The face of every PEO shows its unique approach to providing its own combination of services to clients and worksite employees: transactional and strategic human resources, benefits, payroll, tax administration, and regulatory compliance help, to name a few.
Behind that face is each PEO’s distinct way of providing those services through its infrastructure, technology, and processes.
And behind that is each PEO’s own strategy for achieving financial strength, profitability, and growth. This month’s feature walks through universal elements of such a strategy:
We hope this is helpful in providing insight into developing the foundation that supports the PEO operation, which in turn supports the PEO’s ability to serve its clients and worksite employees.
The misuse of and addiction to opioids, including prescription pain relievers, heroin, and synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, have reached epidemic proportions. As co-employers, PEOs are caught in the cross hairs of this rapidly growing problem.
Ah, you’re fresh to the job, motivated and ready to make sales in this new industry you never heard of before. You have had success selling services in the past. You have the features, advantages, and benefits of the PEO service honed and the promotional support your new company provides will really help to educate prospects in the market. You are set and ready to launch when your manager informs you that it is necessary for you to go through a one-hour legal orientation with the company lawyer. This is a first. In your entire career, you have never had to meet with a company lawyer as part of your sales orientation. It seems odd, but doesn’t really faze you.
In most industries, the accounting department’s responsibilities include several things: • Preparing financial statements, budgets, and forecasts; • Maintaining the general ledger; • Handling all cash transactions; • Creating and implementing financial controls, processes, and procedures; and • Handling payroll and corporate taxes.
Over the years, I have attended NAPEO conferences on all shores of the United States and places in between. As a result, I have made lifelong friends as well as gleaned information and insights that I would not have been exposed to if it were not for being there.
Another NAPEO Capitol Summit is in the books, and what a week it was. As I write this, we have just wrapped up the Summit, and the few hundred people who were here are (mostly) safely back home from Arlington, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C. They had a memorable week, and—from the NAPEO perspective—a historic week.
As part of NAPEO’s marketing and communications initiatives to raise industry visibility and market penetration, we are putting the finishing touches on a 90-second video that explains what a PEO does and highlights the key benefits of using a PEO.
Despite slowing growth, optimism rebounded in Q1 of 2019 with the Expected Growth Index1 reaching its highest point since Q1 of 2018: • The index jumped from 4.0 in Q4 of 2018 to 4.2 in Q1 of 2019; • 93 percent of PEOs expect worksite employee (WSE) growth over the next 12 months; and • 27 percent expect “significant growth” to come this year—up from just 12 percent of PEOs last quarter.
As most members know, NAPEO’s State Government Affairs Committee adopts a state action plan annually. That plan represents actions we expect to take during the course of the year or actions we expect policymakers to take. Overall, I think we’ve done a pretty good job at predicting what states will do year in and year out, but the process is a mix of educated guesses based on research and knowledge from our contacts across the nation and quite a bit of luck. As you might imagine, things don’t always go as planned and policymakers take actions that surprise us. We have had plenty of surprises this year, but none more troublesome than the actions taken by the Oregon legislature.
When I came onboard with NAPEO in October 2011, the sole focus of federal government affairs was to pass the Small Business Efficiency Act (SBEA). Just as the PEO industry has undergone tremendous change and growth since 2011, so has the scope and breadth of involvement between the PEO industry and federal policymakers.
Q. What is going on with the EEO-1 report? People keep asking about ‘Component 2’ data, and I do not know what to say. A. As a result of the D.C. District Court holding in National Women’s Law Center, et al., v. Office of Management and Budget, et al., the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently formally announced the reinstatement of the Revised EEO-1 form, which adds pay data collection (Component 2) to annual reporting requirements.
When the unemployment rate is 3.6 percent—the lowest in a generation—while job vacancies are at a near record high 7.5 million, how do you sustain and strengthen growth? Simple. You retain workers of all skill levels who, in many cases, have been contributing to our economy for decades.