To Manage It Myself or Not To Manage It Myself…That is the Question

December 18, 2019

When Shakespeare’s Hamlet was at an epic decision point he uttered the famous line “To Be or Not to Be…” These epic decision points seem to arise every day for the average small business owner.  Choosing between what to do yourself versus what to outsource is an ever present decision point for many small business owners on a number of topics.  Do I troubleshoot computer issues myself or pay someone else to do it?  Should I hire an assistant to help with some of my admin work or not? Do I write blog articles or social media content myself or pay someone else to do it?  One of the bigger questions many business owners find themselves asking especially when on a growth path is – do I continue trying to manage payroll, benefits, and all of the related compliance pieces myself or find a subject matter expert to do it?

Continuing on the same path of doing it yourself does allow you to be in the throes of what is happening, providing you with a keen awareness of the good, the bad, and the ugly.  However, as foundational as payroll and benefits are to your business combined with the high probability of them being unrelated to the product or service you sell, it is worth careful consideration to utilize a subject matter expert to manage these in partnership with you, so your time can be spent on revenue generating or strategic activities.

When you are considering what might be best for your business, there are a few areas to think through to determine if managing payroll and benefits in house or if pairing up with a PEO makes sense.

1. Scale and Complexity of Needs. Depending upon how streamlined or robust your company’s needs are for payroll, benefits, compliance requirements, and technology integration will determine if an in-house model or a PEO model would be a better value for your company.  Companies who have streamlined needs – simple payroll processing, limited or no benefit offerings, and have low risk for compliance errors – might benefit from the cost savings an in house model can offer.  Companies who have more than basic payroll needs, would like to offer a robust benefits package to attract talent, or have a higher risk in compliance matters might benefit from the partnership of a PEO.
2. Time Cost. For business owners who are managing payroll and benefits on their own, they typically get things done.  Payroll goes out; benefits options are selected and communicated to employees.  But at what true cost?  Do you really know if payroll or your benefits management is compliant and do you have the time to continue to put towards these necessary, important and administrative processes?  If the answer is not really, then a PEO might be a good option to help you meet your own expectations. Even streamlined PEOs offer robust technology platforms to allow you to manage payroll and benefits in 1 place.
3. Administrative Burden. One of the biggest pros of a PEO lies in administrative burden relief.  It would be difficult to pinpoint one thing that makes an administrator’s life easier with a PEO; rather, it’s the collection of small time savings here and there that can add up to a significant amount of time saved in addition to having expert guidance in matters around which you may not have expertise.

Every PEO has a different service offering.  In some instances a PEO might take complete ownership of select administrative tasks.  For other items they might partner with you to manage it together, and there are also items where they will provide you with tools and resources to help you manage it better.  If you want to know how a PEO might be able to help your business, click the Contact tab to see what the combination of quality and simplicity can bring.