For eight years, Mickey Swortzel, founder of vehicle control systems start-up New Eagle, watched her employees’ health-plan costs steadily increase. Then, in 2016, she made the decision to outsource her one-person HR department to ADP, one of the largest companies in the quickly growing market of professional employer organizations (PEOs).
This is not an uncommon story among businesses today. In the last few years, the outsourced HR industry has taken off, bringing in an estimated $136 billion to $156 billion and as many as 180,000 small and mid-sized businesses now rely on a PEO.
