When a PEO Beats an HRIS for Your Small Business

If you're running a small business and comparing a PEO vs HRIS, this video is for you!

An HRIS hands you the software and leaves compliance, benefits negotiation, and multi-state employment risk on your plate. A PEO aggregates your headcount with thousands of other small companies to get you enterprise-class benefits pricing, and takes the compliance work with it. But the real benefit in a PEO – which most small businesses overlook – is healthcare savings plus the hours of administrative work your team doesn't have to do.

In this episode of the Fiscally Awesome Podcast, John Belle, Chief Revenue Officer at Justworks, sat down with Hiline's Matt Gardner to explain the difference between an HRIS and a PEO in more detail.

What you'll learn

• The actual mechanics of co-employment, and why "employee leasing" is the wrong mental model for how a PEO works
• Why nonprofits are the fastest-growing PEO segment, and how benefits packages help them compete for talent against for-profits
• The "fee on a fee" problem hiding in most small-business benefits stacks, and how to surface it
• How Justworks helped small businesses collect $350M in employee retention credits the IRS was sitting on

Ready to right-size your people operations?

Choosing between an HRIS and a PEO is one decision. Running it well is another. Our people operations team supports clients on both models, from Justworks PEO customers who need a facilitator to HRIS setups that need day-to-day management. Talk to our experts about the package that actually fits where your business is heading.

About the guest

John Belle is Chief Revenue Officer at Justworks, where he oversees sales, partnerships, customer success, and revenue effectiveness. He joined in November 2024 after a six-year run at PayPal and a career in tech and tech-adjacent sales leadership. At Justworks, he's focused on serving the small businesses and nonprofits the company calls the backbone of the economy, and on making sure the PEO acts as an advocate for customers, not just a payroll provider.

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