When I first started in the consulting business in the early 1970s, Linda and I and our two daughters were living in a small mountain town in southwest Virginia. In fact, it was so far in southwest Virginia that half of it was in Tennessee! The town was Bristol, Virginia/Tennessee and the state line separating Virginia from Tennessee ran right down the middle of main street in downtown Bristol. The name of the street was . . . State Street!
In the course of my consulting, I occasionally travelled to Florida where I met a Kentucky gentleman named Ken Morefield. Ken was a former high ranking official of the Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, and started his own consulting firm in Orlando in 1966. In 1980, he was being considered for Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division under President Reagan and was thinking of selling his consulting firm. He and I met several times over dinner and coffee and I visited a number of his clients with him and he eventually gave me the opportunity to acquire his firm, which was mostly providing wage and hour advice, a few employee handbooks, and just a touch of the new employment regulations. The thought of moving from southwest Virginia to central Florida was a bit scary, but I wanted to do it and Linda reminded me of the Parable of the Talents so we packed up the car with our girls and our dachshund Maggie and down we came. I was 36 years old.
How HR Has Changed.
Human Resources has changed quite a bit since the early 1970s. In fact, it was not called Human Resources back then, it was called Personnel and the name of the professional association was ASPA – the American Society for Personnel Administration. It was not until the 1980s when the term Human Resources began to bubble up and by the end of the decade, Human Resources was the accepted name by almost everyone, and the name of the professional association was SHRM – the Society for Human Resource Management.
Back in the day, a personnel manager was mostly responsible for recruiting, screening, and hiring employees and for keeping the personnel files up to date, and for employee relations. When I was a young man going through the Personnel Management Training with Burlington Industries, my boss told me, “Sandy, don’t stay in your office. Make sure you walk through the plant and talk with as many employees as you can, every single day.” The only two major employment regulations were Wage and Hour and NLRB, if a union was involved. In the early 70s, Congress had only recently passed the EEOC regulations and enforcement was in its infancy. The first EEOC regulations covered only race, creed, color, sex, religion, and national origin. Age regulations came a few years later.
How things have changed since then. Now, America has more employment regulations than any other country in the world. We find them at the local, state, and federal level and the Human Resources manager’s has expanded exponentially, Now HR has the primary responsibility for complying with all of them.
I really enjoyed HR consulting, mostly owing to the wonderful clients I’ve had over the years. Personal relationships are vital in the consulting business and over the course of time, your clients
become your friends. Aristotle taught that true friendship is when you want the best for your friend, for the sake of your friend, and only for the sake of your friend. I felt that way about my clients and enjoyed so many wonderful, close, and warm friendships.
To my very good fortune, I met Marci LaRouech sometime in 2024 and she was kind enough to assume ownership of Seay Management. She was precisely the right person at precisely the right time and I am so pleased to see how successful she is in growing the firm to newer and greater levels, while maintaining our traditional values of excellence, integrity, and friendliness. She has made it possible for me to retire so now I get to do a lot of reading, a lot of guitar pickin’, and a lot of emptying the dishwasher for Linda! So thanks to Marci and her great team. I am very grateful.
Many of you may know that I had the privilege of teaching the Ancient Humanities at Rollins for many years and my thoughts often return to Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses.” His final words are these:
“Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
Thanks to all of you, my friends,
Sandy
