Professional Employer Organization (PEO) in Canada

What is a PEO (and how does it work in Canada)?

A PEO (Professional Employer Organization) allows businesses to focus on growth by handling the often tedious day-to-day details that typically come with HR. 

PEOs offer a wide range of HR services to startups and SMEs, including payroll management, employee benefits, compliance with government regulations, and any other employment-related admin. 

As your business grows, the HR workload does too. This can be extremely stressful for business owners as they try to juggle customer satisfaction, employment laws, and everything in between. A PEO provider in Canada can give SMEs the ability to fully streamline employee management — allowing leaders to focus elsewhere.

PEOs can also take on a range of roles and responsibilities within a company, based on a co-employment model. This means that an employee is actually employed by the PEO as well as your business; recruitment, contracts, payroll processing, and benefits management and negotiation are all on the table when agreeing on a co-employment model. You can essentially work with a PEO to delegate all the nitty-gritty involved in finding, attracting, hiring, and retaining top talent — while all employees continue to perform their role directly for your company. 

‍All of this might sound a little daunting, but if you pick the right PEO provider for Canada, you can say goodbye to those tedious, stressful HR tasks (the ones you try to put off for as long as possible).

What are the benefits of using a PEO provider in Canada?

Having a PEO makes it easy to do business and manage Canadian talent. They provide a huge variety of HR services required to help a small business to run smoothly and efficiently. 

More specifically, a PEO in Canada can assist with:

Payroll

Your PEO partner will handle payroll for your full- and part-time employees. They can also administer one-off payments to employees, vendors, or contractors. With many PEOs offering services such as direct deposits, running payroll for your SME becomes a quick and seamless task.

Compliance

Your PEO in Canada exists to take the weight of compliance off your shoulders. After all, employment law is notoriously complex — and international employment regulations are even tougher. 

Employers hiring Canadian workers need to continue to abide by local employment laws and work within the tough guidelines of the Canadian labor regulations. Not only are there multiple pieces of legislation that make up those laws, but they can differ greatly from province to province. When it comes to privacy laws, for example, Alberta, British Columbia, and Quebec all follow their own set of information privacy legislation, rather than the federal standard.

Canada’s compliance laws also differ by industry, product, service, and even the type of legal entity your business operates under.

Staying on top of requirements can be hard even for large businesses, and is a real challenge for small firms. Over 33% of small businesses are fined every year for payroll mistakes, and the penalties for non-compliance can be devastating for organizations. 

Misclassification of employees is a particular one-to-watch. Like many countries, Canada takes a tough stance on employee misclassification — and despite the very thin line between contractor and employee, getting it wrong can be extremely costly for your bottom line and reputation.

In recent years, there have been several high-profile cases of employee misclassification in Canada. The case between Uber and its drivers has recently been certified as a class action by Ontario's Superior Court of Justice, leaving the company struggling to justify the workforce’s ‘independent contractor’ status. Businesses that rely on contractors should pay close attention to this case, as no matter what the result of this case may be, it could have massive implications for the entire gig economy in Canada that could spread to the rest of the world.

As a PEO provider in Canada, Skuad’s HR specialists will pass on expertise and guidance, ensuring that you always stay on the right side of the law.

Risk mitigation 

The co-employment model means that a PEO provider in Canada takes on many of the risks and responsibilities of the small business, and shares the burden of risk management. Are you sure that your shortlisted candidate is really the best fit for your role? Do you have the grounds needed to end a low-performing team member’s contract? Is your Intellectual Property protected as your remote employees log in and build your brand from elsewhere in the world?

Working with a PEO helps ensure that businesses remain fully compliant, insured, and successful; your PEO partner will even take care of the paperwork!

Benefits and employee retention 

One of the benefits of using a PEO in Canada is, well, more benefits! PEOs can often access employee benefits packages that an SME cannot. That’s a win for your employees, making it a win for your business!

By using their group buying power, PEOs can unlock access to premium health insurance and other employee perks at extremely affordable rates. This allows SMEs to offer candidates and employees a benefits package that rivals even the largest local employers.

As you’ll likely already know, a great retirement plan or 401(k) makes a huge difference for employee acquisition and retention. A PEO can provide access to superb savings programs, as well as offering and managing 401(k) plans for your employees. A PEO will also often provide a full program of training, education, and awareness to help employees make solid retirement choices. 

This is the sort of service that can set a company apart from its competition when it comes to attracting talent.

Cost and time savings

Thinking this all sounds… expensive? Put those fears aside. Yes, PEOs come with a price tag attached, but just think of what the investment will do for your business in terms of time saved,  the results you can achieve with that extra time, and the improved quality of employment you can pass on to Canadian colleagues.

No matter if your business is looking to access better rates for health insurance, improved benefits, or a streamlined recruitment process, working with a PEO can help small businesses cut costs and make savings. 

Skuad offers all these benefits and many more. Schedule a demo and see for yourself.

What does it cost to build a team in Canada?

Cost of incorporating a business in Canada

Buckle up and get ready to make some bank transfers. Because if you go down the route of registering a new business in Canada, then you should expect some hefty fees.

Opening a branch of a foreign company (which is what you’ll be doing) costs $13,100 USD. That includes company incorporation, opening a local bank account, and the necessary government fees. What it doesn’t include, however, is the cost of renting or hiring an office space, exchange fees you’ll need to swallow for running payroll overseas, and any other less-obvious expenses.

Is your business able to take on thousands in additional fees a year just for one employee in Canada — let alone a small team?

Cost of PEO in Canada

At Skuad, we understand that such a high price isn’t feasible, especially for startups and small businesses. That’s why we made it our mission to provide a helping hand in global team building, at the fraction of the cost of setting up a legal entity on your own.

We offer three distinct packages starting from just $19 per worker, per month. 

• Our Global Payments package will onboard and pay your contractors anywhere in the world through a single, unified platform.
• While the Global Employment package can hire and manage your full-time employees anywhere across the world. 

Need something a little more specific? The Skuad Enterprise package offers a tailor-made PEO solution, giving your business exactly what it needs to grow, at a price that fits your budget.

Get started with a PEO in Canada today

So what are you waiting for? Stop wasting time with laborious, stressful admin and give yourself the power to focus on growth. Schedule a demo with Skuad today and, together, we’ll onboard your Canadian hires with ease!