PEO Insider

A few years ago, Questco served primarily blue-collar businesses operating largely in the state of Texas. Fast forward to today and Questco has service centers in six states, internal employees in 26, and worksite employees (WSEs) in all 50 states. The company’s client base has expanded too; Questco now serves clients across a diverse base of industries, with an emphasis on fast-growing, sophisticated businesses.

Voters in Indiana’s 9^th Congressional district elected Congresswoman Erin Houchin to serve in the United States House of Representatives in November 2022. In doing so, Rep. Houchin became the first woman elected to Congress from her district. She also holds the distinction of being the only person elected to Congress who has worked for a PEO.

Rep. Houchin spoke to PEO Insider about her decision to seek public office, her experience working for a PEO, and the policies she champions.

Each of our new board members recently spoke with PEO Insider ® to share more about themselves and why they wanted to serve.

Arizona-based Vensure Employer Services emerged as a major presence in the PEO industry in just the last few years. Industry insiders know the company for its aggressive pursuit of merger and acquisition (M&A) deals with other PEOs, but few know the story behind the company and the man who leads it: Alex Campos.

Alex is a serial entrepreneur and trained computer programmer who has started and sold several businesses in the technology space. He’s an experienced and successful business leader who runs a company that processes nearly $20 billion in payroll annually. Yet, Alex’s journey to the C-suite may best be described simply as the pursuit of the American Dream.

Among the biggest landmines for PEOs is the misclassification of co-employees. This has become increasingly pressing as the Biden administration focuses heavily on the misclassification of exempt employees, as well as the misclassification of independent contractors. This article discusses common pitfalls of classification, best practices to minimize PEO liability when misclassification occurs, and how to navigate issues when they arise.

PEOs are in the business of offering robust human resources services to their customers and off-loading the responsibilities involved to a team of professionals who know how to manage employee information safely. Customers need help to make sure they keep sensitive information safe and secure. To address the legal obligations companies have when handling employee information, PEOs evaluate the information they handle and the legal obligations regarding data security imposed for handling such information, making sure they introduce cybersecurity measures early and reinforce them often.

NAPEO’s Regulatory Database (RDB) is at the very core of the NAPEO value proposition and is positioned to become even more so with the increased prevalence of remote work. Since the pandemic accelerated the disruption of traditional office life, NAPEO has begun receiving panicked questions from regional PEOs facing a common, recurring issue: a client employer has a remote-work employee in a state where the PEO is not licensed. If your PEO faces a similar issue, your first stop should likely be the RDB, followed closely by a frank conversation with your compliance advisor.

Prior to our workplace upheaval in 2020, work life had been a pretty predictable formula for many businesses. We did things the way we always had—the way society had taught us to look at work because there was simply no outside pressure to force us to change our perspective. As much negativity as is associated with the pandemic, I would suggest that it has had a positive, clarifying effect on the business mindset by challenging false assumptions about work productivity. My favorite business book, “businessThink” by Dave Marcum and Steve Smith, says “A solution is worthless unless and until it creates business value,” and I think we had allowed our focus to be locked in on business norms instead of business value. 

Buying another PEO is an expensive and time-consuming proposition. It can also be disruptive to both the buyer and the seller, and to their employees and clients. It’s imperative that both sides do their due diligence, make sure there is a fit beyond the economics of the deal, and that the post transaction integration is completed with minimal hiccups.

Nothing says “Autumn” like falling leaves, pumpkin spice, and the October PEO Marketing Push! 

This is the time when the industry bands together in an all-hands-on-deck marketing effort to raise the profile of our industry and move the needle on industry awareness and visibility. 

It’s our belief that if we all commit to marketing for the month, we will make a difference and we will grow the industry. The idea is for everyone to do somethingthis month. If you want to do a few somethings, all the better. 

In some respects, these are the best of times and the worst of times, as the economy transitions from total shutdown to hyperdrive in a matter of months. The dramatic closings from COVID threatened the economy not just here in the U.S., but essentially threw all traditional economic measures to their farthest historical extreme globally. Government, in an unprecedented way, stepped in to bring relief to what it perceived as a shuttered economy by introducing two extreme measures in the form of fiscal stimulus (government spending into the trillions of dollars) and monetary stimulus (0 percent interest rates). 

One of the things we have learned from this pandemic is how fast things can change. While many people want to return to normal overnight, we can’t be sure that society knows what post-COVID normal will look like. 

Many trends in our economy and society were accelerated during the pandemic; while COVID didn’t start e-commerce, it made everyone (including your great aunt) a lot more comfortable getting everything delivered to their doors, video chatting with the doctor, and partaking in virtual birthday parties. 

PEO Insider® published my article, “Key Data Privacy and Security Issues for PEOs,” in its May 2010 issue. That article discussed data security best practices such as risk assessments, vendor management protocols, and developing incident response plans, all of which were important then and continue to be critically important today. Since then, there have been many data privacy and cybersecurity developments and trends that are important to consider to continually inform a PEO’s policies, procedures, and practices. 

Employees and others around the country are filing legal claims related to COVID. It is a feeding frenzy. Insurance markets are stressed and PEO risk managers have full plates managing and mitigating claims. The future is uncertain; however, we have sufficient data to paint a decent picture of where we are today and attempt some predictions. 

2020 will forever be remembered as the year that defined a decade of progressive and innovative employer benefits strategies. This pandemic is one of the most significant global threats to financial stability that many will see in their lifetimes. In Mercer’s COVID Employer Response Survey, 85 percent of respondents estimated that the pandemic would have a moderate to high impact on overall financial performance for 2020. What 2021 holds is still not clear. The COVID pandemic greatly accelerated forces that were already pressuring employers to reinvent their health and benefits programs. 

Before starting Pacific HR, I was a systems analyst for a large defense contractor. In college, I studied computer science and added a minor in business administration. I was convinced that a successful career as a systems analyst was my calling. It didn’t take long to learn that programming was not my passion. Before long, I knew I needed to make a change—little did I know how big that change was going to be. 

With the continued threat of COVID and the introduction of the Biden administration into the White House, employers will face a new series of hurdles concerning workplace safety and labor relations in 2021. 

The early hours of COVID-19 were extremely challenging: the uncertainty was terrifying, the rhetoric was schizophrenic, and the legislation was half-baked. But our industry faced those challenges with banners raised and swords drawn. The good news is that, over the past few weeks, we are seeing fewer COVID-19-specific questions and more of the business-as-usual existential crises. Let’s take stock of what we accomplished, what we are currently facing, and what we are likely to face going forward.

It’s October and that can mean only one thing: It’s time for the October PEO Marketing Push! (Silly you if you thought I was going to say pumpkins, fall leaves, or Halloween). It’s the industry-wide, all-hands-on-deck marketing effort to raise the profile of our industry and move the needle on industry awareness and visibility. 

Crises are, by nature, horrible events. Oftentimes, they also bring out the best in people and companies. Living in Northwest Florida (aka Hurricane Alley), emergency preparedness is simply a way of life for most people here. While it is a very nice place to live, people understand that living on or near the water is truly a gamble in that their belongings may one day be destroyed by a storm. Past tragedies of hurricanes and the BP oil spill have well prepared LandrumHR for various crises going forward, including the recent COVID-19 crisis.

The workforce is returning to the workplace. Public health questions loom large, generally speaking. For PEOs and their clients, there are major legal risk management issues. Employees will file workers’ compensation claims based on COVID-19 diagnoses. In some jurisdictions, COVID-19 is presumed to be a work-related illness. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will scrutinize return-to-work safety due diligence and will issue citations. Employees may use such safety violations to pursue enhanced workers’ compensation penalties. Creative plaintiffs’ lawyers will search for loopholes to file civil lawsuits against employers for inadequate safety measures. It will be a feeding frenzy.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began in mid-March, lawmakers in Washington, D.C., reacted by passing two significant pieces of legislation that have profound impact on PEOs. As PEOs continue working with clients to ensure compliance with the new leave requirements and help clients understand the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), it’s worth taking a step back to look at the changes to federal law these two significant bills made.  

• The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) temporarily expands paid sick, family, and medical leave requirements for the employees of small businesses. 
• The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act authorizes $350 billion worth of emergency loans to small businesses. 

There is no easy approach to selling a business and no two transactions are ever the same. Buyer appetites, legal frameworks, industry cycles, and macroeconomic conditions are in constant flux, making the idea of selling a daunting one. The silver lining: Successful transactions happen all the time, provided sellers take the necessary steps to prepare early and prepare well. Preparing involves mental preparation as well as a functional preparedness. The functional preparedness is a form of seller due diligence, asking yourself the tough questions that a buyer might ask, and then being prepared to support your answers. Let’s explore the process.

Enjoy the impact of the economic tailwinds of the current U.S. economy. However, as a warning, do not become complacent in good times. The fissures of structural, process, and management weaknesses can be invisible and hidden during times of prosperity, but can rear their ugly heads during more turbulent times and economic downturns.

Gone are the days of the personnel manager, as the field of human resources has evolved and developed. HR executives have made their way into the boardrooms of large companies as HR directors, vice presidents, and even chief people officers. While small and mid-size companies don’t always have the luxury of internal HR expertise, they do have PEOs. A big part of the HR equation, though, is handling risk, which protects the client, the employees, and the PEO.  

The workplace has changed. Open offices are now the norm. Employees in the field use mobile devices to track their work. Unlimited paid time off (PTO) has become a thing. These changes mirror the evolution of the workforce, which is now made up of a majority of Millennial and Gen Z employees. Perhaps the largest shift, however, has been the emphasis younger workers place on “meaningful work.” To attract and retain the best talent, top employers of today are also advocates on issues that impact their employees.

If you attended PEO Marketing Day during NAPEO’s 2019 Annual Conference & Marketplace in Austin in September, you were a part of an exciting and energizing event that showcased the slick new marketing resources we’ve created to help us all promote and grow the industry, and introduced the “October Push,” the industry-wide, all-hands-on-deck marketing effort we’re launching this month. If you weren’t able to be there in Austin, you’ll still be able to take advantage of these great resources and be a part of the October Push.

It has been a historic year for the PEO industry with the completion of the two largest transactions in the history of the industry. The two blockbuster transactions were the Paychex (NASDAQ: NYSE) acquisition of Oasis Outsourcing, Inc., which was announced in the fourth quarter of 2018, a deal purportedly valued at $1.2 billion, and the Aquiline Capital Partners acquisition of CoAdvantage from Morgan Stanley in a third quarter 2019 transaction, expected to be valued near $800 million, although that information was unavailable at the time of this writing.

Despite PEOs being all about people, they still need a framework from which to operate. They couldn’t serve their clients and worksite employees without one. After all, the PEO needs a mechanism to store and process data, perform administrative and transactional tasks, and keep it all safe and secure. Meeting this basic need allows the PEO to serve its clients in many different ways, from payroll all the way to strategic HR and proactive personal service.

The point of the framework, then, is to support and enhance the relationship between the PEO and its clients and employees. This feature goes into depth in several areas that are vital to this purpose:

• The X Factor: 10 Things PEOs Need to Know about EX and UX
• Making Your Front End Run Seamlessly
• The PEO IT Platform: Build from the Ground Up or Purchase Core System and Add On?
• Can One Platform Fit All? Making Sure Your Technology Fits Your Business
• Electronic Employee Onboarding: Isn’t it Time You Caught Up?

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:

• Having a Formal Budget: Supporting Your Financial Goals with Solid Methodologies
• Factors That Most Affect PEO Profitability
• Developing and Tracking Internal Metrics
• Business and Economic Analysis: Providing Perspective and Context for Decision Making
• Strategic Business Planning for PEOs
• Growth Investment: Where to Invest in Your PEO and Why
• Evaluating Growth Plans and Determining Investment Needs
• Return on Investment: Organic Versus Acquisition Growth

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.

If I were to state the obvious, that PEO compliance is complex, you would be justified in replying, “No kidding, Sherlock!”

Just as any sleuth worth his or her salt has to gather, piece together, and make connections between seemingly disparate clues to reveal the truth, so do PEO operators as they seek and compile information to keep their companies and those of their clients compliant with federal, state, and local laws and regulations.

In the PEO world, there is much information to collect, understand, connect, and translate into practice and policy, and it is constantly changing:

• The complicated federal and state patchwork of laws and regulations governing HR and benefits:
  • Sexual harassment and pay equity;
  • Paid family and sick leave; and
  • Retirement benefits.
• Business regulation:
  • Joint-employer status and independent contractor standards; and
  • Wage and hour litigation, overtime regulations, and exempt/non-exempt classifications.
• Litigation and enforcement:
  • Litigation trends that foretell the direction of things to come; and
  • Immigration audits.
• State trends:
  • Developing policy to address differing state laws and regulations; and
  • Tracking issues in the states to keep compliance efforts up to date.
• Evolving areas of the law:
  • Marketplace contractors, i.e., companies in the gig economy.

We hope this feature provides what you need to strengthen your PEO’s compliance program.

What makes for a robust PEO healthcare program? Well, it would need to have qualities that make it strong, productive, and dynamic.

There are generally three things that contribute to this. First, strength. The plan needs to have a strong foundation that allows it to serve a broad array of participants. PEOs can achieve program strength by offering plan choice. If the range of plans provides options and benefit levels that cover a wide variety of jobs, pay ranges, and locations, enrollment will remain strong and keep the plan strong.

Productivity. When the PEO keeps healthcare costs in check, the program is productive, meaning that participants get the most bang for their buck. A variety of things can help with this, including new distribution channels, performance monitoring, and strategies such as using health savings accounts, health reimbursement arrangements, and flexible spending accounts. These tools also help the PEO enhance its healthcare value proposition.

Being dynamic. This means staying abreast of the marketplace, client concerns, and developments in the healthcare arena to implement plan design changes, make contribution changes, re-evaluate vendors, and update delivery systems.

All of these things will contribute to making your healthcare program robust: strong, productive, and dynamic.

PEOs depend on the data they maintain for their clients and worksite employees to provide their services. It is important to keep that data secure and private. Unfortunately, this data is also extremely valuable to hackers, thieves, and cybercriminals.

This is why NAPEO formed the Cybersecurity Task Force in late 2017. The task force surveyed all member PEOs in-depth, including questions about their preparedness; their internal resources dedicated to cybersecurity; their awareness about the threat, penalties, and exposure; and their response and recovery plans, training, and testing. After analyzing the survey results and conducting research, members of the task force created, “The Pillars of Cybersecurity for PEOs,” to guide NAPEO member companies through several steps to ensure data security, available to members at www.napeo.org/peo-resources/resources-by-topic/regulations-and-compliance.

This feature complements and expands upon this document:

• Cybersecurity for PEOs: Seven Steps to Get Started
• Cyber-Threat Prevention: The Risk Assessment Process
• Bringing the Risk Assessment into Action in 10 Steps
• Data Privacy and Security: Understanding the Complex Patchwork of Laws and Regulations
• Cyber Insurance: Providing a Backstop for Your Cyber Risks
• Data Breaches in the 21^st Century: A Call to IRP Action
• California’s New Sweeping Data Privacy Law: What PEOs Need to Know

While the PEO industry has experienced cases of payroll fraud sporadically for years, a pronounced uptick in member reports to NAPEO of payroll fraud incidents began about six months ago. Reports have come from across the country, with fraudulent client prospects reported in several industries, including transportation, car washes, dry cleaners, construction companies, hair salons, and gyms. In some cases, fraudulent prospects pose as legitimate companies whose identities they have stolen. Fraudsters have also perpetrated schemes through phishing and email scams to steal login credentials or impersonate company officers to request fund transfers.

When the uptick in fraud reports from members began, NAPEO not only started keeping track of them, but also:

• Mobilized the Payroll Fraud Task Force under its Accounting Practices Committee;
• Contacted the FBI about the problem;
• Initiated regular email alerts to members;
• Began developing educational resources for members such as webinars, magazine coverage, and sessions at upcoming conferences; and
• Posted a regularly-updated, members-only resource related to payroll fraud on its website, www.napeo.org/fraudalert. This resource includes: a document outlining steps you can take to protect your PEO; an email to report fraud incidents to NAPEO (ffielder@napeo.org); a link to the FBI’s Internet Crimes Complaint Center (www.ic3.gov); and a listing of recently reported fraud schemes.

The task force is drafting a document, “Best Practices for Reducing the Risk Associated with PEO Payroll Fraud,” for release in the next few weeks. Early this month, NAPEO presented a webinar, “Payroll Fraud and Its Impact on PEOs,” discussing how to identify payroll fraud risk, how to proactively protect your organization, and how to respond to fraud incidents. The recording and PowerPoint presentation from this webinar will be added to webinar archive at www.napeo.org/peo-resources/tools/webinars for those who missed it or want to revisit it.

Even as members have been put at risk by the recent onslaught of payroll fraud attempts, they have come to NAPEO with information about their experiences and lent their expertise to produce educational materials to be shared with the entire membership. This feature presents a detailed picture of the many facets of the problem and a comprehensive approach to preventing fraud attempts and protecting the PEO.