“Published in the Summer 2015 FAPEO Update Newsletter”
Some people dabble in art. Others try their hand at writing. Robert Kelly gave retirement a try in 2011. It just wasn’t for him. But we’re getting ahead of the story.
Robert has been involved in the professional employer organization industry since 1990. He worked for a health insurance third party administrator (TPA) for 18 months prior to joining Staff Leasing Inc. in 1990.
“The TPA I was working for was struggling financially, and I needed to seek other employment,” Robert explains. “With my background in self-insured employee health care plans, I was able to get an interview with a partner of Staff Leasing Inc., became an employee of the PEO and worked my way into management.”
The original four shareholders of Staff Leasing hired Robert to oversee the company’s TPA responsible for processing medical and dental claims. Over the next several years, he spent time in numerous management roles within Staff Leasing, including benefits (as director) and information technology (as director of payroll reporting technologies).
In 1998, Robert cofounded a PEO sales and marketing company, which at the time was one of the first independent sales agencies in the industry.
“I learned more about the industry when I was an independent sales person than at any other time—conversations with Mike Miller [FAPEO general counsel] excluded,” he says smiling.
In 2000, Robert joined forces with colleagues from Staff Leasing to acquire Professional Employers Group as the chief operating officer. This enterprise later became Employee Leasing Solutions Inc. (ELS). ELS quickly grew to become one of the largest privately owned PEOs in Florida, surpassing 24,000 worksite employees in 2007.
This brings us to 2011, where we began this story. After a brief retirement, Robert acquired most of the assets of ELS and began operations as Workforce Business Services Inc. on Jan. 1, 2012.
After a quarter-century in the PEO industry, Robert shows no signs of slowing down.
“Working in this industry is always a challenge,” he says. “This is my 25th year, and I am energized by something happening in our industry on a regular basis.”
Robert enjoys the multifaceted nature of the PEO industry and the complexity of today’s business environment, and meeting the challenges they bring.
“If President Obama were able to have a third term, the sky would be the limit!” he says tongue in cheek.
In a more serious vein he goes to say, “As long as the government regulates and taxes (regardless of who is president), PEOs are going to be in demand and it will never be any less complex than it is right this minute. Small- and medium-sized businesses that do not have the resources to monitor the changing employer climate—simply even to know what they need to comply with not to mention implementing what is required—they need us.”
Robert acknowledges another challenge when it comes to compliance and working within the PEO model.
“Bureaucrats do not understand what we do and combine us with other less or non-regulated ‘employer’ related industries. They attempt to make us culpable for their own inability to perform the jobs the taxpayers have entrusted them with,” Robert asserts.
That is where FAPEO plays an important role in Robert’s story.
“FAPEO is the voice of sanity and reason in an industry that can be so complex that it is often misunderstood by regulators because it takes time to learn and understand it,” Robert says. “FAPEO puts it in a neat, easy-to-read format.”
Anyone who has been in the PEO industry for long can relate to Robert’s frustration with repeatedly hearing the question “what do you do?”
“I do not enjoy trying to explain what I do for a living to someone unfamiliar with our industry,” Robert says with a wry chuckle. “I once said I was an adult film star because I just did not have the bandwidth that evening to explain. Of course everyone laughed—including my wife.”
Turning serious again, Robert goes on to say, “Robert Skrob [FAPEO executive director] is amazing—he is the best part of FAPEO—and none of us would be here reading this were it not for Mike Miller, because FAPEO would not exist.”
Robert is a graduate of Furman University (BA) and the Sykes College of Business (MBA, University of Tampa). He is married to the love of his life, Ruth, and they have three children and a granddaughter. In his limited spare time since coming out of retirement, Robert enjoys working on his boat.
