Gevity HR, Inc., continues to polish its image with the recentaddition of James F. Orr III to the company's board ofdirectors.

From September 1987 until his retirement in 1999, Orr waschairman, CEO, and president of UNUM Provident Corporation'spredecessor, UNUM Corporation. Orr then served as president and CEOof Boston-based United Asset Management Corporation, one of thelargest publicly owned investment management companies in theworld, from May 2000 to December 2001. Since 2006, he has served asa director of American International Group, Inc., where he is alsoa member of the Compensation & Management Resources and theNominating & Corporate Governance committees.

The company recently announced a quarterly dividend of $0.05 pershare of common stock, which will be payable July 31 toshareholders of record as of July 15.

It may be only a nickel, but almost any positive news is welcomeat the industry giant's 97,000-square-foot office in LakewoodRanch. The company reported a net income of $9.9 million in 2007, a72 percent decrease from the $35 million it booked in 2006,according to its Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Gevity's core business is serving as the full-service humanresources department for small and mid-sized companies. In July2007, it was forced to lay off 50 of its approximately 1,000workers. At the time, a company spokeswoman said the cutback wasthe “result of bringing costs in line with our income. We obviouslyneed to manage our spending.”

That same month, Gevity's Senior Vice President of NationalSales and Field Service Operations Peter Grabowski resigned afterspending more than a decade with the company. The company did notdisclose the reason for his departure.

Those personnel changes, coupled with lower-than-expectedsecond-quarter results in June 2007 and an almost 50 percent dropin share value, culminated in the resignation of CEO and ChairmanEric Vonk in late October. Vonk, who had been Gevity's leader sinceApril 2002, was succeeded by COO Michael Lavington.

Analysts seem to like the change. “Client retention continues tobe a problem; however, new management has improved the delicatesituation created by an ill-advised strategy change by priorexecutives,” Morningstar Analyst Joel Bloomer wrote in February.“As the company refocuses on its core competency of providingprofessional employment services to small businesses, we expectperformance to steadily improve.”

Morningstar gives Gevity its highest rating — five-stars — and afair value estimate of $14 per share, about double its currentshare price.

Potential suitors may be knocking. In late May, the globalprivate equity firm General Atlantic LLC announced in a filing withthe Securities and Exchange Commission that it owns about 2.2million shares of Gevity, or 9.5 percent of the company'soutstanding stock, making General Atlantic Gevity's second largestshareholder. General Atlantic already owns a majority of TriNetGroup Inc., a San Francisco-based human resources company.