The areas where PEOs can deliver significant value to their clients can be divided into three broad categories:
- Improving clients’ ability to attract, motivate, and retain employees;
- Enabling clients to focus on their core businesses while PEOs handle all HR
matters; and - Lowering HR-related expenditures.
The first two categories have been addressed in NAPEO’s previous white papers. Those papers found a wide array of positive differences between PEO clients and their non-PEO counterparts in business success, employee-related measures, and other factors.
Therefore, in the 2019 white paper, we focused our research on category 3 in an effort to fill in some details about that remaining piece of the PEO value equation. Specifically, if we look only at cost savings (leaving all other PEO-related benefits to the side), what sort of return could the average client expect on its PEO investment?1
Although it is only one component of the overall value delivered by PEOs, it is still one of the most basic questions prospective clients have when deciding whether to use a PEO—will they experience sufficient cost savings to generate a positive return on their investment? The research summarized here indicates that a conservative estimate of the expected ROI for PEO clients—based on cost savings alone—is 27.2% per year. This ROI estimate is almost certainly an underestimate and is based only on cost savings (it does not incorporate the important benefits noted above in categories 1 and 2).
The 27.2% estimate is based on calculating cost savings for PEO clients in the following five HR-related areas:
- HR personnel costs;
- Health benefits;
- Workers’ compensation;
- Unemployment insurance (UI); and
- Other external expenditures in areas related directly to HR services (payroll
services, benefits, etc.)
1 We are extremely grateful to the following PEOs and other partner organizations for their invaluable assistance in enrolling clients, members, and other organizations in this research initiative: ADPTotalSource, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Delta Administrative Services, The Employer Group, InfinitiHR, Landrum HR, Lyons HR, the National Marine Manufacturers Association, Paychex, Servant HR, Slavic401k, Staff One HR, and SWBC PEO. Without the generous assistance and hard work of these organizations, this research would not have been possible.