What Are PEO Consulting Services? How They Work & Benefits to Expect

There are a ton of moving parts involved in running a small or mid-sized business (SMB) – some more time-consuming than others. And if you’re struggling to keep up with tedious administrative tasks like payroll and employee benefits, it may be time to reach out for some PEO consulting services.

PEO, or Professional Employer Organization, is a great solution for SMBs that lack the time and manpower to tackle all of the tasks related to HR operations. Finding the right PEO provider is a tough ask, though, especially when your to-do list is already a couple of miles along. That’s where a PEO consulting firm comes in, doing a complete audit of current operational processes and making sure you find a PEO provider that aligns with your needs, budget, and long-term goals.

Learn how it all works below, including the many benefits of outsourcing your PEO search to the experts.

What Are PEO Services?

PEO services are outsourced HR responsibilities performed by a professional consulting firm, rather than in-house. You may also see them referred to as co-employment or a co-employment arrangement.

The goal of PEO outsourcing is to free up your time to focus on all of the many other key tasks associated with running a successful SMB. Instead of getting bogged down in the day-to-day requirements associated with employee payroll, taxes, and so on, you can hand off the tasks to a PEO and get careful oversight and management from trained HR pros who are focused on these tasks and nothing more.

So how do you find the perfect PEO for your business? That’s where a PEO consulting firm comes in. PEO consultants analyze your business and match you with an optimal PEO service provider. They also provide ongoing support as needed for things like managing the onboarding and implementation of your new PEO and navigating any challenges that come up after that point.

What Does PEO Do?

If you’re looking for help in any of the following areas, it may be time to connect with a PEO consultant:

• Payroll services

• Tax administration

• Employee benefits, including healthcare and workers’ comp

• Regulatory compliance

• Human resources

• Risk and safety training

• Hiring and talent management
  

Different PEOs specialize in one or more of these areas, and many specialize by industries served as well. Working with a PEO broker lets you bypass the research phase of finding a PEO, providing you with a curated list of PEOs that offer the services you need at a price that works in your budget.

How a Consulting Firm Helps with PEO Outsourcing

Small and mid-sized businesses partner with PEO service providers to streamline their operations and save them critical time, money, and effort. The exact same reason is true for why SMBs bring on PEO consultants. 

Each PEO consulting firm operates a little differently, but the best ones will follow a multi-step process that looks like this:

• Evaluation. The very first thing a PEO consultant will do is evaluate your business’s needs. This includes pinpointing the challenges that PEO can help you solve, as well as getting a general idea of what an ideal PEO service provider might look like for you.  

• Alignment. Before they begin their search, your PEO consultant will check in to discuss their findings, talk about your long-term objectives, and settle on a concrete budget. 

• Research. PEO consultants have access to industry databases of all the top-quality PEO service providers. Based on the criteria determined in steps one and two, your consultant will narrow down a short list of PEOs for you to consider and provide you with a comparison of each organization’s services, costs, and terms. 

• Negotiations. PEO quotes aren’t set in stone. A PEO consultant can negotiate quotes on your behalf in order to ensure you don’t spend more than you have to. They can also negotiate services to help build you a PEO service package that includes everything you need and nothing you don’t. 

• Selection. Your PEO broker is your best resource for choosing a PEO service provider. Get help navigating your options and adding as much value as possible to your plan, then focus on other things while your broker handles the endless onboarding paperwork. 

• Implementation. In addition to active onboarding, a skilled PEO broker will provide you with ongoing support to adapt services as your company evolves. When all is said and done, you get a fully-integrated HR management solution and a trusted partner in managing, scaling, and optimizing that solution – all of which is a huge win for SMBs working with limited staff and budget. 

5 Big Benefits of Working with a PEO Consultant

What are the benefits of a PEO consultant? It depends on what you’re trying to achieve. Learn about the many ways that PEO consulting firms amplify the existing perks of outsourced PEO, 

1. Expert Guidance

The co-employment marketplace is a complicated place. Fortunately, PEO service consulting firms manage these complexities with ease, working day in and day out with SMBs and the PEOs that serve them. As a result, they know how to hone in on the right choice for your business and find the PEO that aligns with your company and its employees, offering expert support for things like assessing a PEO’s track record and performing a thorough cost-benefit breakdown. 

2. Time and Cost Savings

These are big ones when it comes to the benefits of PEO consulting services, and happen in a number of different ways. 

In terms of time, working with a PEO consultant allows you to hand off the extensive legwork involved with researching, comparing, negotiating, and onboarding PEOs, freeing you up for other things and greatly streamlining the PEO search process. 

As for cost, PEO consultants excel at negotiating the best PEO rates and contract terms and help you avoid potential penalties associated with choosing the wrong provider. And because they have access to such a wide market of PEOs, they can almost always score you a better deal than you’d be able to find on your own. 

3. Customized HR Solutions

A PEO broker helps ensure that your final PEO service plan is tailored to your needs and all relevant state, federal, and industry regulations. This can be done by finding you a PEO provider who’s an expert in your industry and/or by mixing and matching services to create a custom plan for your business. In any event, you end up with an approach to HR and payroll that’s hyper-customized to your business – and hyper-driven toward accuracy and efficiency. 

4. Risk Mitigation

You and your PEO consultant share a common goal: to minimize risk for your business and make sure your experience with PEO is a good one. So how do they make it happen? By finding you an industry-informed PEO that can ensure compliance and minimize the risk of audits. Working with a PEO consultant also helps you avoid sketchy or inexperienced providers, in turn minimizing potential risks related to your company’s data, finances, and reputation. 

5. Improved Efficiency

If you had all the time to devote to administrative tasks, you wouldn’t need to outsource them. Partnering with a PEO consultant lets you hand off the difficult and time-consuming parts of searching and hiring a PEO company for your SMB. This means the job gets done faster, and you get to enjoy the benefits of PEO sooner. As an added efficiency bonus, you also get to avoid all of the common pitfalls that slow companies down when finding a PEO, such as using incorrect search criteria or waiting too long to read the terms. 

6. International Support

It’s incredibly exciting to expand internationally – incredibly daunting, too. Top PEO consulting services include support for sourcing international PEO solutions, including connecting you with global PEO companies that specialize in helping foreign companies set up employee payroll, benefits, and more in a new country, all while overseeing the regulatory compliance factors that apply to these types of businesses.

Once you’ve decided on a co-employment arrangement, it makes sense to take the quickest and easiest route to making it happen. PEO brokers provide your SMB with the biggest time and cost savings on a PEO search and are a trusted asset for mitigating risk and inefficiency.

Industries That Benefit From PEO Consulting

From the corporate office to the construction zone, a PEO consultant ensures you find a Professional Employee Organization that understands your industry inside and out. 

As for who benefits most from PEO consulting, that usually comes down to the size of the business (small and medium-sized businesses tend to benefit more than large ones) and the industry (specialized PEO services can be extra beneficial for businesses with heavy regulation). 

Some of the industries we work with most as PEO consultants include:

• Manufacturing

• Automotive

• Healthcare

• Legal services

• Plumbing and HVAC 

• Electric

• Construction

• Business services

• Finance
  

The right HR solution is out there for every business, and just because you don’t see your industry here doesn’t mean your business can’t benefit from PEO. We always recommend reaching out to a PEO consultant to discuss your needs and questions – even if you don’t end up moving forward you’ll still get an overview of what PEO can (and can’t) do for you.

How Much Does a PEO Consultant Cost?

Did we mention you can work with a PEO consultant for free? Many PEO brokers, including our own, are paid a finder’s fee by the PEO their client chooses, which means there are no upfront costs for the clients themselves. You won’t have to pay for consultations or check-ins with your PEO consultant either, since all of their services are covered under that finder’s fee.

Getting the Most Out of PEO Consulting Services

Choosing the right PEO consulting firm is just as important as choosing the right PEO service provider. Sit down and organize your thoughts prior to a first consultation, including what HR functions you want to outsource and a general outline of your goals and budget. If you have specific challenges that will need to be addressed by the PEO you hire, make sure to jot those down, too. 

Ultimately, you want to be transparent and clear with your PEO consultant from the get-go, giving them as much insight as needed into where you are and where you want to end up. As your objective ally in the search, a PEO consultant will provide you with an unbiased assessment of what your business needs out of outsourced HR. This is crucial for finding the right provider and a huge help in navigating the complexities of this type of task.

Start Your Search with AlignPEO

A PEO broker could be just what your business needs to secure a reliable PEO service partner for your business. Better yet, they can do so with significant time and cost savings, ensuring you get a custom PEO plan that’s a perfect fit for your objectives and budget. 

PEO consulting is all about streamlining. Your broker will remove the inefficiencies and obstacles that stand in the way of a smooth search, analyzing your needs from your own perspective and the perspective of a PEO provider. This is a must for SMBs, many of which lack the excessive budgets necessary to maintain a fully-staffed HR department or go back to the drawing board over and over again, trying to find the right PEO. 

Roughly 15% of SMB employers in the U.S. work with a PEO, and these businesses tend to grow faster and have less employee turnover than businesses that don’t use a PEO. They’re also 50% less likely to go out of business. Connect with a PEO consulting service to start your search for the best PEO options and take a huge step toward getting assistance with core payroll, benefits, and HR services. 

Our team at AlignPEO is happy to talk to you about PEO benefits, costs, terms, and more, and can also address questions related to international PEO and PEO exit strategies. Contact us to get started and to see for yourself exactly what PEO consulting teams can do.

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