Q&A: HR Consulting Questions Business Owners Actually Ask

Running a business means dealing with people. Sometimes that means hiring them. Sometimes it means developing them. And sometimes it means figuring out what to do when things get weird.

Mercury HR provides practical, experienced HR support to growing businesses — from recruiting and employee relations to workplace investigations, compensation, succession planning and fractional HR.

Based in Cincinnati, Mercury HR works with companies throughout the United States.

Usually, companies don’t wake up one morning and decide, “We need HR consulting.”

They realize they have people problems that are affecting the business.

Maybe you can’t find good employees. Maybe job postings aren’t producing the right candidates, or you simply don’t have time to sort through resumes and interview everyone who applies.

Maybe you have an employee situation that has gotten beyond what you or your managers feel comfortable handling.

Maybe you’re spending so much time dealing with employee issues that you aren’t spending enough time running and growing the business.

Or maybe good employees are leaving, and nobody is quite sure why.

Those are usually signs that some outside HR help could be useful — even if you aren’t ready to hire a full-time HR professional.

A lot of them.

Mercury HR has been called to help companies with performance problems, attendance issues, disciplinary situations, employee complaints and workplace investigations.

Sometimes the problem is more strategic. A company may need to take a hard look at its current talent and determine whether it has the people it needs for the future.

Other times, a business leader simply needs help preparing for an uncomfortable conversation.

That could mean terminating an employee, addressing poor performance, telling someone they aren’t receiving a promotion, or having another difficult conversation a manager would rather not have.

And sometimes what a leader really needs is a second brain — another experienced person to talk through the situation with before deciding what to do next.

Absolutely.

In fact, companies with HR departments can sometimes benefit the most from additional HR support.

HR professionals have to manage the necessary day-to-day work of the company while also trying to tackle bigger projects.

An HR person can walk into work Monday morning thinking:

        “This is finally the week I’m going to update all of the job descriptions.”

Twenty minutes later, a manager knocks on the door with an employee issue.

Then another issue happens.

Then another.

Two weeks later, nobody remembers the job descriptions.

HR departments often know exactly which strategic projects need to happen. They simply don't get enough uninterrupted time to do them.

Mercury HR can provide additional capacity for projects such as compensation analysis, job descriptions, talent reviews, succession planning and recruiting.

Mercury can also provide guidance to a newer HR professional who encounters a situation they haven’t handled before.

And even larger HR departments occasionally need outside assistance — particularly for a workplace investigation or another project requiring significant time, independence or specialized analysis.

A lot of the work that happens before the business owner ever meets a candidate.

The recruiting process starts by understanding the company, the position and the person you’re actually trying to hire.

• Where is that person probably working today?
• What are they doing?
• What skills and experience really matter?
• What kind of person will fit the company’s culture?
• And what is attractive about the company or opportunity that might convince the right person to leave a job they already have?

Once those questions are answered, Mercury HR can handle job postings, candidate searches, resume reviews and initial interviews.

The goal is for the business owner to enter the process after much of the time-consuming work has already been completed — typically with a smaller group of qualified candidates to consider.

While Mercury is recruiting, you can keep running your business.

Staffing agencies and recruiting firms often have large candidate databases and extensive networks.

Those can be valuable resources.

Mercury HR takes a slightly different approach.

The first priority is understanding the company, its culture, the position and what the owner or hiring manager really needs.

The objective isn't simply to close the requisition.

It's to find the best fit for that particular company.

Mercury also frequently serves as a bridge between candidates and employers during the recruiting process.

Negotiations around salary, responsibilities, schedules or other expectations can sometimes create unnecessary friction. Having someone in the middle can help both sides communicate clearly without damaging the relationship before the candidate even starts.

The goal is for a new employee to walk into the company excited about the opportunity — not already irritated about something that happened during the hiring process.

Start at the beginning.

Before deciding what should happen to the employee, understand what has actually happened.

• How long has the issue been occurring?
• How long has the employee worked for the company?
• Has the employee normally been a strong performer?
• Does the employee know there is a problem?
• Have previous conversations been documented?
• Is there evidence of poor work product or missed expectations?
• Is there something unusual happening personally with the employee?

Those answers help determine what the conversation — and the company's response — should look like.

One lesson from years of working in HR is that there is usually more time to make a good decision than business owners think there is.

Before rushing into discipline or termination, gather the information available and understand the situation.

Then decide what should happen next.

There are several situations where using an independent workplace investigator can make sense.

One is when the HR department itself is materially involved — either because someone in HR made the complaint or someone in HR is the subject of the complaint.

Another is when a high-level executive or company leader is involved.

Outside assistance can also make sense when the company's HR team has limited experience conducting workplace investigations.

Independence matters, too.

When everyone involved works together and knows one another, it can be difficult to completely remove relationships, history or unconscious assumptions from the process.

An outside investigator can bring a fresh perspective focused on gathering facts.

Finally, sometimes the company's usual investigators simply don't have the time or availability to conduct the investigation quickly.

In each of those situations, bringing in experienced outside HR support can help the company conduct a more independent and organized process.

Fractional HR can take a couple of different forms.

For some companies, Mercury HR may spend a set amount of time with the business each week.

That creates regular opportunities to talk with company leaders about what is happening inside the organization and address problems while they are still small — before they become significantly harder to manage.

That time can also be used for HR projects, onboarding, offboarding and other ongoing needs.

The appropriate amount of time depends on the company's size, goals and growth plans.

For other companies, fractional HR is more like having an experienced “phone-a-friend.”

You may not need HR every week.

You just want someone available when things get weird.

Some of Mercury HR's most interesting work happens in areas such as compensation research, talent reviews, career pathing and succession planning.

For example, compensation analysis can reveal that a company's annual raises have not kept pace with the external labor market.

That creates two problems.

Existing employees become easier for competitors to recruit away, while the company may simultaneously struggle to hire experienced people because its pay ranges no longer match the market.

Talent reviews look at the organization from another angle.

Mercury can facilitate conversations about employees throughout the company:

• What's working?
• What's not working?
• What's next for this person?
• Where does the company have risk?

One important question is whether the company is single-sourced on an important skill, relationship, process or piece of knowledge.

If only one employee knows how something critical works, that's a business risk.

Those conversations can then lead into career paths, development plans and succession planning so the organization is intentionally building the people it will need next.

A simple principle explains why employee handbooks matter:

The best time to decide how your company will handle an employee issue is before you have the employee issue.

A good handbook allows a business to make important decisions in something closer to a vacuum — before emotion, personalities, history and urgency become involved.

It's much harder to decide what is fair, reasonable and consistent when you're already dealing with a difficult employee situation.

That doesn't mean your company needs a policy for every possible scenario.

It does mean employees and managers should have clear guidance about what the company expects, what employees can expect from the company, what behavior is acceptable, how common workplace situations will generally be handled and where managers have discretion.

A handbook isn't supposed to eliminate judgment.

It's supposed to give the company a foundation from which to make better decisions.

Mercury HR most commonly works with companies that have approximately 5 to 100 employees.

Good fits often include companies that:

• Don't have a dedicated HR professional.
• Have an HR department that is overwhelmed by day-to-day responsibilities.
• Have someone in an “Accounting/HR,” “Operations/HR” or similar slash role.
• Can't figure out why they aren't finding good employees.
• Can't figure out why good employees keep leaving.
• Need an independent workplace investigation.
• Have leaders spending significantly more time on people problems than they want to.

The common denominator isn't necessarily company size or industry.

It's usually that people issues are starting to interfere with the business.

Mercury HR can work with companies across industries.

The deepest experience is in manufacturing, distribution and engineering environments, but the work has extended across many different types of businesses.

That includes recruiting.

Experience includes hiring employees at virtually every level of an organization and across many different professional disciplines.

The important part is understanding the business, the work and the kind of people who will be successful there.

No.

Mercury HR is based in the Cincinnati area, but the work is not geographically limited to Greater Cincinnati.

Through Mercury HR, experience already includes supporting companies with operations across approximately 20 states.

Over the course of a broader HR career, that experience has included HR work touching six continents.

Depending on the engagement, many HR services can be provided remotely, which allows Mercury HR to support businesses throughout the United States.

The first conversation is largely about understanding the business.

Before recommending an HR solution, Mercury wants to understand the company around the problem.

• How old is the business?
• How many employees does it have?
• What does the company look like financially?
• What are its current plans?
• What are its growth plans?
• Where does the owner or leadership team believe HR help is needed?

The conversation may also touch on areas such as hiring, management, employee benefits, compliance, employee handbooks, required posters, job descriptions and other people-related processes.

The goal isn't to manufacture additional HR work.

It's to understand the company well enough to identify where HR can genuinely help the business.

Everyone thinks they can handle HR until it's time to handle HR well.

Many employee situations appear straightforward until you're actually responsible for making the decision, having the conversation and living with the consequences.

Large HR consulting firms bring considerable resources and knowledge.

What they may not immediately know is your company.

Mercury HR's recommendations are made with the company's culture, people, goals and business needs in mind.

The philosophy is simple: I'm a business person who happens to practice HR.

HR should support the company rather than exist for its own sake.

That also means Mercury HR isn't interested in creating projects just to stay busy.

If the company doesn't need something, the answer should be that it doesn't need it.

The objective is practical HR guidance that helps the business find good people, keep the right people and deal effectively with the difficult situations that inevitably happen along the way.