Growing Your Business with a PEO

It might be fair to say that most business owners would love to have more time in their day. With the extra hours, you might finally get through the stacks of paperwork on your desk, or review the latest employment laws you’ve been meaning to catch up on. Being an expert on all things related to running a business would be nice, too. Unfortunately, there are only 24 hours in a day, regardless of who you are or what business you’re running. And there’s always more to learn about running a business.

What if you were able to take back some of the time you spend on payroll and HR-related responsibilities? A Professional Employer Organization, or PEO, can actually help you gain some of that time back. They can also provide guidance on the trickier parts of running a business, which means more time for you to focus on growing your business.

Now, let’s take a closer look at some of the areas where extra time and support can translate into growth for your company.

Payroll

One major feature found across many PEO offerings is payroll software that allows you to automate direct deposits to your employees. If you’re not already using payroll software, you know all too well the time and energy it takes to process payroll without intuitive software or ready support. If you’re factoring in different employee types and pay frequencies, the complications pile up quickly.

The time and resources you save on payroll can then be reinvested in financial planning for the year ahead.

However, with a PEO like Justworks, you can easily run online payroll for your team, and the platform is flexible enough to accommodate varying employee types, pay frequencies, and more. Gone are the days of calculating special payments by hand — with a PEO, you can run payroll seamlessly, which means less heavy lifting on your end! The time and resources you save on payroll can then be reinvested in financial planning for the year ahead, or anything else that contributes to your company’s growth.

Access to Better Benefits

It can be difficult for small and medium-sized businesses to offer competitive benefits to their employees. It takes a lot of time and focus to research and understand what makes a good plan. It can be even tougher to afford the insurance your team deserves once you find it.

Related Article: What Kind of Health Insurance Options Should a Small Business Offer Employees?

Joining a PEO like Justworks means you’ll have access to big-company benefits and perks at affordable rates, even if you’re a small business with only a handful of employees. Finding affordable plans and learning about them won’t be solely on your shoulders — PEOs support employers and their employees through health insurance plan selections and enrollment (and some even have one centralized platform where both can be done).

With the ability to easily choose and afford better health insurance for your team, you’ll have an opportunity to elect plans that are more attractive to prospective hires. And with more talent entering your pipeline, your company’s ranks can grow that much faster.

New Hire Onboarding

Once you begin increasing your employee headcount, it takes a lot of time to prepare for and onboard new hires. Between paperwork and training, there can be a lot of hands-on tasks employers have to manage. Some PEOs aim to lighten the lift for employers by automating a number of onboarding and HR-related tasks through a tech-based platform.

A PEO can help increase the time employers have to search for and recruit more promising candidates.

Justworks’ platform, for example, enables new hires to complete tasks such as completing direct deposit information and selecting health insurance plans all in one place. The platform also includes a suite of online trainings powered by EVERFI, which means employees can access and complete training on their own right on Justworks’ platform. By decreasing the time employers need to be directly involved in the onboarding process, a PEO can help increase the time employers have to search for and recruit more promising candidates.

Compliance

Making sure your business is in compliance with the latest employment laws can be a job on its own. With the number of changes that can happen month-to-month (especially while COVID-19 is still a factor), keeping up can become an overwhelming task.

PEOs can help employers with this facet of running a business as well. Justworks, for example, provides regular updates to our customers around the latest changes to employer laws and regulations. When an action may be required, we alert our customers to help ensure they comply.

Related Article: How to Stay Compliant While Working with an Outsourced HR Partner

PEOs can also handle withholding, reporting, and remitting your payroll taxes, as well as filing your W-2s and 1099s. Not only that, but PEOs can also secure workers’ comp and (in many states) state unemployment insurance for their customers. Together, those are some pretty big time commitments that you can take off your plate. And depending on the number of employees you have, this could save you more time (and stress) than you realize.

Customer Support

As a business owner, part of your job might include chasing down answers to some important questions. But when you’re facing a deadline, or you have one too many items on your to-do list, the last thing you want to do is chase down the answer you need. This is where a PEO’s support can really come in handy.

When you run into any snags or questions you can’t answer, PEOs often have customer service teams available to answer your questions — Justworks’ support is available 24/7, so you won’t lose any time waiting for the support lines to open up. And some PEOs (Justworks included) open that support up to their customer’s employees as well. This means less time spent answering the questions from your team, and more time focused on their development and growth.

Sometimes the busyness of running a business is necessary to ensure success and growth. But it can be difficult to focus on growth efforts when you’re buried in paperwork and manual processes. Joining a PEO can help save you valuable time so you have more to invest in growing your business.