Hiring across several states before there is an HR department.

The situation

A start-up in spirits branding, marketing and distribution, helping bring new and existing brands to market. Substantial private equity backing and an aggressive plan: a national footprint within three years, and growth from twenty-two employees to well over a hundred across multiple states inside the first year.

The executive team had made a deliberate decision to stay lean administratively, so that the people they hired would be working on revenue rather than on running the company. That is a defensible choice, and it creates a specific problem: multi-state employment obligations arrive on the first day you employ someone in a new state, whether or not anyone is available to handle them.

What we did

BRG was asked to provide a platform, through a PEO, that could carry the launch. We built a comprehensive RFP and marketed it to targeted PEOs within our portfolio — with the emphasis on which providers could genuinely register and operate in new states at short notice, rather than on price alone. For a company whose plan depends on speed, registration lead time is a more consequential variable than the administrative fee.

The outcome

Full human resources and compliance support from day one. A Fortune 500-level benefits and retirement offering — which for a start-up competing for experienced people against established companies is a recruitment instrument, not an overhead. Access to legal, tax, benefits, risk and payroll specialists the company had no intention of hiring. And the ability to scale into any state with the PEO carrying the registration and compliance burden.

By operating under the PEO’s state unemployment rates, the company saved a substantial amount on unemployment taxes. We have not published a figure for this engagement because the case record does not contain one, and we are not going to estimate it.

What this one illustrates

This is the engagement in this set where cost was least of the argument. A company at twenty-two people has no meaningful spend to optimise. What it has is a plan that requires employing people in states where it has no presence, no HR function, and no intention of building one this year. The model was bought for capability, and the savings were a consequence.

If this resembles your situation

Work out the first three states you will hire into and what it takes to register in each. If the answer surprises you, that is the real timeline on your growth plan, and it is better to find it now than in the week you want someone to start.