they can, there might not be enough work to keep a full-timer productively occupied.
“Am I doing this right?”
There’s a certain amount of angst involved when you try to handle all your employee-related tasks yourself. There are a lot of responsibilities, and there’s a fair amount of risk too. Plus, with people being far less predictable than one might like, unusual questions keep cropping up, and you end up wondering how to handle situation after situation.
You want to be a great employer, but handling all these issues is driving you nuts.
Relax! A PEO can handle it for you
Outsourcing is the answer, and a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) is the solution you’re looking for. There are benefits for your employees too.
What advantages do we offer? Here are five big ones!
1. Get more employee benefits at a reduced cost
The bigger a business is, the better the deal they’ll get from organizations offering employee benefits like retirement plans and medical insurance. Quite often, these providers aren’t interested in smaller businesses at all, and when they are willing to help, the costs are much higher. Many small businesses want to offer benefits such as these, but find the cost too much to bear. That means that attracting the best talent gets harder. After all, employees want to get benefits.
By getting a PEO on your side, the PEO becomes the official employer. And since a PEO handles staff from several small and medium enterprises at once, it becomes an attractive proposition for benefits providers. They’re eager to get that big pool of employees on their books, so they offer better prices. Suddenly, benefits packages become affordable, and the best potential employees are beating a path to your door.
2. No job is finished until the paperwork is done
Admin overload is probably one of your biggest reasons for considering a PEO. Eliminate the stress leading up to payday with professional payroll processing.
Your employees need proper job descriptions so that you can evaluate their performance. Writing JDs is an art and a science, and it’s one you probably haven’t had time for yet. Meanwhile, your employees may not be fully aware of what is expected of them and what measurements would be applied to evaluate performance. Ultimately, this hurts your business. Again, a PEO takes this task off your hands.
Let’s not forget employee record-keeping. Each worker should have a personnel file with employment contracts, work history, and payment history neatly combined in one place. Get a PEO and it’s not your problem anymore. That’s something to celebrate, isn’t it?
3. Professional HR guidance
People make mistakes, and sometimes, there’s deliberate misconduct. What should you do? Ignoring the problem will only send the message that it’s ok to do what you like in the workplace. Taking action can be just as disastrous – if you don’t follow the correct procedures.
Does your secretary keep turning up late for work? Did two of your laborers end up in a fistfight? Is the new employee demonstrating complete incompetence? Whatever the problem, you have professional HR advice on tap when you work with a PEO.
4. Comply with government requirements
From your paperwork to your health and safety requirements, there are very specific laws related to the employment of people. What’s more, these rules and regulations keep changing. Unless you’re on top of things, you could break the law by adhering to last year’s rules.
Because PEOs are specialists in the business of managing human resources, they constantly update their knowledge, and they will understand all the latest developments. You want to be on the right side of the law, and your PEO will keep you in a position where you can confidently say you’re doing everything according to the latest regulations and laws.
5. Recruit and retain the best people
Strong HR management ensures satisfied employees, and as previously mentioned, access to perks goes a long way. But there’s more to it than that. For example, do you have a formal remuneration scale that provides payment based on the level of responsibility your employees have? How do you decide who earns what?
Employees who are unhappy with their remuneration are likely to move on to other companies, leaving you in a position where you either have to train or recruit and orientate a new employee. The learning curve can be a costly one for you.
As your reputation as a great employer grows, you’ll no longer have to go out looking for people who will condescend to work for you. Instead, qualified candidates will start sending in their CVs even when you aren’t looking for help.
Do I need a PEO? Boosting your bottom line through sound people management practices
HR doesn’t have to be a headache, and it doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. With the time you save through working with a PEO, you can concentrate on your business and its strategies for success. The day-to-day HR is no longer a time-eating monster that eats into your bottom line. Instead, your business applies the best HR practices, almost without effort on your part. That’s thanks to your PEO.
