You: Employer with W-2 Employees:
You built a team
Now the question is whether the infrastructure behind them is helping you keep them or quietly costing you more than you realize.
We work with small employers who are losing solid people to larger companies that can offer better benefits, getting hit with workers’ comp deposits and audits that lock up working capital, or watching the owner spend hours every month on payroll and HR instead of running the business.
We have run this math from both sides. The situations below are the ones where the structure most often shows a clear return.
Read the one that matches where you are right now.
You have 5 to 20 W-2 employees and either no group health plan or a small-group plan that feels expensive and limited. When a larger competitor recruits them, the benefits gap makes the decision easy for your people.
Small-group plans put businesses under 50 employees into the highest-cost risk pool. Carriers charge maximum rates because your headcount gives you almost no leverage. The co-employment structure gives access to group plans underwritten by tier-1 national carriers on composite-rated terms. You decide how much of the premium the business covers. Employees pay their share pre-tax. The employer contribution stays deductible.
Some shops have hourly, seasonal, or part-time staff who waive coverage. You still need accurate W-2 processing, timely tax filings, and IRS compliance without paying for a full benefits stack your people will not use.
The payroll and compliance layer runs on its own. Workers’ comp stays pay-as-you-go with no deposits or year-end audits. SUTA rates stabilize through the pool. You get the full compliance infrastructure without being forced into health or retirement modules. You can add those later if your team changes.
Standalone policies usually require a large upfront deposit based on estimated payroll. When the actual numbers come in different, the true-up bill hits at the worst time and the audit process is invasive.
Inside the structure, workers’ comp is pulled from every payroll run based on actual wages paid. No big check on day one. No year-end audit. The math stays current. Your cash stays in your account instead of sitting in an insurance company’s reserve.
You added employees quickly. Onboarding is still manual. PTO tracking is informal. Your current payroll setup was built for where you started, not where you are headed. You know a workers’ comp audit is coming and you are not sure your setup can handle multi-state hiring if it becomes necessary.
The infrastructure handles onboarding, direct deposit, tax filings, HR questions, and multi-state compliance under one roof with people you can actually reach. Your internal admin gets the capability of a full HR department without you having to hire one. If you have no admin, the support fills that gap directly.
SUTA rates are experience-rated. For a small team, a single claim can double or triple the rate for every employee on payroll, not just the person who filed. The elevated rate can stay in place for up to three years.
When payroll runs under the PEO’s master tax ID, your claims get absorbed into a pool of hundreds of thousands of workers. One claim becomes statistically insignificant. Your rate stays stable. You can make hiring and firing decisions based on the business, not on protecting a tax rate.
The legal prerequisites. Most owners already meet the first two.
At least 2 active W-2 employees. 1099 contractors do not count toward the minimum.
A properly registered business entity (LLC, S-Corp, C-Corp, or partnership) with a Federal EIN.
If you add the health module, a standard digital health questionnaire applies. It screens for active catastrophic liabilities. Standard managed conditions rarely disqualify a group.
Groups under 10 employees electing health go through individual health questions per carrier rules. We walk you through it.
Included automatically
Workers Comp Pay-As-You-Go
zero upfront deposits, no year-end audits
SUTA Rate Stabilization
through the pool
Employment Practices Liability (EPLI)
IRS payroll tax filings
under the PEO’s master FEIN
Multi-State Compliance
Direct HR support
for compliance, terminations, and employee issues
You control the rest. Turn on only what you need.
Workers comp, SUTA protection, EPLI, HR support, and IRS compliance are automatic — they come with the structure. The four modules below are add-ons you control. You can take any combination for yourself, extend any of them to employees, or leave a module off entirely until your situation changes. You only pay for what you turn on. Any module can be added later.
W-2 processing, direct deposit, 941s, state filings, year-end W-2s (included in both pricing tiers)
Access to plans underwritten by tier-1 national carriers on composite rates. You set the employer contribution.
Optional. Base fee plus per-person cost plus 1% AUM. You can bring your own plan instead.
This is a co-employment arrangement. The PEO becomes a joint employer. You gain pooling benefits and compliance transfer but share certain legal responsibilities for employment matters. Exiting requires planning and can involve temporary gaps or new underwriting steps.
Many small employers run payroll through Gusto or Rippling and handle health separately. This structure is for those who want the combined payroll, pay-as-you-go workers’ comp, SUTA stabilization, and group health access under one roof when the monthly cash flow relief and time savings clearly outweigh the trade-offs.
We will tell you straight if the numbers do not line up for your team size and industry.
Know what this actually costs for your team
The price is flat per person per month and depends on whether you need the health access layer. About 15 minutes to run a real side-by-side with your current costs.
Run the Group Calculator. It shows your exact monthly number before you decide anything.