Name: jeff kuzmich - jeff kuzmich - Migrate_PEO_Fact_vs_Fiction_02172026_5161270
Uploaded: 2026-02-26T05:53:01.121Z
Duration: 21 min 19 s
Description: jeff kuzmich - jeff kuzmich - Migrate_PEO_Fact_vs_Fiction_02172026_5161270

Transcript for "jeff kuzmich - jeff kuzmich - Migrate_PEO_Fact_vs_Fiction_02172026_5161270": Hello everyone. Thanks for joining today's webinar. We're going to take you through what a professional employer organization, or PEO, does, how co employment works, and why this model helps more than 200,000 businesses streamline their HR, reduce risk, and grow with confidence. So before we get to it, let me just cover a few housekeeping issues. Today's session, the audio is gonna be coming through your computer, so just make sure you have your volume set correctly. Also, sometimes to get the console to work properly, you may have to refresh your browser window. You'll see the key commands here on screen to help you do that. So let's look at some other important features. To download and print a copy of today's deck for future reference and to access additional resources, you can refer to the Files and Resources window at the top right of the console. That's available anytime during the event, and as our speakers discuss some of the resources that will be available to you, this is where you'll find them, in that Files and Resources window. And then finally, I'd like to note that this presentation does not constitute legal advice. It's for informational purposes only. And now, I'd like to introduce today's speakers. Joining us first is Leigh Ann Dresnick, Director of PEO Client Success. Leigh Ann leads a team dedicated to helping clients maximize the value of their PEO experience at Paychex. With more than ten years in the PEO and HR solutions industry, she creates proactive, personalized customer journeys using data insights and client feedback. She recently introduced buying intent and data signaling strategies to anticipate client needs and help strengthen retention. Donna Gilbert Meek is a Senior Director of PEO HR Services and Relationship Management. Donna is recognized for turning complex HR operations into scalable, client centric solutions. With twenty five plus years of entrepreneurial and operational experience, she leads client success strategy across the full lifecycle, onboarding adoption, renewal, and growth. She builds high performing teams and delivers data driven improvements that increase efficiency, strengthen compliance, and improve retention. Now, Donna, will hand it off to you to introduce what we will be covering today. All right. Thanks, Rob. Excited to be here today. Let's get started with the basics. We'll introduce the PEO model and what it includes, and then we'll look at how businesses benefit from outsourcing HR through PEO, and then how this model compares to other services. We'll clear up some common confusion and assumptions about PEOs, and finally, we'll touch on how Paychex PEO stands out. You'll leave with a clear understanding of how a PEO works and whether it's a fit for your business. So let's get started. Leigh Ann. Thanks, Donna. Let's talk a little bit more about what a PEO actually is. PEO stands for Professional Employer Organization, but what that really means is you get a partner in your corner to help you with your HR and compliance needs. We're talking about a team that brings together the right technology and real life support with HR know how to help your people thrive and keep your business protected. The PEO can help with managing payroll, benefits, and all those compliance headaches so that you don't have to. They also share the responsibility of keeping your business on the right side of the labor laws, which gives them serious peace of mind. The big picture here is really about building a partnership. The importance of this partnership, I think, is much like one you would have with your CPA, attorney, or maybe even an in house counsel. PEO partnered with an HR expert like we have here at Paychex adds a layer of protection that can scale with you. This is all made possible through something called co employment, which really is just a fancy way of saying there are certain HR responsibilities that are shared. You'll continue to make the day to day decisions and call the shots on who you hire, who you separate with, but the PEO takes on a chunk of that administrative workload so that your employees also can have the opportunity to have access to better benefits. This is something that the PEO brings to the table because they have the opportunity to have larger buying power that bigger companies usually have access to. So who's a great fit for PEO? We get this question a lot. Generally, we see a variety of sized businesses across a multitude of industries at various stages of the business life cycle. We see companies that are small yet mighty, that they wear a lot of hats, and they need to do a lot with less access to resources. We also have a lot of clients that have fully functioning HR teams that want a partnership, so they have the ability to drive more strategic initiatives that ultimately make a positive impact on the bottom line, but they're often sucked into admin tasks. Bottom line, a PEL lets you and your team get back to focusing on working on growing the business and finding and keeping great talent. So, Donna, let's tell them a little bit more about the value. All right. Thanks, Leigh Ann. So, yeah, let's talk about the value of partnering with a PEO. Partnering with a PEO means you're not alone in navigating HR complexity. You get help staying compliant with the ability to offer better benefits and more time to focus on your business. A PEO may also help reduce risk and services that scale your business as it grows. Let's dive into some specifics. You can improve recruiting and retention of employees. PEOs can simplify hiring, onboarding, and employee retention while giving your business a competitive advantage through offering Fortune 500 level benefits more affordably. PEOs can also provide access to large group health and retirement plans. Employers expect health care costs to rise 9.2%, putting a lot of pressure on budgets and benefit strategies. Through economies of scale, a PEO can help make it more affordable to offer a health plan and other valuable benefits to your employees. How about if you could reduce safety risk? PEOs provide greater compliance support than standard HR outsourcing, including workers' comp and safety services managed by the PEO to help reduce your liability. And one of the most important that I think is streamlining HR tasks. Businesses spend an average of more than eight hours a week on administration alone. PEOs free your HR team from those tasks so they can focus on what matters the most. And then staying compliant with changing regulations. There are over 50 new state level workplace laws and numerous federal tax and AI regulations that became effective on January, making a significant period of regulatory change for businesses in HR departments. HR risk management and compliance is the third greatest HR challenge for businesses behind, of course, health and nontraditional benefits and talent management. PDOs keep up with changing compliance requirements to help your business comply and potentially avoid costly penalties. Lastly, PEOs save your business time and money while helping you focus on growing your business and accelerating growth. So now let's talk about how PEOs differ from other HR outsourcing models and some of the key benefits. As Leanne mentioned earlier, the shared HR responsibility helps reduce administrative work through the co employment relationship. PEOs handle payroll processing and take on the responsibility for the accuracy and timeliness of payroll tax filings. This reduces the risk of penalties and fines for you related to payroll tax errors and potential audits. The PEO is able to provide robust benefits such as health insurance, retirement plans, and voluntary benefits through pooled plans at rates many small and mid sized businesses can't achieve, The administrative work that comes along with this is reduced since the PEO works with the carriers directly, manages your open enrollment, your new hires, your benefit reconciliation, and also provides great tools for employees to manage their benefits. With compliance and risk, PEOs often implement workplace safety programs and provide resources and training to provide a safer work environment, mitigating your workplace hazards and risk, and then also manage workers' compensation insurance and claims, sharing risks with the client by providing coverage under the policy and handling your claims administration. PEOs help ensure compliance with the latest regulations and provide HR expertise to consult with. Over to you, Leigh Ann. Thanks, Donna. So let's take a moment here to clear up some of the most common things people tend to have a misconception about with PEOs. So the first one is I'll lose control of my business. Not true. You're still the boss. You're calling the shots on your team, your culture, and the everyday decisions. The PEO really is just there in the background, making sure that payroll is getting handled, PEO benefits are taken care of, and the compliance headaches go away. With Paychex, you're not only getting the technology, but you're also having the HR partner that's going to be there to help give effective recommendations so that you can have that gut check that you sometimes want before making a major HR decision. The second misconception we hear is PEOs are only for big companies. While big companies certainly benefit, actually, it's our smaller companies sometimes that get the even bigger benefits of working with a PEO. You don't have to have huge HR departments to get access to great benefits or expert support. It really is all about making it easier for you to compete, grow, and run your business without all the extra overhead. At Paychex, our PEO is offering not only scalability but a degree of flexibility that how you want to use our services. The third misconception is the PEO will replace my HR team. No. Think of PEO as a partner, not a replacement. Your HR team is still very much in the picture. The PEO can assist with streamlining some of that administrative workload so that your team can stop chasing paperwork and also focus on your employees growing and building that strong company culture, making your workplace even better. Having an HR partner that also can provide as a sounding board when it comes to making some of those tough decisions when it comes to tackling employee challenges or just simply needing access to HR information. Rather than your team going and spending the extra hours researching for answers, they can tap into a nationwide network of information and have real recommendations from our team. The fourth misconception that I hear is that I'll lose flexibility if I use a PEO. This one makes me chuckle a little bit because when I hear this, it usually isn't so much about flexibility but more about the fact that we are a little tighter on some of those gray areas, but this is a good thing. There are so many pitfalls and challenges that any size business is faced with when it comes to compliance and managing employees and benefits. With a PEO, you do get more flexibility, not less, and often you're able to get that under one umbrella versus having to work with multiple vendors or partners. Each PEO is a little bit different in what they allow and offer, I would highly recommend any business go through the evaluation process to see what their options are. Alright, thanks Leanne for that information. Now, I'm going to share with you why Paychex PEO. Not all PEOs are created equal. Paychex PEO stands out because of our scale, technology, and national service coverage. We bring deep industry expertise, an all in one HR platform, and a dedicated relationship manager who serves as your single point of contact. Our Master PEO Benefits Plan gives you access to competitive benefits typically reserved for larger clients. With Paychex technology, you get HR analytics and robust reporting, straightforward GL and third party integrations, and AI powered tools that help keep you compliant. Every client also gets access to our automated compliance platform to navigate employment laws, AI powered legal updates to keep up with changing requirements in addition to our HR experts to keep you current on new regulations, update your handbook, and provide a library of HR forms and templates. Decide to choose the engagement style that fits your team? You want more self-service, a dedicated payroll specialist, or both? Mix and match retirement benefits, EPOI, workers' comp, timekeeping, performance management, and applicant tracking without juggling multiple departments or even vendors. We guide you to the answers and solutions that best fit your business. Back to you, Leanne, to share more about our service model. Thanks, Donna. So when you're looking at PEOs, it is really easy to think that they all work the same way, but the service model really does make one of the biggest differences. At Paychex, I think that's one of our biggest strengths. We don't use just a one size fits all approach. You get your own team of experts that back you up every step of the way. From day one, your implementation project manager helps get you set up so that you feel comfortable when moving forward. We also get you matched with a dedicated relationship manager that is involved early on during your implementation. They understand your needs, and they really help you move and transition into ongoing service. Your relationship manager is your key liaison between you and the internal team here at Paychex. No need to navigate the Paychex phone tree for support. We're always just a phone call or email away. We really emphasize the customer centric experience, where expectations around closed loop communication is at the forefront of our service. We continue to exceed expectations both in our customer service loyalty scores and transaction surveys. In addition to the relationship manager, you have another really critical partner in your corner, your dedicated HR business professional. They support your internal team, your HR team, whether that's a team of one or a team of many. Through an HR assessment, they can help you determine where some of those gaps and potential risks are and then establish an actual action plan so your team can work through those. We've been helping clients with HR support for years, and the way we go about it really does set us apart in the market. Our clients would often ask our HR business partners, or what would you do, or how should I handle this, and what do you think, when it came to some of these tough decisions. That's why we provide our clients effective recommendations and not just best practices. While relationship managers and HR business partners are the ones you usually interact with the most, there's a whole team behind the scenes that continue to support your business and employees, starting with a dedicated payroll specialist and a designated safety consultant. Many of our clients do take advantage of working with our benefits team and benefits consultants to not only access those top notch benefits for employees, but also so they can work through a benefit strategy that makes the most sense for them. Human touch in our service model is critical, and it really does make the difference, and we continue to leverage AI tools and resources to help our teams be more effective and productive, allowing us to deliver more of a personalized service approach. We have insights into benchmarks and industry data and HR trends so that you can make better and faster decisions. We've been doubling down on our AI and workflow investments, which allow us to signal internally when one of our clients might be experiencing some distress or has gaps in a solution where we can either offer them an option to plug into other services or possibly leverage an integration with one of their own current systems. Clients have access to AI tools like HR analytics, where data is used for HR benchmarking and compensation. We also have turnover stats and time to fill information, so much more, and it's right at your fingertips. So with Paychex, you really get the best of both worlds. You're getting the cutting edge technology to boost efficiency, and you're getting an expert service team that's there for you every step of the way. So as we look back over over this call here today, let's kind of recap what we've learned. So we learned a little bit more and understand what a PEO is and how co employment works. We walked you through some of the differences between a PEO and other outsourcing options for HR. We also reviewed how paychecks can support your business as a strategic partner and make more informed decisions around compliance in a benefit strategy that help both your employees and the business thrive. So if you want to take the next step, we'll have you take a look at some of our PEO resources so that you can make your decision. I would say that Donna and I would both agree that a recommendation for you to go through the experience of an evaluation process with one of our representatives so you could really explore where that PEO solution can make sense is something worthwhile and something we recommend that you do. So I'm going to turn it back over to Rob. We can do a quick poll and maybe touch on some Q and A. Excellent. Thank you so much, Leanne, and thank you, Donna. As Leanne mentioned, one of the best ways to evaluate whether a PEO is a good fit for you is to talk to an expert. So if you would like to talk to an HR expert about outsourcing, about a PEO, and whether it's a good fit for you and your business, just click Yes on the poll that's coming up here on screen, and we'll have someone reach out to you and do an evaluation and figure out if this is the right solution for you. It is for a lot of other businesses. And now I'd like to get just to a couple questions. We just have a few minutes here. My first question is for Donna. Leanne had mentioned businesses can't be too small for a PEO, that we take care of everyone. Is there a size limit, though? I mean, there's got to be a place where PEO starts to make real sense for a business. Not really at all. It's a great question, especially it's very valuable for small and mid sized businesses that want to be able to offer competitive benefits that they couldn't do otherwise and really be able to have technology and compliance that they couldn't do on their own. So I would say a good starting point would be 10 employees or above, but it really is no one size fits all. It just depends on the type of business that you're running and what needs are, in particular. So I would definitely say that a business isn't too small, any business isn't too small for a PEO. That's great. And I love that you both have kept reiterating that point about that custom solution, really putting together a solution that works for you and your business. I love that it's not one size fits all. Know, to that point, Leanne, how quickly can I start seeing value from a PEO partnership? It's got to be, It's got to take a little while to get benefits in place, to get the compliance in place, to get the technology in place. What does that look like in the real world? What is that ROI experience? Yeah, great question. And when I think about what our clients go through as they make a transition, many of our clients actually see that value right away. Even as early on as the exploration process when they're meeting with one of our reps, they uncover some of those pockets in areas that we can help them with, but as we're going through that onboarding process and setup, your relationship manager is really tackling some of those needs right out of the gate, and same with the HR business partners, so we're there to help start making that action plan come to life even as early as the implementation phase, so that we're moving at the pace and the speed the client is comfortable with. So when there's a lot of technology sometimes to set up, we're going to work them through making sure they have the right access, the right resource, the right training, and the right reporting, and make sure we're keeping them at a pace that feels comfortable for them. For some clients, that setup's a little bit easier, and they don't need as much up front, and so we can normally jump right into that action plan with our client. As I mentioned, not all service models are the same, so you really want to see what makes sense for you, but I would say some of our clients are experiencing that value right out of the gate, and we can provide effective recommendations as early as their first payroll run on the PEO, so they could really start working with that HR person and asking them as many questions as they might need as it relates to HR and compliance concerns. That's fantastic. Thank you, Leanne, and thank you, Donna. I really appreciate you both taking the time today. And I want to thank you for joining us to better understand the value of a PEO and how it works to benefit and support your business. As a reminder, you can access a printable copy of the presentation deck in the files and resources window on your console, with those other related resources that we had mentioned. If you could spare a few minutes as we close, we welcome your feedback on a brief survey that'll pop up. Your response helps us improve future resources like this to support you and your business. Thanks again, and I hope you have a great day.