§ 43-55-01 — Definitions

As used in this chapter:
1. "Administrative fee" means the fee charged to a client by a professional employer
organization for professional employer services. The term does not include any
amount of a fee which is for wages and salaries, benefits, workers' compensation
coverage, payroll taxes, withholding, or other assessment paid by the professional
employer organization to or on behalf of a covered employee under a professional
employer agreement.
2. "Client" means any person that enters a professional employer agreement with a
professional employer organization.
3. "Coemployer" means either a professional employer organization or a client.
4. "Coemployment relationship" means a relationship that is intended to be an ongoing
relationship rather than a temporary or project-specific relationship, wherein the rights,
duties, and obligations of an employer which arise out of an employment relationship
have been allocated between coemployers under a professional employer agreement
and this chapter.
5. "Covered employee" means an individual having a coemployment relationship with a
professional employer organization and a client, who has received written notice of
coemployment with the professional employer organization, and whose coemployment
relationship is under a professional employer agreement subject to this chapter. An
individual who is an officer, director, shareholder, partner, or manager of the client is a
"covered employee" to the extent the professional employer organization and the client
have expressly agreed in the professional employer agreement that the individual is a
covered employee and if the individual meets the criteria of this subsection and acts as
an operational manager or performs day-to-day operational services for the client.
6. "Licensee" means a professional employer organization licensed under this chapter.
7. "Professional employer agreement" means a written contract between a client and a
professional employer organization which provides for the coemployment of a covered
employee, for the allocation of employer rights and obligations between the client and
the professional employer organization with respect to a covered employee, and the
assumption of the responsibilities required by this chapter.
8. "Professional employer organization" means a person engaged in the business of
providing professional employer services. The term does not include an arrangement
through which a person that does not have as its principal business activity the
practice of entering a professional employer arrangement and does not hold itself out
as a professional employer organization and that shares an employee with a
commonly owned company within the meaning of section 414(b) and (c) of the Internal
Revenue Code of 1986; an independent contractor arrangement through which a
person assumes responsibility for a product produced or a service performed by the
person or the person's agents and retains and exercises primary direction and control
over the work performed by an individual whose services are supplied under the
arrangement; or the provision of temporary help services.
9. "Professional employer services" means the entering of a coemployment relationship
under this chapter.
10. "Temporary help services" means services consisting of a person recruiting and hiring
its own employees; finding another organization that needs the services of those
employees; assigning those employees to perform work at or services for the other
organization to support or supplement the other organization's workforce, to provide
assistance in special work situations, such as an employee absence, skill shortage, or
seasonal workload or to perform a special assignment or project; and customarily
attempting to reassign the employees to another organization when the employers
finish each assignment.