Over the years we have worked with countless small business owners. No matter the industry or size of the company, we have found some specific things that most owners share. First of all, small business owners are busy individuals. They do not have extra time to spend figuring out tax laws, processing payroll, making sure they are covered by insurance, answering employee benefits questions, or researching best practices for human resources. If they do happen to have extra time, they would much rather spend it with their friends and family rather than dealing with administrative headaches.
Since their free time is so scarce, many small business owners consider outsourcing these back-office tasks. While outsourcing may seem beneficial at first glance, outsourcing multiple aspects of your business may be counterproductive.
Think about it. If you outsource payroll, you still need to communicate with your payroll provider every week or two to make sure the correct hours and pay rates are being calculated. If you outsource tax administration, then you need to hire a CPA to ensure you stay compliant with current regulations. There may be one benefits broker for health and dental, and yet another one vision. There is likely a financial advisor helping with 401(k)s and maybe a supplemental insurance broker helping with life insurance and disability. That is already several individual relationships to manage. Point being is, even if you outsource your administrative tasks, there is still a lot of different moving parts and vendors that you must keep up with consistently.
Having to keep up with different vendors could cancel out any time savings achieved through outsourcing. Think about it like this. You would not go to a vegetable store, a fruit store, a bakery, and a deli just to get all your groceries, right? Instead, you would just go to one location, the grocery store, and get everything you need right there in one spot. Why isn’t there anything like this for business? A one stop shop for all back office administrative tasks. Well, there actually is. It is called a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) and helps thousands of small business owners across the country save time and money.
Sure we may be a little biased being a PEO ourselves, but our clients have suggested distinct characteristics that set a PEO apart from other solutions.
Access to exclusive resources
In our experience, we’ve found that small business owners are passionate people who want to provide the best opportunities to their employees. They want to be able to offer the very best pay and benefits, but cost can become a real concern. Working with a PEO allows small businesses the access to a robust benefits package as a Fortune 500 company. This can include benefits such as medical, dental, vision, life insurance, disability, 401k and retirement plans, flexible spending, and dependent care plans with the potential for much more.
A PEO can solve many other pain points of business owners besides just employee benefits.
A PEO is able to provide robust human resources solutions like leadership development training, recruiting tools, employee retention, and turnkey onboarding resources. While there are individual resources out there for each of these areas, it makes the process much more simplified when using a PEO. On top of that, using a PEO is usually much cheaper than outsourcing each function individually.
Cutting Edge Technology
Technology has made almost every aspect of our lives easier. However, the best technology is only as effective as the person using it. For example, having the best payroll software will not make somebody an expert in payroll. Working with a PEO gives you the best of both worlds. Partnering with a PEO not only gives small business owners access to the best technology, but also pairs it with expert level professionals who know how to get the most out of that technology.
All Business Functions, One Place
Working with a PEO allows business owners to consolidate payroll, benefits, taxes, human resources and other employee related business functions with a single vendor. Not only does this arrangements save time and frustration associated with dealing with multiple vendors, but also allows for a unique coordination of services not available anywhere else.
In Conclusion
A PEO offers a suite of services for small business owners that are not available with traditional service providers. Partnering with a PEO like CornerstonePEO may be in your best interest. CornerstonePEO covers everything from HR and employee benefits to payroll and workers comp. Our industry leading PEO services offer innovative, cost effective, easy to understand business solutions for companies of any size and industry. Contact us to learn more.
