What is a PEO?

It is the multi-billion-dollar industry you’ve probably heard very little about. Professional Employer Organizations (PEOs) were the fastest growing industry in the 1990s, and, currently, there are approximately 800 PEOs who operate in all the 50 states and provide services to approximately 250,000 businesses, which equates to between 2.7 and 3.4 million worksite employees. Those employee numbers are larger than the size of the entire agriculture/forestry industry in the U.S. and close to the size of the federal government, the education sector, or the information sector, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)!

A PEO is defined by NAPEO (National Association of Professional Employer Organizations) as an “organization that provides an integrated and cost-effective approach to the management and administration of human resources and employer risk of its clients, by contractually assuming substantial employer responsibilities and risk, through the establishment and maintenance of a co-employer relationship with client’s employees.”

This relationship includes payroll, optional employee benefits, workers’ compensation, Human Resource management, loss control & safety, compliance, tax pay & file, unemployment management, and much more. PEOs become your “red-tape” manager and let you get back to the business of generating revenues for your business.