Profile

Tony Jackson

New position: Market manager, Gevity HR, St. Petersburg

Previous position: Sales manager, Gevity HR, St. Petersburg

While Tony Jackson's territory has more or less tripled, his scenic commute each day between his Bradenton home and St. Petersburg office remains the same.

Appointed to the new position of market manager for human resources outsourcing company Gevity HR, Jackson is responsible for sales in three markets -- Tampa, St. Petersburg and Lakeland. That means overseeing 13 or more sales representatives.

Previously, Jackson was sales manager for only St. Petersburg with a half-dozen sales representatives. "Now it's much larger and a much larger budget to deal with," he said.

Jackson has been with Gevity for six years, hiring, training and coordinating sales representatives who work with small and medium-size businesses. "My first and foremost responsibility is finding the right person for the job," he said.

Gevity HR, a Fortune 500 company, performs benefits and technology services for small companies. "We actually partner with our clients to help manage the human resources programs of their own employees," Jackson said.

Businesses today face a number of risks when hiring, training and firing employees, Jackson said. Therefore, background checks and consultation are vital. "In the protection part of our program, we would help protect their business from the ramifications of hiring the wrong person as well as workers' compensation."

For example, if a company hired an employee to drive a company vehicle and that employee had a poor driving record, "Clearly if you hired that person, you're putting your business at risk," he said.

"We typically look at companies from around five to 100 employees," he said. "We look at companies that are particularly white collar and gray collar (light manufacturing) as well as restaurants, hotels and motels."

Prior to joining Gevity HR, Jackson, 47, was division manager for the National Federation of Independent Businesses in Baltimore for eight years. Before joining the NFIB, Jackson worked 18 years in retailing in North Carolina. He spent two years studying at Western Carolina University while learning the retail business.

"When I found out about this industry," Jackson said, "it fit perfectly with what I saw were day-to-day problems small businesses were facing. I thought it was a perfect fit for my background. The service we provide for clients is invaluable. We get a lot of positive response, especially when we've handled something that was a sticky wicket."

Jackson said his commute over the Sunshine Skyway is "the highlight of my day -- (driving) over the bridge in the morning and seeing the sunrise and driving across the bridge in the evening and seeing the sunset.

"It's pretty nice."

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