In honor of ESC’s 30th Anniversary, Liz Warren, ESC’s EVP and Chief People Officer reflects on how far human resources has progressed and how the company has grown and developed to meet the new challenges. Liz recently celebrated 25 years with ESC and has a unique perspective on how ESC’s depth and breadth of services have evolved from a more transactional approach in the past to today’s strategic focus. From Administrative to Strategic: The Evolution of HR Traditional Administrative HR When we look back to 1995 when ESC was founded, the primary focus of human resources was administrative tasks such as payroll processing, benefits administration, and compliance with labor laws. These functions, while essential, often positioned HR as a support role rather than a strategic partner within organizations. In the beginning, ESC did not have a dedicated HR Department, with the company focusing primarily on payroll and benefits. When a client had a question, ESC would call on a part-time HR consultant. In those early days, Liz would do the occasional seminar and provide on-call support. Greg Bauer eventually asked Liz to join the company full-time. Liz recalls Greg telling her that someday she would have 25 people in the HR department. Liz was cautious coming from Wegmans, a large, well-established company, but here ESC is today with an HR Department of 25 and an amazing people-centric culture. More HR professionals joined the team, but after about 5 years ESC identified the need to add a compliance officer. While compliance has always been a part of the HR function, it has increased in complexity over the last few decades, with changes being made on the federal, state, and local level at a rapid pace. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, you might have had one significant change in a 2-year period. In contrast, 2024 saw approximately 17. ESC started with one half time compliance officer, and today the company has 2.5. Liz recalls a few times over the years when she identified that a compliance change was going to change ESC’s business significantly. The following timelines reviews U.S. trends and highlights from New York State that changed the compliance landscape for employers. Compliance & Labor Law: 30-Year Timeline 1995–2004: The Digital Dawn & Global Expansion U.S. Trends Digital transition begins: HRIS systems start replacing manual records. Legal focus: FMLA enforcement and ADA regulations increase, reshaping hiring and accommodation practices. Diversity initiatives begin to appear in corporate America. New York Highlights Labor Law Section 195 increases focus on recordkeeping and notice requirements related to employee compensation, laying the groundwork for future wage transparency laws. Stronger discrimination enforcement under New York’s Human Rights Law included reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities, protections for religious practices and observances, protected traits/characteristics were expanded to include sexual orientation and military status. 2005–2014: Strategic HR & the Early Gig Economy U.S. Trends HR becomes a strategic business partner, focusing on aligning employees with business goals and employee retention. Remote work and flexible schedules gain popularity. Gig economy emerges, led by companies like Uber and TaskRabbit. Increased scrutiny of wage and hour violations under FLSA. New York Highlights Wage Theft Prevention Act (2011) mandates wage notices, pay stubs, and recordkeeping. City of Buffalo’s “Ban the Box” law (2014) prohibits employers from asking about criminal history on job applications. 2015–2019: Tech Boom, Equity Push, and the Rise of People Analytics U.S. Trends AI and cloud technology transform recruiting, onboarding, and performance management. People analytics become a core HR competency. The MeToo movement (2017) spurs sweeping changes in harassment training and reporting policies. New York Highlights Paid Family Leave Law (2016) gives New Yorkers job-protected, paid time off for caregiving. Fight for $15: Minimum wage steadily increases to $15/hour in NYC by 2019. Salary History Ban: NYC enacts the ban in 2017; New York State follows in 2019. Freelance Isn’t Free Act (2017, NYC): Requires written contracts and timely payments for freelancers. New compliance requirements around leaves of absence had a large impact on ESC’s work. Managing these used to take a Benefits Consultant about 15 hours per week. Today, ESC has 1.5 people to support leave of absence management along with assistance from HR Business Partners, ensuring employees are aware of what is available to them. 2020–2021: COVID-19 & the Employee Wellbeing Revolution U.S. Trends Remote work becomes default for many industries. HR shifts to crisis management, health policy, and employee mental health. Digital adoption surges: Virtual onboarding, Zoom-based meetings, and e-learning replace in-person processes. Emergency COVID leave laws pass (such as FFCRA). New York Highlights COVID Paid Sick Leave (2020) for COVID-related absences, layered over federal benefits. Sick and Safe Leave Law (2021) guarantees paid/unpaid leave based on employer size. Remote work raises tax and labor law complexities, especially between NYC and surrounding states. COVID was one of those most significant challenges faced by the HR Department at ESC over the last 30 years. Liz remembers watching the daily press conferences and hearing her phone ring immediately afterward. Clients were calling to ask for a policy based on the changes just announced in the press conference. Nothing has changed business more than that. Liz recalls the HR Department moving at such a fast pace, and then every few hours things would change. 2022–2025: The Future of Work Is Now U.S. Trends Hybrid work models continue to be the norm and companies formalize WFH policies. Debate over AI in HR: Use in hiring, monitoring, and evaluations faces legal and ethical scrutiny. Unionization wave: Workers at Amazon, Starbucks, and tech firms drive a labor resurgence. Pay transparency and skills-based hiring become core HR practices. New York Highlights Pay Transparency Law (2023): Employers must list salary ranges in job postings (NYC and statewide). Expanded harassment laws: All employers (even with one employee) are now covered; annual training is mandatory. Electronic Monitoring Law (2022): Employers must notify workers of monitoring (email, internet, etc.). Gig worker protections continue evolving. New York State’s required annual non-harassment training was another of those big changes that impacted ESC’s HR Department. If you have attended one of our training sessions, you may have heard that ESC had recommended and facilitated this training long before it was required. The training then focused more on the importance of respect in the workplace and talked mostly about sexual harassment. Liz explained that more claims have come forward since mandatory annual training went into effect, but ESC’s #1 call was always on harassment concerns. The last three decades have transformed Human Resources from an administrative back-office function into a strategic, tech-enabled, and compliance-heavy discipline, with New York State consistently leading or expanding on national labor protections. Liz explained that if an organization does not get the compliance components right, they won’t have the foundation necessary for the strategic people operations to be successful. Emergence of Strategic HR The role of HR professionals began to evolve as organizations recognized the importance of aligning people management with business objectives. In the beginning, ESC had on-call support and training, but not much of a focus on compliance. ESC then moved to growing the compliance through dedicated compliance officers and then started to look at how to strategically improve people operations. Those foundational aspects are important, but what sets great HR departments and high performing companies apart is the strategic HR. ESC started to look at one strategic project at a time and building it out to today, ESC has at least 16. The most requested strategic projects are: Organizational Development through Company Culture: Shaping company culture, developing policies focused on company values, and improving organizational effectiveness. HR Assessment: Evaluating company policies, practices, and processes to ensure consistent application of compliant HR procedures. Succession Planning: Focusing on building a pipeline of future leaders, enabling continuity in the organization’s operations, and minimizing disruption when critical roles are vacated. Compensation Analysis: Evaluating the company’s current base compensation structure and researching comparable positions in the job market to plan for future compensation structure needed to remain competitive. Employee Engagement & Retention: Assessing the degree to which employees are motivated to create positive organizational outcomes. As strategic HR evolved, ESC procured clients who had a focus on strategic initiatives. ESC has committed to continuous improvement, systematically examining processes to create efficiencies so that clients are better served. For example, the leave management process went from taking weeks to submit a claim to a few hours by adding efficiencies. As processes became more efficient, ESC was able to add value for clients through more strategic HR work. ESC has always valued training and development, as was apparent when Liz was called on in her early days with the company to facilitate seminars. Seminars went from an hour meeting with a group of leaders to today’s very interactive sessions that might be multiple hours to a full day retreat. What started as a handful of seminar topics in 1995 has evolved into an HR University of at least 50 seminar topics today. ESC has always focused on strong leadership as a cornerstone of the HR function. One of the early client offerings was one on one or executive coaching. The importance of strong leadership skills was apparent from the beginning, and there is still a large focus on that at ESC today. The leadership development series stands out as a strategic offering for ESC’s clients. Clients will engage ESC for 6 months to a year for a series of topics that really help to grow their leadership team making a big difference for workplace culture and employee engagement and retention. The Strategic HR Business Partner Model The concept of HR Business Partners (HRBPs) exemplifies the strategic role of HR. HRBPs work closely with business leaders to develop and implement HR strategies that support business objectives. This model emphasizes the importance of HR’s involvement in strategic planning and decision-making processes. The skills of HR professionals have had to increase greatly over the last 30 years. HR in the past was thought of as the party and picnic planning employee, not as a strategic person that could help your business grow. As it changed, it was necessary for ESC to have well versed HRBPs with skills in training, compliance, strategy, and employee relations. Traditionally, in a large company, an HR professional might only have one of those responsibilities. ESC has strategically recruited and selected lifelong learners who are motivated to learn and do more than they would typically do in an HR role. By having a large team with different skill sets and strengths, we are able to provide the best service to our clients. Back in the early days at ESC, clients were not assigned a service team like they are today. Whoever happened to answer the phone was the one who provided the on-call support or arranged to meet with the client. A big improvement was assigning clients a dedicated HRBP who could get to know them, their people, and their industry. ESC always wanted to be relationship builders with clients but today it is even more important. ESC’s HRBPs are true business partners who know the intricacies and industry specifics for each of the organizations they work with. PEOs sometimes focus on one industry, but ESC made the decision early on to be diverse and always maintained it is about the people. HRBPs learn the intricacies of the business or industry, applying that knowledge with a focus on the people. Even back to the company’s beginnings, an ESC employee could find themselves working with a medical practice in the morning and a manufacturer in the afternoon. That part has stayed the same, but the type of work and variety of work is much more complex now. 30 years ago, the focus was on basic compliance and employee relations. Today it is much more; it is all those things it was back in 1995, plus the complexity of strategic HR. Another huge difference is that ESC’s clients now have employees in 36 states. This increased complexity led to ESC seeking out resources to prepare HRBPs to support clients in thinking about things like employment manual addendums for each state they work in, and how to meet the unique state-specific compliance requirements. HRBPs need to have more knowledge today to create proactive support for the clients so they can focus more on how to meet business objectives. Ongoing, day-to-day support is also provided in a similar way to what it was in 1995. ESC handles more client requests for virtual meetings, along with continuing to do a lot of work in person and on site with clients. This flexibility to accommodate the preference of our clients also opens the door for serving clients on a national level. Some Things Will Never Change ESC’s focus on customer service has always been very strong. As an independent contractor working with ESC, Liz saw that in the early days, and it was a values alignment that led to taking the leap to work at ESC full-time over 25 years ago. Excellent customer service continues to be ESC’s #1 value with treating customers and employees well as the company’s top priority. It was important that ESC have values established to communicate how leadership and employees should act. A task force/committee was created with volunteers from every department. This group talked about putting values into words and action. To this day, ESC includes the values in the recruitment process and employees learn about the values in action on their first day of work. ESC’s values include: Integrity…Trust: Choose to do the right thing with courage and character. Customer 1st Focused: It is not enough to deliver excellent customer service; you must have a passion for it. Aim to discover exactly what it is that your customers want and then make certain that you exceed their expectations. Follow through on your promises. Positive Attitude: Create together through optimism and a positive contagious attitude. Quality…Excellence…Professionalism: Be committed to excellence that goes above and beyond requirements. Exhibit pride in being a true professional and show your passion for your work. Teamwork…Collaboration…Open Communication: Collaborative, it’s about connection: how we work together, the way we treat each other, the way we support each other, the way we speak to each other, the way we help each other grow. Commitment…Accountability…Responsiveness: Act with urgency and be held “answerable” for accomplishing tasks and goals. Ensure timely delivery and follow through of your tasks and objectives. It is when employees take ownership of their actions that achievement reaches new levels. Flexibility…Adaptability…Continuous Improvement: Welcome change and realize you can achieve much more through a dynamic process. Diversity: Act in a manner that demonstrates an understanding of and a sensitivity and concern toward each person’s individuality and importance. We share in the belief that diversity provides a competitive advantage. For ESC, it is so important that all ESC employees know that if you can’t live these values, ESC isn’t the right place for you. Another thing that hasn’t changed is that ESC’s work is interesting! The HR Department often talks about how we should write a book, and when someone says, “that could be the title of another chapter,” you know something extra interesting has happened. Liz has said that some of the HR Department’s stories are better than Lifetime movies. Conclusion In thinking back on the last 30 years since ESC’s founding, Liz identified that life moves so fast. When she went to meet with a handful of leaders at a company with her training packets back then to today’s all-company seminars with 100-150 people, she never could have imagined this. As she was thinking back on the development of ESC’s HR Department, Liz said that she wishes she would have kept a journal. It would have been really interesting to look back on not just ESC’s evolution, but the evolution of the companies we have supported. There are clients at ESC that were with the company when Liz came on board 25 years ago and she finds it inspiring to talk to people you have had a business relationship with for 25 years. The evolution of HR from an administrative function to a strategic partner reflects what ESC has always believed. A company’s people are the most vital component of organizational success. By embracing strategic roles, ESC contributes to shaping organizational culture, driving performance, and achieving business goals.