04:05 INTERVIEW
GPA: What got you involved in payroll and HR services? What kind of background did you have to kind of migrate into this realm? Rick Hammell: When I say I date myself a little bit, I remember when global payroll was Excel files that you emailed. My first HR role was at a major hotel corporation, tasked with making sure people were on- boarded and paid correctly. The hospitality industry provided a good foundation for how to treat people. Then I worked for a technology company and there the director of HR really inspired me to continue my career in HR and gave me a lot of opportunities to really expand, and I learned HR in the tech world was actually really important. Then the 2008 recession hit and we had to switch gears. I got into government contracting, which took me international. I was the
I think when companies are wanting to go global, everyone says it’s complicated and, yes, there’s some complications behind it. But, if you can provide technology to make it more simplistic and more attainable, more businesses will be able to do it.
one to figure out how to on-board people, how to make sure they get paid correctly in Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Japan. We didn’t have entities completely ready at that point. I had to figure out how to get entities set up. But we still had to pay people. All those issues of having to figure out how to deploy talent abroad, I had to go through that. And I just felt like it was a really bad experience for not having things really organized in regards to technology. I saw there is a gap in the overall solution and I took it upon myself to figure out how to resolve it.
I remember taking the proceeds from selling my house and starting the business which became Atlas. Then when we were trying to build something out even further and I had to get investors, I told them: “Look, I’m going to do this, but I’m also going to put my own capital into it as well.” Which, obviously, makes investors very happy to know you have a personal investment. Now what we have here at Helios is that next evolution of really thinking about the entire global operations for businesses. And with Helios, we really want a global structure with
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GLOBAL PAYROLL MAGAZINE ISSUE 10
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