G&A Partners

G&A Partners offers HR outsourcing in three distinct models: a full-service PEO with co-employment, an administrative services organisation arrangement providing a la carte HR without co-employment, and an HCM option combining technology with support. It publishes a comparison between them and segments by company size and industry.

Offering all three models and publishing a comparison is more useful to a buyer than it sounds, because most companies evaluating a PEO do not know that the alternatives exist. The choice is usually presented as PEO or nothing, when a company that wants payroll and compliance help but not co-employment is describing an ASO arrangement precisely.

The distinction turns on the benefits. A PEO pools employees across clients to obtain plan pricing a small employer cannot reach alone, and that pooling is only available through co-employment. An ASO leaves the company holding its own plans, which suits an employer already satisfied with its coverage.

Segmenting by employee count reflects where the answer changes. Under about a hundred employees the pooling argument is strongest, and above it a company can often obtain competitive plans directly, at which point co-employment is buying administration rather than access.