18. Abigail Church - GrowthLab

Episode 18: Abigail Church | HR That Builds Trust, Clarity, and Cohesiveness

In this episode of Making More, Billy Fischer sits down with Abigail Church, PHR, an HR business partner with GrowthLab, to talk about the people systems growing companies need before the cracks start showing.

Abigail works with startups and growing organizations to build the HR foundation that keeps teams compliant, aligned, and scalable. From handbooks and payroll setup to employee classification, compensation benchmarking, feedback systems, and performance improvement plans, her work sits at the intersection of compliance and culture.

This conversation reframes HR as leadership infrastructure, not paperwork. Abigail explains why “we’ll fix it later” often becomes expensive, why clarity builds trust, and why difficult feedback can be an act of care when it is handled with honesty, structure, and support.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why early-stage companies need HR foundations before problems appear
• The hidden cost of misclassification, unclear pay bands, and incomplete documentation
• How GrowthLab helps companies build compliant, scalable people systems
• Why clarity is one of the most important trust-building tools in leadership
• How performance improvement plans can be collaborative, not punitive
• What healthy conflict and workplace cohesiveness actually look like
• Why leaders should stop pushing HR problems to “next quarter”

Abigail’s answer to the title question was clear: making more clarity and cohesiveness. In her view, clarity helps build cohesiveness, and cohesiveness helps individuals, teams, and businesses achieve their goals.

Learn more about GrowthLab:
 www.growthlabfinancial.com

Connect with Abigail on LinkedIn:
 Abigail Church, PHR: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abigail-church-phr

Find Billy on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bigeyedfisch/ or visit his website, billyfischer.focalpointcoaching.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Making More, the podcast where high-performing business owners and visionary executives share how they're building more than just bottom lines. I'm your host, Billy Fisher, an engineering leader, turned business and executive coach, and I'm guided by a personal mission to help leaders create clarity, build forward momentum, and make more of what matters most. Today I'm thrilled to be joined by Abigail Church, an HR business partner with Growth Lab who helps growing companies build the people systems that keep them compliant, aligned, and scalable. Abigail lives at the intersection of leadership and HR fundamentals, from clean classification and updated handbooks to real feedback, performance improvement, and conflict resolution that actually protecture. We'll talk about what founders and leaders miss most often and how to build cohesiveness through clear expectations and honest conversations. Abigail, welcome to Making More.

SPEAKER_03 1:02

Hi, Billy. Thanks for having me. I'm Abigail Church, and I've been working in HR and organizational development for a little over 15 years.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

A great history, and I I have a soft spot in my heart for HR leaders and HR business partners. I met my wife when she was an HR business partner at Toyota, and uh and now uh she manages HR for a small manufacturing company here in Columbus. But it's just I have the exposure to what HR is all about, what it what it takes to be an HR. And so thank you for all that you do.

SPEAKER_03 1:36

You're welcome. And thank you to your wife for being a part of the larger HR team.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Absolutely. So today, HR as leadership infrastructure is kind of how I'd like to sort of frame the episode. So um in my role now as a coach, HR is oftentimes my foot in the door with an organization to talk to them about leadership development and talent growth. And so I'm curious from your perspective, how you all operate with the companies that you support on the leadership development side.

SPEAKER_03 2:14

Yeah. So for us, it's a matter of meeting either with established customers or potential customers and getting an idea of what their current state is and what they're planning for their future state. Most of our customers are startups. They're just being funded or they're just starting out. And our goal when we first start working with our customers is to establish that foundation, the policies, the processes, the systems they're going to use to keep up to date and current on everything HR and payroll. From there, we work with them on understanding how this really helps feed and inform their leadership strategy.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

I think it's so important to have that established in the early days of a company, right? You the longer you wait to establish it, the harder it becomes to try and get it in place and make sure that it's working properly.

SPEAKER_03 3:17

Yeah, that's correct. If you if you leave it uh sort of off to the side in the beginning, what ends up happening is the business itself establishes its own culture, its own norms, its own processes. And those may not necessarily be an alignment or a reflection, alignment with or a reflection of what the business owner wanted when they first started this business.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

So how do you how do you make sure that that it doesn't get left to the side? Are there are there companies that come in and they kind of want to just make you all like a side project and and don't give you the respect that you deserve as truly like the HR representative for that new company?

SPEAKER_03 4:01

I can honestly say that uh that has not happened. We have not engaged with with customers who don't see that as important. Typically the customers who don't, and I don't, I can't say that I've come across any of our customers who feel this way, but those we speak to who don't see it as as important as finance and operations planning, um, they're usually not past that first sales call, that first tell us, you know, why you want to, what it is you're you're looking for. We certainly can do transactional work. Our goal is really to help them understand that the work, even at the fundamental level, really isn't transactional. It leads and builds to something much larger and deeper.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

So are your ideal clients going to be long-term relationships, or is it still like a finite period of time where you want them to kind of grow their own wings eventually?

SPEAKER_03 4:59

They do mostly end up being long-term relationships. Okay. That said, our goal is always to come in on a fractional basis, help get those foundations in place, work with them as they grow, and then find that pivotal point where they are now at a place where they really do need somebody in-house to handle a lot of this. Uh, the the reality is once businesses reach a certain employment level, it can't be done fractionally. So that's a success story to us if we are able to take you from inception to bringing your HR services, your payroll services in-house.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

Yeah, absolutely. So growing new companies, um, I think that that would probably um you're gonna get different measures of of all industries and things, but it's gonna be probably a little complex and there's gonna be some risk involved with what you all are building at the forefront uh of these startups. So what what kind of what kind of tension do you feel with these new startups when they're trying to learn the ropes of all things HR?

SPEAKER_03 6:05

The biggest tension we feel is really just being able to get time to sit down with those business owners and busy. Yes, they're busy. So we we can go through and we can get uh the first draft of a handbook done uh and send it over to them for input and feedback. Sometimes they can be really quick about that. Sometimes we may follow up for days, weeks, or even months to sit down and and be able to make sure that we finalize that and they're good with where it's at. Some of these businesses also have board of directors they work with. So some of these things have to go through approval processes and that can be that can take some time depending on what all's on the agenda and what the board of directors sees as the most important things to hit at each meeting.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

And in companies like that and relationships like that that you're building, do you all get a seat at the board table in in some way, in a fractional way, or how is that kind of arranged?

SPEAKER_03 7:01

That has not been the case thus far. We certainly can answer questions from the board. Uh, we do typically engage, although we're working with the business owner on a relationship basis, when it comes to attending certain meetings and stuff, if that's not included in our engagement, we do have to walk a very fine line of how we work in that space.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Very good. That explains it.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

So, Abigail, I want to take a few steps back and share with the audience a little bit of your own career path into HR and how that has shaped your perspective so far. So please tell us, take us down memory lane, if you will.

SPEAKER_03 7:40

Yeah. So I ended up in HR through happenstance. I worked in from the time I was 20, 21 years old, I worked in clinical research and I worked in clinical research until I was 30. So nine and a half or so years working in clinical research. The biggest thing I took from my or the skill I really built from my clinical research career that's very applicable here is that everything that I touched or did in clinical research had a standard operating procedure. And SOP we had to follow. That was mandatory because it's very highly regulated. Uh, that is the reason why when a small business was looking for somebody to come in and take over their accounting and their HR, I was recommended as somebody that they should talk to. I didn't have those traditional backgrounds, but what I did have was an ability to get to the root of a problem because I'd spent so much time helping develop and maintain and even evolve the standard operating procedures in the clinical research industry. Uh from there.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

Yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 9:01

Yeah. From there, uh, I found myself in a crash course of and a lot of it being learned through everyday experience of learning the accounting and the HR world. Wasn't in retrospect the best way to go into the career path I'm in today, but it is what happens to a lot of people who end up in HR.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Yeah. That's fascinating. So I think the the SOPs that you have such a history with and just such a respect for, I think that may be the biggest part, more than just the technical experience of writing them and evolving them, but just the respect for how important they are in an organization or in a department. Um so is do you think that's maybe one of the things that a lot of leaders misunderstand about HR's role is the the documentation?

SPEAKER_03 9:53

I think so. I uh from what I've heard, and I've heard a full spectrum of comments about what HR is and isn't, a lot of people who don't really know what it is believe it's a lot of paper pushing, it's hiring, it's firing, it's performance evaluations. It's really not. It's so much more than that. The respect I have for standard operating procedures, policies, regulations, aside from the fact that I'm a nerd who really likes reading and studying those things, is that these are the things that make it possible for us to hold people accountable in a respectful and caring way. Accountability is really hard to establish if clarity of expectations and processes isn't present.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Now you're speaking my language. That sounded like a focal point statement right there. We we hold clarity in such high regard for what we're trying to create for our clients, right? It it really all starts with clarity. And if you don't have it, then everything else is going to be kind of a waste because you don't know. You can't trust it. It's just something that's floating out there without a without an anchor. And so um thank you for bringing that up as a important part of the HR realm as well.

SPEAKER_03 11:11

Clarity is what builds trust. Uh, that is a staple of HR. Clarity builds trust. Uh, if that hasn't been your mantra and you're working in HR, it really should be. Clarity builds trust.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

The most common growing pains that you see across the organizations that you're supporting are are there are there trends? Has it changed over the years? Or what do you think is the kind of the biggest growing pain today?

SPEAKER_03 11:39

Uh yeah, so there really are trends. Uh unfortunately, at this stage, I'm still mostly engaging with new customers after the fact. So we go in and we do a lot of cleanup. Some of the recurring things we see are contractors who really fall under the label illegally of employee. So that's a misclassification that comes with possible penalties, interest, et cetera, if that's not cleaned up and an audit occurs. Uh payroll, people being hired and being given job descriptions and compensation bans based on gut feeling or the desire to get somebody in the door instead of it being done on market analysis. Uh, that is one of the things that unravels quickly when your staff starts to grow. All of a sudden, people realize that the pay bans don't make a whole lot of sense. So, and then you find yourself trying to navigate through correcting those things without necessarily eroding the trust that you've worked so hard to build.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

Right.

SPEAKER_03 12:57

And those are the two biggest things.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

Maintaining that internal equity with pay bans is just such a you know, we talk a lot about like, do we do we talk about our salaries or something we share? But you know, it's it's not something that really can be controlled. And so you have to go in with the understanding that they're probably going to talk about it, it's probably gonna come up. So we got to make sure there's some equity there.

SPEAKER_03 13:19

Yep, correct. Uh outside that, because COVID did such a great job at changing the the landscape of what businesses look like today, we see more remote businesses than we used to. The other thing that we see pretty consistently payroll compliance issues, mostly with state registration, uh, you know, withholding, unemployment, PFML, those requirements in each state, the thresholds there. And not that this is my area of expertise, but to give you an example of where HR touches another area of the business, sometimes just having an employee in a state makes you, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Uh the requirement becomes that now you're you're eligible and must report sales tax, even though, even though you may not be selling anything in that state, you now have the requirement of reporting zero sales tax because you hired an employee in that state. A lot of these things end up being sort of commingled. So HR isn't just a space where we focus and stay in our lane in a way that we have blinders on. We also have to be aware that in some spaces we have to inform other team members that I'm getting ready to register this state for these payroll taxes. And you know, tax professional, we need you to look to see if that impacts anything you do for this customer, or if the tax is already being handled in-house, letting the team member of the customer who's responsible for that know we're registering in these states. I'm passing the baton uh off to you because now it's your turn to see if this impacts you in any way. A lot of lot of long, thin tender tendricles come out of HR work that touch other spaces.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Yes, absolutely. You're gonna be kind of just mixing in with everything, mingling.

SPEAKER_03 15:24

Yep. There's a lot of mixing and mingling and and cross-collaboration.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

But I think also a testament to truly how um you know core and essential HR is to the operation. You you're going to touch all of those things because you have to, probably legally and um for compliance requirements. So um those are things that you know some smaller companies may just leave them untouched, but I think then we'll get into the situation like we touched on a little bit earlier. This we'll fix it later mindset, right? But that can get really expensive if you if you decide you're gonna wait to fix it later.

SPEAKER_03 16:06

Yeah. Usually people with the we'll fix it later mindset don't fix it until there's a real problem. And by the time there's a real problem, it's expensive to fix.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Have you had that uh example with any companies as far as with like setting up I-9s or anything like that, where you know you have to get that documentation in place to prevent like some really catastrophic things from happening for their employees?

SPEAKER_03 16:32

Yeah, it's not it's not uncommon, but I don't want to say it's the most common thing for us to come across where uh especially companies that maybe aren't initially US-based and don't understand US employment laws, we have to walk them through. Hey, now that you're hiring here, these are required forms. This is how they're filled out. These are the documents that have to be reviewed and checked. And in most cases, we very much encourage them to set up e verify to help them verify that somebody is here and is legally allowed to work in the United States. Yep. Just giving them that even that fundamental knowledge of these forms may not seem like a big deal, but if they're missing, if something's inaccurate, if you didn't catch it yourself and put a memo in place explaining what happened with this I-9, you're subject to fees and penalties if you are audited by immigration and they find these errors.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

That's not nice. That's that's ICE.

SPEAKER_03 17:39

Yes. Yeah. And it's it is um, you know, a lot of the business's opinions, especially smaller businesses that have been established for a very long period of time, you know, they're small and they stay small because they want to be small. Their mindset is I'm too small a fish for the U.S. government to care about auditing. The reality is the U.S. government has picked up on the fact that because they have been ignored for so long, there's a lot of things happening in these smaller businesses that really need to be reviewed and addressed. They're being audited more frequently.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Something to be on the lookout for sure. I want to switch gears a little bit and ask you some questions about feedback and performance evaluation. Can you all help leaders do that without drama in the organization? Can it can it become like a like a also like maybe an SOP or a just a system in place where it it works really well?

SPEAKER_03 18:46

Yeah. Uh it's usually a combination of creating the escalation policy or process. Uh you make it a pretty flow chart so that people can easily follow it. You create the policy and the process to give more details about what it is and why it's important. Uh, where the rubber really meets the road is really sitting down with these leaders who maybe for the first time are having to do something like this and helping them understand not just the importance of following that defined escalation path and following the policy and process in place, but also understanding that giving people feedback, even when it may not be pleasant feedback, is important to everybody's growth. That is an act of caring, not something we do because we want to hurt people. It's something we do because we believe in them and we feel like they can do better. So we will coach. We we will sit in reviews with these leaders and help them have conversations until they feel like they're good to do it on their own. Uh, we will also take on ownership of dismissals of employees if that is something that the company is not yet ready to handle solely on their own. Oh, really? Yeah. That being, um, we will be present, we will coach them ahead of the conversation, what to say, what not to say, and during the meeting, even sort of non-I don't want to say nonchalantly, but low-key find a way to stop them if you can tell that they're anxious and they're starting to ramble. So uh those of us who have been fired or laid off know how important the communication in those meetings is, how it's delivered. So the goal is to teach leaders how to deliver that information in a way that's candid and caring. And if they accept the feedback, helps them learn and grow.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

Yeah. Oh, that brings us to the performance improvement plan. And you had to implement a lot of those as far as the support structure that goes with them and and kind of help the managers treat those the same way as sort of an act of caring and a tool for growth, not a not a just a something that should be immediately um, you know, thumped down of.

SPEAKER_03 21:22

Yes. Uh in some spaces, we're still working on helping people understand that performance improvement plans or PIPs aren't designed or meant to be punitive in nature. They're there for a few reasons. One, to help the employee understand this is a recurring issue. We got to this point because escalation steps one and two didn't work. Now we feel like we need something more clear with measurables that we can hold you accountable to, but that you can also, you know, hold us accountable to because part of making sure you're successful is us reading. Sourcing you. So uh it it helps establish or bring that clarity that's needed to understand where they're falling short. It's a dialogue. It's not something that HR and managent put together and stick in front of a person and say, here's what you have to do. It really is collaborative in nature. It's here's what we're thinking, here's what we're noticing, here's what we're thinking, how do you feel about that? Do you agree with this? But the goal is to get to a place where everything in that plan, I don't even want to say document. Yes, it is a document, but it's a documentation of a plan that everybody in that room is going to be held accountable to. And everybody does need to be in agreement with what's there if that person is going to be successful. That said, that's also, you know, you have to be walk the fine line of knowing whether the person who's receiving this PIP is consciously or subconsciously not agreeing because they're afraid of what could happen if they're not successful.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

I love that we're calling it a plan and just with the acronym, but also the fact that it's it's more than just a document. And like you said, it's collaborative. I think Eisenhower said it best where he he dismissed plans, but said the planning is the really um part that you can't miss. It it all comes down to what's happening in that plan and in developing a PIP, hopefully, like you said, in a collaborative way. Um kind of all parties can agree that if we do this, then we'll be on the other side of it and all the better for it.

SPEAKER_03 23:49

Correct. And more often than not, and I know this is going to be hard for some listeners to believe, more often than not, if you do that in an in a way that everybody's in agreement with and it's clear to the employee that your goal is their success, that this is not just one more step to make sure that you can dismiss them without any issues, they engage and they improve more often than not.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

The good side of the story.

SPEAKER_03 24:18

Yes. There are still some people who don't succeed regardless, but that is okay because then we just help them find success somewhere else, whether it's a new role or whether it's a new organization.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

That's right. Always a growth opportunity if you if you have the right attitude. Correct. All right. In your own words, what what does cohesiveness really mean in workplace relationships, Abigail?

SPEAKER_03 24:55

So to me, and we can say workplace relationships, I really believe this is true for all relationships. Cohesiveness looks like wanting to have healthy conflict. Conflict is a healthy thing if we handle it in a healthy way. Not everybody should agree all of the time. If we do, we're probably hiring people who are in our tribe and not people who are necessarily best for moving us forward. We want different, the divide diversity of different perspectives. So healthy conflict is, you know, sitting down, putting things out there, talking with everybody impacted about what you're working on, where you're at with it, and hearing their input and wanting to understand it and incorporate it and continue moving forward. And it also means that when you hear input you don't agree with, that you state that you don't agree with it in a respectful way and that you keep working through that in a respectful way until what's there is what really is needed for everybody and supports everybody. That's not my way of saying work until everybody's happy. Sometimes some people just won't be happy. But work until you have agreement that what's there is going to be productive.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

I have to uh give this anecdote now. I've got an engineering leader at Toyota that was just notorious for always saying he wanted to hire like-minded people. And like I I get that to a certain degree. Yes, there's a certain attitude you want to have and you want to be somebody that that strives for greatness and all that, but like also we need all sorts of minds to be successful, and you need all sorts of characters and backgrounds, and so um I think especially true when you get in a large corporation and you have that that yes men culture where there's just there's not the pushback. And I love your comment about um you didn't say friction, but when you said an I thought friction, I wrote an article about the idea that you need a little friction for for things to actually happen and move, and it can be healthy in that way. And so it's just it's such an important part of it, and I think that goes just such a long way to build the best relationships, um, like you said, not just in a workplace, but just in general.

SPEAKER_03 27:29

Absolutely. Uh the reality is we don't learn or grow or develop our thought processes as human beings unless we are exposing ourselves to people who think and feel and value different things. Uh, the person I was 20 years ago is not the person I am today. That's the result of being open to learning about other people, what they think, why they think that, what they believe, why they believe that. It's really a beautiful thing to not see other people's values or thought processes or beliefs as a threat to your own. And uh, you know, friction, conflict, um that again is a healthy thing, especially if you're bringing people around who, again, I don't like to use the word like-minded. It's people who all are devoted to the mission, the vision.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

They're aligned, right? Yes.

SPEAKER_03 28:26

Yes. And they value the same things. That's why core values are so important in a company. Uh, when those things are very clear, you attract people who want to achieve the same things you want to achieve, even if they see different ways of doing that.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

And then I think there's there's a little bit too, where um it's the core values are not um something that are maybe put on the wall, put on a poster. Um like they kind of you have to be intentional with how much you you really kind of raise them up as like this is what we are working towards. This is this is what we are holding as the most important values. Make sure that you are um aware of that, and then also that you are hopefully um, you know, seeing some of your own values in those those values in a common way.

SPEAKER_03 29:22

Right. And I would go one step further. You can't just have them on the wall. They have to be a part of how you evaluate people, whether it's hiring, whether it's deciding to let them go. Our performance evaluation process, the very first part of our performance evaluation process is alignment to core values. Are you aligned? Are you not aligned? Are you sort of neutral in that space? Uh, we do this quarterly. We have quarterly conversations and an annual review. And that is something we all take very seriously. It's that and uh gets it, wants it capacity to do it. Those are the two core things that help us decide. First of all, does somebody align with our culture based on their core values fit? And secondly, do they get it? Do they want it? Do they have the capacity to do it? Because that helps us understand if we have the right person in the right seat.

unknown 30:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

So good. Are you all getting to help some of the startup companies actually develop the core values? Or is that something they typically are bringing to the table with the engagement?

SPEAKER_03 30:33

Uh that sort of, yes. Uh, what I have found myself doing, especially when I'm helping put together a handbook, is some of the companies have very clearly stated core values. I may have to help them define them a little further to make them more tangible. In some cases, I go out to their website and I review their website and I'll say these seem to be your core values. Would you agree with that based on what I'm seeing? Uh we have not yet been engaged to help define or develop them, though that would be something I would love to do at some point in time.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Yeah. I think as a as a coach, I am lucky enough to get to do that sometimes. And it is some of the most just kind of rewarding work when you get to see the finished. Sort of just here, here it is. We're holding it up now. This is this is the set of values. And um, you know, we're gonna march forward with that now.

SPEAKER_03 31:24

Yes. Uh yeah. And uh as we talked about previously when we first met each other, my knowledge at this point, this stage in my career about core values, the importance of core values comes from another focal point coach I met years ago.

SPEAKER_00 31:38

Yeah. Such a such a fun interaction that we had there. Um shout out to Tim for leaving a good impression of the focal point on you.

SPEAKER_03 31:47

Yes, he was uh Chris Halter, he was great.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

That's awesome. Thank you. Think about maybe when we get the conflict, it's not so good. Maybe it's left unresolved for a little bit too long and it spreads. What to do about that in that situation?

SPEAKER_03 32:05

What I've found in that situation is to just bring all of the actors who have, for lack of a better way to frame it, skin in that game, people who are impacted by it together and just get what we're feeling and why we're feeling that way out. Uh, here's where I'm at, here's why I'm there. Uh and it's once we get all of the the bad feelings out on the table, we can start assessing is is this something we can work through? Do you think we can get back to a place where we have trust? Do you feel like trust has been irrevocably eroded? Uh but the first thing is really to get people to say what has thus far been unspoken.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

Yeah. I think that's that's so true in my own experience, where it just becomes something that it prevents the relationship from even really existing, right? It's just there's there's so much tension and so much friction that um, you know, two leaders can barely be in the same room with one another. And um, you know, I think it had and that and your description of how to resolve that played out, then we might not be talking right now. But unfortunately it didn't. And so here we are.

SPEAKER_03 33:22

Right. And there are instances where they can resolve and at the same time they end up learning that they're ready for a new stage in their life. Uh part of the friction is really the fact that they're still trying to make themselves fit in a place that they're ready to move on from. Um, not for bad reasons, but just because they've developed and they've grown and their values have evolved over time.

SPEAKER_02 33:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:51

Those are success stories too, knowing knowing when it's time to move on to something else, uh, despite the fact that you may still love the organization and the people you work with, knowing that it's time to start a new chapter.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

Yeah. It's so good. I feel like I'm in a therapy session right now. Thank you, Abigail.

SPEAKER_03 34:08

You're welcome. I hear that a lot. I hear people tell me maybe I should have been a therapist. Uh, this is the result of going through my own several decades of therapy.

SPEAKER_02 34:18

There you go.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

So very good. If you wouldn't to have a section in a handbook about the ground rules for open, honest conversations that are rooted in kindness, what what would be a part of that section?

SPEAKER_03 34:35

So, first it's understanding that we own and are responsible for our own emotions, our own thoughts, our own feelings. We are responsible for what we do, say, think, and feel. So our actions, we're responsible for that. What we're thinking, we're responsible for that. What we're feeling, we're responsible for that. And uh owning that at the start. So not speaking in an accusatory fashion, you did this, you made me feel this way, this I reacted this way because of you. It's acknowledging all those things that came in response to what happened with the other person or people in the situation. We chose to do that. And we have to own that. And we have to own if that was healthy or unhealthy and kind of go from there. Um also understanding we can't really control how other people give us feedback. All we can do is control how we respond to it, how we take it in, how we process it, how we respond to it. Yes, we can give people feedback. Hey, in the future, providing me feedback in a manner such as this would be a lot more productive, or it would be easier for me to take it in if it was done this way. At the end of the day, though, it's data. Um yeah, somebody may be telling us something to hurt our feelings intentionally, but at the end of the day, we decide if we're gonna let them do that. Uh, that said, in very few situations have I seen somebody providing feedback where their intent is actually to be a jerk. Uh typically it's somebody trying to be helpful and either having anxiety around providing the feedback so it comes off as very direct, or it's it's somebody who they're really trying to be helpful and they don't see what they're delivering as a personal attack. I'm just trying to help you. And and uh it's it's important for us individually to learn how to take the feedback regardless of how it's given to us. And then also sorting out uh not letting ourselves get wrapped up in what other people think about us. It's what am I here to do? We understand our intention. Now we're hearing our impact. Let's figure out how to realign ourselves in a way that our impact and our intention mirror each other. Yeah. So it's much easier said than done, but acknowledging that the only person who controls what we do, say, think, or feel and how we respond to things and how we process things is ourselves. And if we don't currently have the emotional intelligence or the emotional maturity to do that in a productive way, seeking a mentor or a coach or a therapist who can help us get there.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

So good. That's a lot for that section of the the handbook, but I think I think it's all such such valuable information. So I think it's worth making it a little bigger. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:50

It is. It really is. Uh, and making sure that it is framed and and stated in a way that is accessible to all people. What I just described may not make a whole lot of sense to some employees. And that means that I've missed the mark in making it more tangible to them.

SPEAKER_00 38:11

I want to talk for a little bit about Growth Lab's model. It's a little bit unique, I think, with the tiered fractional HR support. So can you talk a little bit about how it works at different company stages but different customers?

SPEAKER_03 38:25

Yeah. So a lot of our customers who are just starting out, maybe they just got funding, maybe they just established the business, whatever the case may be, we're probably going to work with them on more of a project basis. We're going to help them get that firsthand book established. We may do an annual cadence where we help keep that up to date. Um, once they start hiring employees, we will help them get payroll set up. We will make sure that their payroll is compliant. We're even willing to help them process payroll if that's what makes the most sense for their business. And also when they're ready to hire, helping them with job descriptions and compensation benchmarking and making sure right from the onset that everything is grounded in fact and not gut, uh, because that's what tends to get people in trouble. Once they start hiring employees, and it's usually somewhere around the five employee mark, they they need something more ongoing. So once that payroll is established, they're probably going to engage with us to monitor their payroll tax accounts. Just because payroll is running smoothly doesn't mean that everything's going to the states in a fashion that the state agrees with. Every once in a while you'll have uh state notices that go out for unemployment rates, come a few weeks after they've started. So there may be a reconciliation that happens. Most payroll companies do reconciliations every quarter to make sure they pull additional funds needed to bring things to current. You usually just see that happen in Q1 of the year. But the cadence becomes more established. We may go from annual to quarterly with those compliance things, then from quarterly to monthly. It's usually around the 10 employee mark that we find ourselves helping more with the training and the coaching and helping them navigate the more difficult conversations. Newer companies, when they're starting to hire, and this is true honestly, really, whether you're newer or not, sometimes we just make poor hiring decisions. We end up identifying we needed to ask better questions or there's something else we should have looked more deeply at. But helping them navigate those spaces where we're not only coaching them through how to have those difficult conversations, but also learning what we miss during the hiring process or the onboarding process and evolving from there. It's just once you start hiring people, you go from the mode of foundation building to continuous improvement. So and yeah, that once once they hit a certain size, uh, and it's a little bit different for each company depending on the industry, but we start to feel the pain point that we can't keep up with the demands as a fractional provider. And we start having the conversation with the customer about, hey, this is this is now where you're at. And you either need to hire somebody who's part-time in the office to help with certain employee-facing items, or you really should bring somebody in full-time based on the complexity and what we see historically from assisting you, serving you.

SPEAKER_00 41:57

They graduate, don't they?

SPEAKER_03 41:59

They do. That's that's the success story. That's what we're working toward. If you start with us from inception, our goal is to help you grow your company in a healthy way so that at some point you don't need us. Now, again, we have customers who don't really have the gold growing beyond a certain point. And that's perfectly fine. Uh a lot of companies work better as small companies. Uh, but for those companies who are really wanting to go far, it's helping them graduate from us. That is a it's turnover, but it's healthy turnover.

SPEAKER_00 42:34

That's right. That's right. As far as working with legal counsel, I would think that the startup companies you're most working with probably don't have their own in-house legal counsel. Maybe they have an attorney that they partner with, but how do you all have your own in internal legal counsel, or are you also finding partners to help kind of bridge that gap when there are legal questions?

SPEAKER_03 42:57

So we have a firm we work with that we are very fond of, and we will recommend that firm to our customers when they don't have established legal counsel. Uh, very few of our customers have in-house legal counsel. Uh, if they do, I work very closely with legal counsel on certain things to make sure we are remaining legal and compliant. I sometimes see those things as two different things. I know I know some people are like compliance and legal, those are the same things. No, sometimes we can be be compliant in a sense, but in certain states we could not be legal. Uh so working with them is very important. Uh, if we identify that, for example, if we write a handbook, we will say this is compliant from an HR perspective. You should also have your general counsel or your the legal firm you work with review this and make sure that there's not anything in here that they question or think is a tad bit too risky to have in here. Uh, that said, my goal is always to write. Handbook in the company's branded voice. So sometimes lawyers read through that and it's hard for them because they want it to the way to write it with the least amount of risk is to keep all that legalese in there. It just also makes it very hard for employees to read it and understand what it is they're actually expected to do and required to do and what they're entitled to. So there is a lot of back and forth there usually where it's they put in their perspective and how it should be written from a legal perspective. And I have to push back a bit and say, okay, but that doesn't fit with the rest of the voice of this document.

SPEAKER_00 44:40

We're losing the human voice. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 44:42

Exactly. So let's talk about how we can frame this in a way that is both accessible to the everyday employee, but also legally sound.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

So maybe it's inside the handbook, maybe it's not. But Abigail, I was going to ask you one habit that you think improves the culture the quickest?

SPEAKER_03 45:02

I think one habit that improves culture the quickest is uh making sure that you are keeping a finger on the pulse of what's going on in your business. As you get larger, that does not look like having one-on-ones with every employee. Uh it will start there, I think. HR just checking in, how are things going, especially during their first 30, 60, 90 days? Uh you can move that out to monthly or quarterly based on their role and responsibilities in the business. Um, then eventually it becomes you're not meeting with everybody, but you're meeting with the managers and the supervisors, the leaders in the company who are responsible for this these people and making sure that they're keeping a pulse on what's going on. There end up being more meetings that way. You also find that the culture stays much more healthy that way.

SPEAKER_00 45:58

Regular meetings, I think. Again, so many people look at meetings as a negative, but you're exactly right when they're the one-on-one type and you're you're able to have conversations, get to know each other and get an idea of like what you're actually going through on a day-to-day basis. That that was for me some of the most um you know impactful work that I did at Twitter with with the 101s.

SPEAKER_03 46:18

Yeah, and they don't have to be long. For some people, they can be as short as 15 minutes, and you'll know exactly where things are and how they're going. Uh, if you find yourself with some people spending an hour or longer each time you meet, there may be something more to look at there. But these uh these meetings uh are are really just meant to ask some very specific questions. You can tell if somebody's being forthcoming with you or not. If they're not, you can press in a bit more. Uh at the end of the day, though, you can't make them talk. So uh at least you're you're doing what you're setting the example that shows that you care and you want to help, and most people gravitate toward that.

SPEAKER_00 47:04

Do you have any advice for leaders that want to keep pushing HR problems to the next quarter?

SPEAKER_03 47:12

Don't do that. Don't do that. Uh yeah. If you find yourself wanting to continue to push those things, I think it's important to sit down with your HR leader and say, hey, I keep kicking the can on this. I don't, it, you know, it may not, you may not understand why you want to keep kicking in the can on it. Uh for most people, it's avoiding that difficult conversation or avoiding doing something that's just very uncomfortable. Uh, for those of you who think HR exists to ensure your comfort, we don't. We actually exist to push you to grow. And discomfort naturally comes with that. So be open and honest with yourself when you're pushing things off. Don't do that. Instead, ask for help identifying what it is that causes you to want to kick that can down the road so that you can go ahead and get in front of that thing and start changing that behavior.

SPEAKER_00 48:11

So good. Abigail, the title question. We've come to the final question. Making more blank is most important to you at this point in your life and career.

SPEAKER_03 48:25

Uh for me, it really is about clarity and cohesiveness. Like that's uh more more clarity helps build cohesiveness. Cohesiveness is what helps us achieve our goals uh individually and as teams and as businesses. So clarity and cohesiveness continue to be what I want more of. Uh, and they're gonna continue to be, I think, for the duration of this stage of my career.

SPEAKER_00 48:54

And you'll be all the better for it. Those are great things to have.

SPEAKER_03 48:57

Ah, they are.

SPEAKER_00 48:58

Abigail, where can people find out more about you and about Growth Lab?

SPEAKER_03 49:03

All right. So, Growth Lab, you can learn more about the company at www.growthlabfinancial.com. And you can find me on LinkedIn, Abigail Church PHR.

SPEAKER_00 49:15

Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. It's been a great, great episode having you here, and I look forward to talking to you again soon.

SPEAKER_03 49:22

Okay, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 49:24

Thanks for listening to Making More. If today's conversation sparks something in you, let's connect. You can find me on LinkedIn and threads at CoachFisher FPT or by visiting Billyfisher.focalpointcoaching.com to learn more about how I help leaders create clarity, build momentum, and make more of what matters. This recording is copyrighted by Engineer Consulting Incorporated. Until next time, take care.