Co-employment is a solution to help you handle everything you don't want to do, therefore allowing you to focus on what you do want to be in charge of. As businesses across the country continue to evolve and change, business owners' list of responsibility only continues to grow. They may find themselves thinking, “Am I doing everything I can for my employees? Have I been providing my employees with proper benefits, including health insurance, access to long- or short-term disability and correctly matching their 401(k)? Am I being fully compliant in properly protecting business? How can I operate smarter in order to make my business the best it can be? Am I allocating enough time for myself to focus on what really matters? And most importantly, am I being the best employer I can possibly be?”

While all of these components need to be met to properly run a business, they also can ultimately take complete control of a business owner's focus, leaving their true passion—the company they started from the bottom up—falling behind as they are too wrapped up in the day-to-day concerns.

This is where co-employment, or hiring a Professional Employer Organization (PEO), can make a significant impact. Co-employment allows businesses to have a single provider that takes care of human capital management (HCM) needs across the entirety of the HCM lifecycle, from attracting a new hire to retirement benefits. A PEO can take care of payroll processing, tax filing, employee benefits, workers' compensation, attracting talent, regulatory compliance assistance, support with employee relations and employment issues, and access to technology to manage HR.

Besides handling HR tasks that most business owners don't have time for, co-employment offers more for your money. Most companies that invest in co-employment find savings by receiving a purchasing scale that they wouldn't receive on the open market. Many discover that their employees can have access to richer overall benefits package than they could afford to offer on their own—and at a competitive price.

Many business owner are hesitant to hire a PEO because they do not fully understand what co-employment really is. Business owners often ask, “Do I still have control over my employees and how I want to run my company?” or “Does this mean that I now have to fire all my HR employees?”

My response is always that co-employment is a solution to help you handle everything you don't want to do, therefore allowing you to focus on what you do want to be in charge of. Co-employment is there to assist, not control. It exists to compliment and protect your business and employees, not replace them.

I'm also often asked what kind of businesses would most benefit from engaging in a relationship with a PEO. People wonder if it is more targeted toward smaller businesses, or if there's a certain sector that sees the most value from their investment. I find that neither of these impact who should invest in a co-employment. The businesses that benefit the most are the ones that most value their people and that strive to be great employers. They are the companies that want to make an investment in their employees by offering the best benefits they can. They are thinking long-term about their talent, both next week and next year, and how to best keep them.

Above all, people make an organization. People are your company, they are the strongest assets we have and in order to keep them, we need to work for them as hard as they work for us.

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Brian Michaud is senior vice president, ADP TotalSource.

Instant Insights /

Understanding the benefits of co-employment

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