One of the worries companies have when choosing to partner with a PEO is how it will impact their company culture.
Your company culture is unique, and as you grow, you must nurture it to keep your morale and productivity high. You need to ensure that your employees understand and agree with your goals and that your company gives both employees and customers what they come to expect. It is reasonable to worry about whether outsourcing HR will affect it negatively.
However, the truth is that the impact of partnering with a PEO on your company culture is, assuming you have chosen the right PEO, generally positive. PEOs take great care to support and enhance your company culture.
PEOs Enhance Your Culture
The purpose of a PEO is not to change your company culture. PEOs understand how vital it is that you determine what your culture should be and keep it stable. A PEO will not push their values onto your company, even as they help you deal with compliance and ensure equal treatment for your employees.
Instead, PEOs help you streamline your routine HR processes, especially payroll and benefits administration. By doing this, the PEO frees up time for your internal HR team, allowing them to focus on your employees. They can then provide more care and attention to your employees with endeavors like supporting your internal culture. Your HR team can be completely accessible to those asking questions and devote attention to hiring people who fit your culture as your company grows. They can also provide things like employee wellness programs and ongoing training, which help people commit to your company.
You need to make sure that the PEO's staff understand anything relevant to them, such as preferred communication methods. Your employees understand what is going on and how to get comfortable with the new process. But once you have appropriately onboarded employees, the PEO will support your ability to develop a good company culture and grow.
Working with a PEO also:
Strengthens Relationships with Your Employees
You want a good, strong relationship with your employees and for them to feel as if you are as loyal to them as you expect them to be loyal to you. When you work with a PEO, they become the employer-of-record, meaning they handle all your benefits administration. As they are experienced specialists, this gives your employees a much better experience.
The improvement in available benefits in general and the connection between your employees strengthens your company. Employees no longer have to worry about their benefits and can devote more focus on their work (and on things outside work, supporting better work-life balance). Better healthcare reduces absenteeism by encouraging employees to get all of the preventive care they need, while good retirement benefits reduce stress and help employees and their families relax.
It also helps employers feel as if they are taken care of, which increases loyalty and retention and makes people more inclined to want to come to work. You want a strong, positive relationship that does not make your employees feel taken for granted or exploited. Instead, you want them to feel as if they are an essential part of your company, which, in turn, positively interacts with company culture, increasing morale and productivity. A good company culture improves productivity while ensuring high levels of employee satisfaction.
Scales Your Culture as You Grow
As your company gets larger, it can become harder and harder to maintain your company culture. Rapid growth can be a particular problem, as it can result in an influx of people who don't understand the company culture you have developed and may start to skew it in their own directions. If your HR team is too busy as the company grows, they may hire the wrong people, not give the correct information, or not provide key employees the support they need. Before you know it, your company culture has grown out of your control.
A PEO can help you address this challenge considerably. They have people with a wealth of experience dealing with all kinds of issues, and they can give you advice on how to maintain your culture through growth. They can, for example, help you develop handbooks and culture guidelines for employees to refer to or use while onboarding new employees, ensuring that they understand your culture from the start.
They give your HR staff much more time, increasing their flexibility and capability to handle these processes themselves even without offering advice. However, it is always a good idea to talk to your PEO about your issues, as they have probably seen them before. Almost certainly, everything you have encountered has happened to one of the clients of an experienced PEO, and they will already have a good idea of how to deal with it.
PEOs help your company grow, and a vital part of that is sustaining and improving your company culture. They will go out of their way to ensure that your company culture is not negatively impacted and work with you to sustain your culture and values. Your HR staff will not have to worry about tedious administrative duties but will focus on helping you grow.
