Partnering with a PEO like Australia PEO can often be a completely necessary step for small businesses and SMEs. They offer a level of expertise and skill in areas such as payroll, visa and immigration support, compliance and onboarding, which’s often unobtainable if a business was to hire an in-house team.

But as businesses evolve and grow, so too will their requirements. And when you partner with a PEO, your shifted needs might result in outgrowing them. Although some PEOs can adapt and change with your shifting needs, many don’t have the foundations in place to accommodate the ebbs and flow of business changes.

Below we’ve pulled together some information on everything you need to know about changing PEOs.

Particularly if you’ve been working with a PEO for several years, it is possible to get complacent with the relationship that’s developed over time. Yes, they provide a streamlined service for your HR needs that rarely needs internal intervention, but how do you know you’re getting the best bang for your buck?

Why switch PEO?

• Your PEO hasn’t provided a lower rate for a higher number of employees. If you’re offered a set rate as a percentage of your employee’s salary, the more employees you sign on with your PEO should result in a lower percentage rate. Paying 6% for one worker or 100 workers sounds hardly fair, does it? At Australia PEO, we offer a simple fee structure for our partners to avoid nasty bill shock and to remain wholly transparent. We offer customised rates that are fair and reflect the number of employees you wish to hire.
• Your PEO isn’t 100% open and transparent with When you pay for a service, you want to know exactly what you’re getting and where your money is going. Otherwise, how are you supposed to identify the value in the service? If your PEO isn’t giving you cost breakdowns in a clear and concise format, this can spell trouble.
• Your PEO is offering below standard customer service. Partnering with a PEO can be a daunting process. After all, you’re entrusting them with your valued employees! You want to make sure that the service your PEO is providing is enough to make you feel confident in their abilities. If they’re not returning your calls, making continuous payroll errors and continuously putting you on the back burner when you’ve requested information, then it can cause further damage in other areas of your business.
• Your PEO is finding it hard to keep up with your business’s rate of growth. The purpose of most companies is to grow and evolve, but if your PEO isn’t keeping up with the increasing demands of your business, how can you expect your business to travel in the right direction? A small PEO team of two might have once been able to handle your two employees during your start-up phase, but they simply won’t have the in-house capabilities to manage your 200 employees ten years later.

How to switch PEO seamlessly…

When you’ve concluded that the most realistic way forward is to switch PEO, the easiest route would be to drop them immediately and move onto a more suitable partner. But now is not the time to make hasty decisions. Switching PEOs hastily without doing your due diligence can lead you back to square one very quickly.

The very first thing you need to do is make an in-depth list of your requirements and long- and short-term goals for the business. What do you need from a PEO partner, and what can you live without? You need to know all your prerequisites before shortlisting potential partners, so you can confidently select one that will fit all of your needs, not just a few.

The next step is to shortlist your PEO candidates. Sit down with each candidate either in person or on Zoom and ask them about their strengths, history with compliance, and relationships with past and current clients. What are they fantastic at, and what can they worker harder at perfecting? How do they usually charge their clients? Are they willing to provide you with some references?

When you work with Australia PEO, you’ll quickly find that the versatile services we offer were designed to work in cohesion with the day-to-day running of a raft of different business. We want to make our business relationships as smooth as possible so that you hardly even remember we’re an external party and not an in-house HR team.

Speak to Australia PEO to find out more about the PEO services we offer.