Firm helps clients navigate the labor market
First, America's employers scrambled to cut employees. Then they scrambled to hire more.
G&A Partners, a Houston-based professional employer organization, has helped its client companies survive the whipsaw. In doing so, it grew revenues by more than 31 percent in 2021 and maintained a top spot on the Chronicle 100's private companies list.
“The last few years have been crazy,” said CEO John Allen, “from the pandemic and negative oil prices, and now inflation and the prospect of a recession.”
As a professional employer organization, G&A places human resources employees at its client companies. Those associates provide HR administration, payroll and benefits. In these unpredictable times, G&A has grown its ranks to 80,000 employees placed at more than 3,000 clients across the country, Allen said.
Its revenues, or what it bills to clients, have grown from $3.5 billion in 2020 to nearly $4.6 billion in 2021.
Allen attributes
G&As performance to sales growth, solid customer retention and a few strategic acquisitions.
In January 2021, for instance, G&A announced it had acquired XMI, a Nashville-based provider of human resources and accounting services. At the time, it was G&A's ninth acquisition in three years.
The buying spree continues. In March of this year, G&A said it had acquired Employer Advantage, a Joplin, Mo.-based provider of human resources services. In June, G&A expanded into Iowa and Nebraska with the acquisition of Focus OneSource of Des Moines, Iowa.
Professional employer organizations offer flexible arrangements that appeal to small- to medium-size companies in difficult times. They also appeal to entrepreneurs who want to focus on growing their businesses.
“A lot of what we do is not core to why a small business owner got into business in the first place,” Allen said. “An engineer got into business to provide engineering services, not to process payroll or figure out what kind of benefits to provide to employees.”
G&A offers these functions for what is often less than what companies would have to pay to keep them in-house. G&A surveys its clients monthly to gauge customer satisfaction.
“These have been interesting times,” Allen said. “It's not like you can ignore the things you can't control, but you can't dwell on them either. You focus on the things you do well and you hope that everything works out well. For us, it did.”