Over the last thirty years, the Professional Employer Organization (PEO) industry has experienced tremendous growth, and PEOs continue to grow each year as businesses learn more about the benefits of these services.
With almost 1000 PEO companies in all 50 states to choose from, how do you find the PEO that best fits your company's unique needs?
Exploring the Differences in PEO Providers
As you can imagine, just like your business, not one PEO company is the same. Their workers' compensation insurance and benefit plans have very distinct differences in coverage and costs. They service different industries, markets and states. Each company has minimum employee or annual payroll amount requirements as well.
For example, over 90% of PEO companies only provide workers' compensation insurance coverage in the state(s) where their business resides. So if you work in multiple states, your employees would not be covered if an accident were to happen.
Each provider also has different group health insurance providers. This is extremely important not only in cost differences, but what if you're in an area where the carrier's doctors and hospitals are limited?
Unlike a company salesperson who may try and fit you into their plan that has mediocre coverage, our job is to know which PEO companies have the insurance coverage that employees can access easily.
Get the Best PEO Pricing
When we submit your company information to qualifying PEOs who can deliver the services you need, each provider knows that they're competing for your business. This can result in a savings of between 10-30% compared to contracting directly with the PEO company.
There are many long term advantages as well. For example, if you hire more employees and your payroll grows, we'll request more discounts for you that ordinarily wouldn't be brought to your attention by the leasing service or sales person.
ELQ's Knowledge of the PEO Service Industry
As with any industry, there are strong and poorly managed PEO companies. The job of a PEO broker is to save you time and money by investigating the history and financial strength of each PEO for you. We travel to each provider, communicating with the principles and management. We know and develop relationships with their internal employees - the people who you'll communicate with regularly.
This is important in knowing their professionalism, communication and problem solving skills. Your goal in outsourcing these tasks is to eliminate time consuming administrative paperwork - not add to it. The PEO broker should know who can successfully service all the needs of your business, consistently.
As the PEO industry has grown, all the advantages favor using independent representation. Reducing the time, sales appointments and hassles of trying to find out who can deliver the services you need.
Security, in knowing you're working with a reputable, professional, PEO company that has a history of providing services to businesses in your industry and savings, as companies compete for your business.
