Executive Suite: Louis Basso, Farmingdale

Louis Basso, 59, inhabits the world of professional employer organizations, or PEOs. As a PEO, his company, Alcott HR Group, provides its corporate clients and their 4,000 employees with services that include payroll, compliance, training, and health and pension benefits. The clients are mostly on Long Island and in New York's five boroughs and include doctors, lawyers, nonprofits, manufacturers and mom-and-pop retailers.

Basso is also the president of the New York Chapter of the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations. Before Alcott, Basso and co-founder Barry Shorten ran a staffing company that provided engineers to the defense industry. But after the industry downsized here, beginning in the late 1980s, the pair thought a natural segue was a concept then popular on the West Coast: providing HR services to companies. So they founded Alcott in 1987.

Basso discusses why companies use Alcott's services and what's on their minds in today's challenging economic environment.

Why do companies come to you?
“Small businesses just don't have the infrastructure to keep up with the myriad laws. Generally our clients are the type of people that want to do the right thing for employees, want to have good benefits, want to have good services, but they're just too small and don't have the infrastructure . . . We have a lot of small businesses coming to us now because they are so confused with the health-care law that they say, 'Listen, we need somebody to manage it for us.' Even though small business has entrenched a little bit, there's a tremendous need for our services.“

What is the greatest challenge facing Long Island businesses?
“It's probably a little bit of uncertainty on where the economy is going. The businesses that we service are a little reluctant to hire. They are a little reluctant to expand, one, because some of the credit issues are challenging for those businesses. Two, some of the new laws and things with health coming out — they're not sure what those extra costs are going to be. Unfortunately right now in the first year or two of the new health care law, the costs are still going up double digits.“

So are your clients hiring more this year than last?
“No. What I do see, though, fortunately, is things have stabilized. Fewer of them are laying off, but they aren't really hiring yet. Over the years we have always depended on that client of 20 people growing to 22 to 24 to 26. Unfortunately, over the last couple of years that client of 20 has gone down to 18 to 15 to 14.“

Are the companies taking longer to bring on new hires?
“The hiring process is not so much taking longer, but there are a lot more candidates to pick from right now. In some respects it's speeded it up. In the days of full employment it was hard to find the right people for the job. Now there are more people available.“

CORPORATE SNAPSHOT

Name. Louis Basso.
Company. Alcott HR Group, Farmingdale.
What it does. Serves as HR department for 300 small and midsized companies.
Employees. 44, in Long Island and in Buffalo.
Revenue. $180 million in 2010; projects about $200 million this year.