A Professional Employer Organization (PEO) is a co-employment partner that runs payroll, transmit and files employment taxes, administers benefits, and supports HR and workers’ compensation for your existing team. You still own the company. You still hire, manage, set pay, and run the business.

The value is scale. The PEO already serves thousands of employees across many small companies, so it can buy large-group benefits, allocate HR personnel, and operate HR systems that a smaller shop cannot justify on its own.

No. You keep ownership, strategy, customers, and day-to-day supervision. The PEO does not take equity or sit in your operations meetings.

What you share is a defined list of employer duties in a Client Service Agreement: typically payroll, tax filings, benefits administration, and certain insurance functions. If a salesperson cannot explain in detail core areas of their service agreement, using an outside PEO advisor makes sense.

Payroll provider software files taxes under your EIN and leaves benefits, workers’ compensation, handbooks, and multi-state rules with you. An HR manager is one generalist stretched across recruiting, employee relations, and compliance.

A PEO is a system: payroll tax operations, a benefits-buying coalition, a workers’ compensation program, HR advisors, and an HR platform, bundled through co-employment. Many clients still keep an internal people lead for vendor management purposes. They just stop asking that person to also be the tax expert, the 401(k) administrator, and the claims adjuster.

No. A staffing firm supplies workers. A PEO does not send you labor. It co-employs the people you already have — and the people you hire later — and wraps payroll, benefits, services, and HR around that workforce. 

If the pitch is “we’ll send you people,” you are looking at staffing, not a PEO.