Episode 60: Is your PEO strategy flexible enough? Meet VensureHR.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Savoy PEO Spotlight Podcast, where we're here to help brokers better understand the PEO landscape, who our partners are, what makes them different from one another, and then, of course, most importantly, when to use them. I'm Cassandra Novak, and I'm part of the Savoy PEO Center of Excellence. My role is here to help brokers position PEOs strategically, avoid those missteps that they might have, and bring the right partners to the table at the right time.

Each of our episodes features one of our Savoy's trusted PEO partners and focuses on real-world broker scenarios. So today we're kicking this session off with Chris Hill, who is the Senior Business Consultant at Venture. How are you doing, Chris? Yeah, doing well.

Super excited to be here. Cassie, thank you for having me on the podcast. Well, in having you here, we certainly would like to know more about yourself. So why don't we start off by you telling us how you started in this industry and what you're doing here?

Sure. I'll try to keep it short. It's kind of a long story, but I started in the industry back in 2020. I had worked for a company unlike any PEO prior to working for the PEO industry.

But I was introduced to our head of partnerships, I believe in August of 2020. He had me shadow him for a few days. I had no idea what this industry was all about. I just knew that like when I was working for my prior employer, I would get my paycheck.

It was from this other company that I wasn't, you know, actually working at. And when I shadowed him, I realized that it was a great opportunity to meet business owners, business developers, executive teams, people who are doing amazing things in the United States, and an opportunity to speak and advise those organizations on certain items as it relates to the PEO, which I'm sure we'll get into today. Well, that's interesting because I don't even think I knew that much about you.

So I appreciate you providing that kind of background. And because we have gotten to know a little bit about you, how about telling us about Venture and giving us a 30,000-foot overview of who they are? The place that I like to start is that Venture is a human capital management organization with several business units that operate underneath that umbrella. We're not just a PEO.

We're quite agnostic when it comes to the solutions that we provide. I like to make the joke that if you make up an acronym, like we'll have it somewhere in our solution center. But really anything from PEO, right, professional employer organization, ASO, payroll only, HCM solutions, nearshore staffing, domestic recruiting, EOR, both domestic and global. The beautiful thing about venture is not only do we have the PEO solution, but we have the ability to find, hire and pay talent in any country in the world that is not on a U.

S. sanctioned list. So the talent in the U.S.

is incredible. We have an amazing team here. We're growing quite rapidly. We are privately held.

So that is one of the small differences that we have compared to some of the other big ball players in the space. But on the PEO side of the house, we process about $160 billion a year in payroll for clients across all 50 states, about 140,000 groups on our book of business today. So you said a couple of interesting things, and that is the acronym issue. issue.

I swear every conversation I have lately, I go into PEO, ASO, HROs, and then I start going on with the medical acronyms. And I've literally had people stop me and be like, can you say that in English? Like, I don't know what you're talking about. So I'm trying to get better at not doing that.

And you also talked about payrolls and things being not just in the United States, but internationally. Can you elaborate on that? Because I don't know that a lot of our PEOs are operating both in the United States and internationally. Yeah, sure.

Well, you know, as we know, the PEO business model, right, the co-employment model only exists in the United States. But what we've done is we've acquired some companies that allow us to go to market not only in the U but in again any country really in the world that we allowed to pay people in Can get too crazy with the countries that we hiring people in But typically that solution is going to be either EOR global contractor payments or global payroll We have the ability to accomplish all of those things through our Venture Employer Solutions umbrella.

And what's amazing and the unique opportunity that venture has in that regard is you have a meeting with a client that's using a PEO in the U.S. today. And during your discovery call, you realize, well, hey, we have two employees in Ireland that are currently on an EOR.

Why not just bring them all under one umbrella and one house and one service team? Right. So it's a really nice, unique selling point that we have. There are other organizations out there that that can do this.

Right. We're not the only one. But in a world where we're constantly meeting companies in the U.S.

and in a world where U.S. employers are consistently looking outside of the country to employ, whether it's because they don't want to deal with U.S.

compliance, rules, regulations changing all the time. It's a very nice thing to have for us. It makes our lives a lot easier. We don't have to lose a deal because there's international exposure.

And can you merge them into one system or are you keeping the systems separate? Is it a single sign-on? Because my understanding, and this is where I'm naive, is that, you know, HR compliance regulations are different between the U.S.

and other countries. And then we also have the medical aspect of it where, you know, we're dealing with things in the United States differently from a medical perspective than you would in other countries. To answer your first question, that is the end in mind. That is the end goal is to have a consolidated engine that can process both domestic U.

S. and international scope. Today, it operates via a single sign-on. So there would be a separate system for your domestic employees.

In the U.S., you hire somebody, you have their I-9 verification, right? Tax withholding, you know, direct deposit data.

Time and labor rules and regulations are different. Medical enrollment is different, like you said. And then the international employees outside of the U.S.

all live within that international system. So it's not quite yet at a point where it's one button to pay everybody, but that is, of course, the goal, a unified system for both domestic and global. I will say that the two systems, being that they are SSO, have not necessarily ruled us out in any arrangement. We have several groups that are more than happy to leverage that.

We do have a lot to talk about today, so I don't want to stay singly focused on this international U.S. area. But I'm thinking more along the lines of what would you say in sitting with a broker who says, I don't even know where to start, Chris.

What clients should I be looking at and what makes you the best fit for my clients? Like what is the differentiating factor that stands out that I can bring to the table for my groups? Yeah, well, of course, I'm both honest, but I will say that I fundamentally believe venture is the most flexible PEO in the market. The only requirement that we have to use our PEO model to co-employ with us is payroll.

The beautiful thing for brokers is that they might have businesses in their portfolio that may not qualify for a PEO's master medical plan. They might be too risky for a workers' compensation program through a PEO. And some of our competitors out there will not allow that client to work with the PEO unless they qualify for all of these criteria. So with us, the low hanging fruit really are the groups that need to carve things out, right?

The general contractors, the environmental consultants, the construction companies of the world that have a risky workforce. Okay, no problem. Let's carve out your workers' compensation. We'll approach this with a PEO.

All things remain the same otherwise. And one of the beautiful things about that industry is that they look pretty good on a GRX report for medical as well. So they get pretty competitive medical insurance rates, especially here in New York versus a small group where we have the ability to offload some risk and liability with payroll. And we have the ability to carve out their workers' compensation.

In New York, we might even get creative and put them in a safety group, right? Give them the best possible solution for that client specifically. I'd say that's a low hanging fruit, right? But venture is industry agnostic On my own book I have about 350 groups that I brought to venture We have law firms tech companies general contractors property management groups VC firms private equity firms right So it's across the board.

But the role that I play and the role that my team plays here at venture is to have these consultative approaches to the conversations to identify what that right solution really looks like for the client. In other words, no square peg in a round hole, round peg in a round hole situation. You get what you pay for. I got you.

So you're talking about carve outs. When you carve out workers comp, I get brokers that ask all the time, well, why will I need workers comp policy deck pages? Or why will I need loss runs? Why do I need payroll information if, in fact, I'm not even going to be doing workers comp?

Can you elaborate on why some of those details are still necessary to the model with the carve out? 100%. The reality is it matters less when we're carving out workers comp, right? If an employer is on our master policy, we need to classify the employees.

We need to make sure that everything is coded accurately in our system and we're collecting that data. With a carve out, the reason why we still ask for some of these items, and there are less, by the way. There are less items to ask for when there's a carve out. But the main reason is so we have the appropriate classifications in our system from a reporting standpoint.

Because if you're going to have this HRIS be your source of truth for everything, it's nice to be able to pull a report in the system that, you know, Cassie is an 8810 who works in New Jersey and Chris is an 8742 who works in New York, right? without having that data with an outside policy, there's no way really for us to get that on an employee level. So that's kind of the reason why we would request it. But by no means do we have to make it a big pain in the butt for the brokers.

We'll make their lives as easy as possible. If they really don't want to provide it, we will work with them and the group to classify as accurately as we possibly can what the employees would be. On the flip side of you guys being able to provide to so many different industries. Are there red flags or particular companies that you do stay away from?

And what are the specifics around that? That's going to be a tough one. There has never been a conversation that I have had with a business owner that I don't fundamentally think there is a solution for them here. For example, a lot of PEOs have medical underwriting criteria.

They have a minimum of five where they need to quote, right? Let's say you are one person and you're coming over to the U.S. to start your business.

Great. Let's put you on our domestic EOR to start. You can have benefits on our domestic EOR. Then when you hire your second, third, fourth, fifth employee, let's switch you onto our PEO.

Same system. You can underwrite on our master medical policy. We'll switch you to the PEO. Okay, now you've grown to 150 employees and maybe you want to self-insure your own large group plan.

Great. We'll move you to ASO. Keep you on the same system. Carve out the medical.

Carve out the workers' compensation. Keep the same service team. Keep the same technology. I rarely find myself in a situation where I have to put my hands up and say, sorry, there's nothing we can do for you.

That's partially my stubbornness, but also I think the flexibility that we have and the scope of the products that we have to offer here. So I know all of you would like to get in front of the clients or the brokers pretty early on. But for those situations where the broker is trying to position you in front of the client before you actually speak to them, what are the qualifying questions or the things that they should be talking to their client about to get their client interested?

The broker is probably already considering and understanding that PEO might be the right fit for this group, but now they're trying to get the client to understand why they're the right group. What would you say to that broker to say, hey, this is how we should position it? Yeah, it's a great question because it's true. We don't always get to get in front of the clients, you know, immediately, right?

We have to work with the broker's knowledge of the product, the client's historic knowledge of PEO in general, right? This company, what's fascinating about this industry is that it's still such blue ocean, right? There's still people who I have a conversation with. They're like, I don't even know what a PEO is.

And I'm like, how do you not know what a PBO is? What I would say is there are some general questions that every broker should be asking their clients. If they a medical if they a life and health broker if they a P broker they having these conversations Hey like who are you using for payroll today Are there any challenges with that This is another tool in my tool belt as a broker right I have connections that you know I have a relationship with Savoy. They're an amazing company.

They have the ability to go to market with several PEOs. I would really like to know a little bit more about your infrastructure so I can support you from the perspective of more than just, you know, your comp and your ENO and your DNO. or your medical insurance. Because the reality is that they will find out about PEO one way or another, and you want to be the person to make that introduction before it's too late.

But I would just get curious, you know, on a quarterly sync that you have with your clients, just ask, hey, by the way, how's everything going with your payroll provider? Do we need to explore a potential alternative option here? I think naturally things will come up in your conversations, especially if you are a broker for any of those lines. This has been really great.

And I feel like I've even learned some things about venture that I wasn't aware of. So I appreciate all the time that you've spent with me today. And it does go really quickly. You think that we just started and we're already meeting time.

So I'm gonna ask you one final question. And Chris, that is, we've both been in the industry for a little while, me a little bit longer than you. As you look over the next couple of years, from when you've started to now, what do you kind of see as the trend or things changing? I know the scope early on, depending on what region of the country you were, could have been a workers' comp play or could have been a medical play.

I personally feel like the industry is changing where it's neither of those. And there's other aspects, which I will share, but I'd like to hear your perspective first. Yeah, great question. There are so many things happening right now in the world that could affect this industry.

I think number one is the ability to have a global product and a unified global product. You're not going to be a competitor in this space very long if you don't have the ability to do what you're doing in the US and also mirroring it at a global scale. I hate to beat a dead horse with the global piece, but it's true, right? There are competitors out there that are doing it.

And a company would rather be with somebody who can do both U.S. and Europe versus just U.S.

and have a separate system for Europe. I think the introduction of AI tools is going to be a pretty big, you know, contributing factor to what changes his industry a little bit, both from an HRIS standpoint, a learning management system standpoint. I think there's going to be more focus towards client self-service with AI capabilities. The longer that a PEO can keep their human service teams, I would say the better, just anecdotally speaking.

But I think both global infrastructure and AI capabilities are going to be huge. And we're not just talking about using AI to write your emails, but we're talking about much, much bigger, larger AI capabilities. like AI, you know, renewals, underwriting insurance quotes, which is already being leveraged in a certain capacity. Yeah.

So I didn't want to give it away, but that's certainly where my head was as well, is the AI tools and the things that are taking over. I've used the analogy of cell phones being obsolete. By the time you have got everything downloaded on them on your big, fancy new phone and you walk out, there's already three versions after that. And it's very hard for business owners to keep up via technology and then also following all the HR compliance rules around the country.

And then now, as you've said, not to be a divorce, the international piece of it, there's no way anyone could, you know, any single person or even a small department keep up with the leverage of changes and what's going to continue to change. We're moving so much more quickly than we had in our parents' time or our grandparents' time or anything beyond that. So, but Chris, I really want to thank you because this has been extremely helpful. And thank you for sharing your practical insights.

For Savoy's brokers that are listening, if you believe that venture may be the right fit for your clients, your first step, of course, is to contact Savoy's PEO Center of Excellence, and we'll help validate the proper fit, guide your strategy, and manage the process end to end. Thank you again, Chris, from Venture. And thank you for everyone that's tuned in to the Savoy PEO Spotlight, and we'll see you on the next episode.