Barrett Business Services (BBSI)

Management Discussion

• The spread of COVID-19 and resulting restrictions and labor shortages across the United States are having, and will continue to have, a negative impact on the operating results of the Company. As our clients respond to the effects of efforts to address the consequences of the pandemic, including the measures taken at various levels of government to contain the virus’s spread, we expect that our ability to add new customers, as well as to grow revenues from existing customers, will be adversely affected due to economic slowdown, business closures, labor shortages and reductions in hours worked.
• We report PEO revenues net of direct payroll costs because we are not the primary obligor for wage payments to our clients’ employees. However, management believes that gross billings and wages are useful in understanding the volume of our business activity and serve as an important performance metric in managing our operations, including the preparation of internal operating forecasts and establishing executive compensation performance goals. We therefore present for purposes of analysis gross billings and wage information for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019. 
• Because safety incentives represent consideration payable to PEO customers, safety incentive costs are netted against PEO revenue in our consolidated statements of operations. We therefore present below for purposes of analysis non-GAAP gross workers’ compensation expense, which represents workers’ compensation costs including safety incentive costs. We believe this non-GAAP measure is useful in evaluating the total costs of our workers’ compensation program. In July 2020, the Company began limiting its safety incentive offering in certain markets, resulting in a substantial reduction in safety incentive costs.