Scott Maichel: Simple Philosophical Shift Contributing to Southern California’s Flourishing Business Community

In any discussion concerning the strength of a particular economy, one should expect to encounter disagreement over which factors are most responsible for an economy’s success, stagnation, or regression. The individual opinions of expert economists might vary by an impossibly wide margin, yet it is nonetheless the case that the vast differences in these viewpoints can be credibly supported by the available data.

While the level of influence exerted on an economy by one factor or another can be debated to no end, the specific data points cannot be reasonably argued in the same way. In the case of California’s state economy, there is no room for debate over the fact that the state has simply outperformed -- in many cases, by an impressive margin -- other, similarly sized economies the world over.

With an economy similar in size to that of the United Kingdom, California is easily among the largest economies worldwide. In the years since 2012, California has posted a GDP growth of 15.9 percent, outpacing that of the United States (11.6 percent), the United Kingdom (8.1 percent), and Germany (-5.1 percent).

California’s economic performance is certainly the product of a number of distinct factors, including legislation in support of clean energy as well as the diverse revenue-generating economic sectors found within the state: Clean energy companies, for example, have produced a 185 percent return in the years since 2012, and the state continues to benefit from the revenue derived from the tech (a trailing 12-month revenue of $720 billion), manufacturing ($279 billion in 2015), and agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting ($39 billion in 2015) industries.

Scott Maichel, the co-founder of AmCheck San Diego -- one of the many companies thriving thanks to Southern California’s flourishing economy -- posits that local companies can reap even greater rewards in the current economic climate with a simple philosophical shift in approach. Maichel, drawing on his decades of experience in the payroll and HR business, encourages clients to adopt strategies designed to shift the focus of employees away from time-wasting administrative tasks and toward more rewarding tasks and initiatives.

“HR professionals, for example, are so bogged down with administrative tasks they rarely have time to concentrate on their strategic initiatives,” Maichel explained. “Such a circumstance demands a solution designed to minimize the transactional aspects of payroll and HR administration, which in turn allows payroll and HR professionals to concentrate on the responsibilities that yield a greater sense of professional fulfillment.”

Amcheck San Diego’s novel approach to payroll and HR -- Maichel, the firm's co-founder, is the pioneer behind several offerings unique within the industry, including the PEO transparency analysis, the AmCheck employment attorney hotline, and the AmCheck college scholarship program -- ensures clients are positioned to attract and retain the exceptional employees that represent such a critical component of the state’s thriving economy.

While acknowledging the difficulties inherent in any economic analysis, Maichel consistently encourages companies to become more involved in advocating on behalf of their respective professional communities. The degree to which this type of advocacy influences the strength of an economy may be up for debate, but Maichel nonetheless expresses a profound sense of confidence in the validity of the anecdotal evidence collected over his more than 25 years in the payroll and HR business.