Every company, no matter how small, has to comply with an ever-increasing body of laws and regulations. But not every company has a trained human resources professional to handle the load.

“At most small companies, when I ask the owner, ‘Who handles your HR?’ the answer is, ‘You’re looking at him,’” said Jack Lipovac, founder of HR-OneSource in Johnston. “There are 5,300 companies in Iowa with 25 to 250 employees, and most of the companies with fewer than 100 employees don’t have a trained HR person.”

His company of four consultants does some special projects for big companies, including investigations, but specializes in handling all of the HR duties for those small and medium-sized companies. “Small employers are under a great deal of stress to find information quickly,” Lipovac said. “For example, they don’t fire many people, so they don’t know how.”

Focusing on the needs of small companies has led HR-OneSource to rapid growth. Lipovac said revenues have increased by 30 percent to 40 percent annually in recent years.

The company expanded its range earlier this year by opening a “members only” section on its Web site, www.hr-onesource.com, after two years of preparation. “We developed the site to pull all of the basic information together,” said Tom Hedrick, the marketing director. “Hopefully it answers 50 percent to 60 percent of the questions that pop up on a daily basis.”

For example, the site contains 95 questions that can come up during the hiring process; a hiring checklist to make sure everything was done legally; job descriptions; and condensed versions of pertinent labor laws, plus links to more detailed sources.

HR-OneSource has signed up about 100 clients to use the site in various ways. The most common arrangement is that a client subscribes to all or part of the site’s resources for an annual fee; also, a joint-labeling arrangement can be made, placing a client’s name on the site along with HR-OneSource; and verbal agreements have been made with a couple of companies who want to “private-label” the site. In those cases, “we’ll collect an annual fee and customize the site for them,” Lipovac said. “They can populate it with their own information.”

The company also sends a monthly electronic newsletter to about 3,000 clients.

After moving to a new location a year ago, HR-OneSource added a veteran business trainer last May; Kevin Pokorny closed his own business after running it for many years and signed on as a training consultant. David Hansen is a senior human resources consultant and Clint Davis is a human resources consultant. Attorney Mary Sanders works part time on research topics, and a couple of other people work part-time on research and the Web site.

Lipovac, who has a master’s degree in labor relations, began moving into HR consulting about 25 years ago. When Congress passed COBRA — the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985, which requires the continuation of group health insurance coverage for former employees under certain circumstances – and the Family Medical Leave Act, “human resources started getting more complicated,” Lipovac said. “There was more litigation, and I started getting calls.”