On Episode 7 of the Instant Payments Podcast, Instant CEO Tal Clark sat down with longtime friend, Instant customer, and fellow Pensacola leader Britt Landrum, CEO of Landrum, Inc. With more than 50 years of history, Landrum is one of the few remaining family-owned staffing and PEO organizations of its size, and its longevity offers a powerful roadmap for how people, technology, and reinvention intersect in today’s workforce environment.
Here are three key lessons from Britt’s story.
People-first leadership is a business strategy, not a slogan.
Britt didn’t step into the CEO role from afar; he grew up in the business, starting in the mailroom, spending time in sales, operations, IT, and even custodial work. Those experiences shaped a leadership philosophy grounded in understanding people from the inside out.
In staffing and PEO work, this matters. Supporting other employers with payroll, HR, benefits, and compliance only works if you understand the realities of frontline employees, their challenges, their financial pressures, and what truly keeps them engaged.
This is one reason earned wage access (EWA) has become “tablestakes,” as Britt puts it. Workers need flexibility and stability, and employers who ignore those needs fall out of touch quickly. The companies that thrive are the ones that stay connected to the people who make the work possible.
Technology must enhance the human experience, not complicate it.
Landrum has always been early to adopt new technology. Britt shared examples ranging from early internet adoption to today’s integrations with modern HRIS platforms, AI, and on-demand pay tools.
But what stands out most is how they adopt technology: integration over complexity, simplicity over showmanship.
Britt shared that employees and clients don’t want five logins or scattered systems. They want: payroll, benefits, time, and pay access all in one place, with one experience.
This mindset is exactly how modern PEOs and staffing firms keep pace with workforce expectations. Technology isn’t added for the sake of innovation, it’s added to remove friction for the people who use it.
Agility is the advantage of a mid-sized, family-run organization.
One of the reasons Landrum continues to succeed is its ability to pivot quickly. Britt describes the company as occupying the “sweet spot”: large enough to offer enterprise-level capability, but independent enough to adapt quickly.
This agility has shaped the company’s history:
- shifting from recruiting to staffing in the early years,
- launching a PEO when the concept was still new,
- expanding into new services,
- modernizing operations during COVID,
- and adopting tools like earned wage access ahead of market maturity.
Family ownership allows for long-term decision-making, while mid-sized scale allows for fast, people-centered innovation.
That blend, stability plus flexibility, has allowed Landrum to remain a trusted partner for employers for more than five decades.
The takeaway
The future of staffing and PEO organizations won’t be defined by size alone. It will be defined by the ability to combine:
- an authentic understanding of people,
- thoughtful adoption of technology, and
- organizational agility that keeps pace with a rapidly changing workforce.
Landrum, Inc. is a living example of how those elements create staying power. For today’s employers navigating workforce challenges, Britt’s lessons offer a clear reminder: people and technology aren’t opposing forces, they’re most powerful when they work together.
🎧 Listen to the full conversation with Britt Landrum, CEO of Landrum, Inc., on the Instant Payments Podcast at instant.co/podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
