The PEO issues the paycheck, but you pay the wages, taxes, and employer portion of benefits. Since the PEO is the employer on paper, they handle registering for state agencies and tracking compliance laws. And because PEOs can pool all of their client-employees, you get access the more affordable and flexible large-group benefits.

As an HR department of one, she’d created an environment where people loved to work. I was called in because they were having trouble with a few vendors. And as usual, the problem wasn’t the vendors, but how the company was using the tools.

Running the People side of your business takes a lot of work, but hiring a PEO comes with trade-offs that you may regret later.