Employee wellness is one of the most critical contributors to workplace productivity, retention, and happiness. In fact, many employers can save 15% to 20% of their yearly payroll budgets by reducing turnover. This can add up to millions of dollars annually. Studies also link employee well-being to higher profitability and productivity.
Few businesses have the time and resources to establish and maintain an excellent program. That's why so many choose to delegate the process. By partnering with a comprehensive outsourcing partner like a professional employer organization (PEO), you don't just streamline your wellness program; you can get direct cost savings for employee benefits like group health insurance.
How Outsourcing to a PEO Improves Wellness
Working with a PEO opens the door to many new wellness opportunities.
Access to Wellness Programs
Financial issues are the leading cause of low-quality wellness programs. Smaller businesses can't find affordable options. That's why they settle for poorly designed wellness strategies that rarely yield the desired results.
According to research by Gartner, around two-thirds of organizations have introduced new wellness benefits to support their employees' emotional and mental health during COVID-19. However, the quality of these programs isn't always high.
A PEO can provide access to affordable employee assistance programs (EAP). These programs are designed to help employees deal with problems affecting their performance. Common examples are:
- Anxiety
- Lack of Confidence
- Stress (Financial, personal, or work-related)
- Death of a loved one
- Alcoholism or substance abuse
- Mental health disorders
Reduced Administrative Burden
The administrative burden on small HR departments is usually enormous. They spend around 30 to 40 hours per month on payroll processing, compliance, and health benefits administration. This prevents HR specialists from focusing on essential tasks, including employee wellness.
By outsourcing administrative functions to a PEO, you are freeing up your HR department immensely. They can spend time designing an effective wellness program, evaluating employee needs, improving the workplace environment, and much more.
Meanwhile, a PEO can handle:
- Benefits administration
- Payroll processing
- Filing employment taxes
- HR Compliance
- Training
- Onboarding
Wellness initiatives are an integral part of the company's success. They also contribute to employee retention. Meanwhile, working with a PEO and taking the burden off your HR experts can help you reduce burnout in the HR department.
Better Health Insurance
High-quality wellness programs are often part of health insurance offerings. However, smaller businesses usually can't afford high-level insurance premiums. That's another reason why companies struggle with providing better well-being programs.
If you partner with a PEO, you can access their master benefits policy. PEOs use economies of scale to provide their clients high-level benefits that are affordable. Improved employee benefits don't just give you an opportunity to leverage wellness tactics. They can increase overall employee satisfaction levels.
Increased Safety
Safety in the workplace is one of the major drivers behind employee happiness. If you don't keep your safety measures up to standard, you will likely face workers' comp claims and overall employee dissatisfaction.
If you outsource HR to a PEO, you gain access to a team of experts who can design a custom safety plan for your workplace. Besides improving safety and reducing accidents, a robust plan can help increase workplace morale.
Additionally, a PEO can set up high-quality safety training for your employees. While you can arrange it on your own, outsourcing safety training can be highly beneficial for several reasons:
- Independent safety review
- Lower costs
- Better compliance
- Higher expertise
When a qualified PEO takes care of safety management, you can reduce risks in the workplace, improve employee well-being, and minimize employee lawsuits.
Comprehensive HR Outsourcing with a PEO
A professional employer organization (PEO) is an HR outsourcing partner that can take care of most HR tasks while leaving day-to-day decisions to the client. If you use a PEO, you can delegate all administrative functions to the experts and free up significant time for your internal HR team.
Out of all types of outsourcing HR partnerships, a PEO is the only one that gives you access to better benefits, such as group health insurance. This significant advantage can help you improve employee satisfaction, increase profitability, reduce churn, and improve business operations.
