ENGAGING FOR THE FUTURE

In late February the NAPEO board, Leadership Council chairs and other industry leaders met in Arizona for our annual retreat. This meeting is an opportunity to think big about the ways NAPEO serves the industry’s interests, what’s on the horizon that the association needs to prepare for, and how we can be your best advocate in the future.

Having spent my entire career in and around trade associations of all shapes and sizes, I’ve experienced a lot of well-intended planning retreats where the staff pulls teeth to get anyone to say anything! As you know better than me, we don’t have that here.

I shared with the attendees that I am truly in awe of the sustained level of engagement from every person in the room. It makes us stronger as a group, and I continue to be thankful for your eagerness to get involved.

The discussion focused on industry and association priorities including:

• Maintaining a close connection with previous Board chairs so we don’t lose the invaluable contributions of established industry leaders. How do we continue to benefit from experienced industry executives after their terms end?
• Diversifying PEO industry entrants and employees to better reflect the breadth of communities well-served by PEOs across the country. How can we get more young people involved with/interested in the PEO industry as an employment destination?
• Deepening the bench of NAPEO-member engagement to maximize member benefit and improve the association through broader participation of member professionals. How can we get our tentacles deeper into organizations so that more professionals know how to engage with and contribute to NAPEO?
• Identifying big “horizon issues” that will have an outsized impact on the association and the industry, including everything from AI to industry consolidation. What issues are ripe for NAPEO to lead on and how can we meaningfully engage now to maximize return on that investment of time and resources?

These curated discussion topics reflect several of the core priorities of our Chair Steve Politis of Alcott HR but were carefully considered because of the impact they have on your businesses and the association. Each of those topics has an ability to influence the growth and success of the PEO industry in the years ahead.

Because the professionals in that room (and those of you reading this column!) are so committed to the industry and the association, we left with some real actionable ways that NAPEO can engage and lead. Together we’re not only going to be ready for what’s around the next corner, but we are proactively finding ways to grow the association’s impact.

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” – Henry Ford