EP 133: HR Systems & Tech - The Audit, The Stack, The SOPs | HR Systems Series Finale

🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts · Spotify · Buzzsprout

📺 Watch on YouTube

📖 Read the full transcript below

Episode Summary

The system can’t fix a process you never built. In every HR audit Kerri does, one of the first questions is: tell me about your HR payroll software. And if there’s a pause, the follow-up is gentler — or if you don’t have one, that’s fine. How do you pay payroll? Because whether you have one employee or a hundred, you have to pay them somehow. That makes HR tech your problem no matter how small you are. What she finds, over and over, is the same picture: payroll in one tool, time tracking in another, benefits somewhere else, employee files in an unlocked cabinet in somebody’s office. Three to six systems that don’t talk to each other. Nobody owning the whole thing. And a contract quietly billing for modules that were never turned on — because implementation is like a gym membership, and the gym doesn’t call when you stop showing up.

This is the finale of the HR systems series — cradle-to-grave HR, from employer responsibilities all the way through to strategy. In it, Kerri covers the five core functions your HR payroll system should actually cover, how to audit the tech you already own before you buy anything new, what you genuinely need at each stage of growth, how to make your benefits broker bring enrollment technology to the table instead of buying it yourself, what to understand about PEOs before you sign, and the five standard operating procedures every small business needs documented — with or without software. Because your technology is only as good as the process behind it. The tool is not the system. The process is the system.

In This Episode

• The five core functions an HR payroll system should actually cover — payroll processing, employee records, time and attendance, benefits administration, and HR workflows

• Why most small businesses have this spread across three to six tools, and what it’s costing them in errors, re-keying, and lost data

• The four audit questions to ask about every tool you currently pay for — before you shop for a new one

• Why implementation stalls, and why the software company will never chase you down to finish it

• What you actually need at each stage: under 10 employees, 10–30, and 30–100+

• Why service and support — not features — should decide which HRIS you buy

• How to get your benefits broker (or the carrier) to pay for enrollment software instead of buying it yourself

• What co-employment really means before you sign with a PEO

• The five SOPs every small business needs documented, and why key person risk on payroll is the one to fix first

Chapter Timestamps

0:00 The first question I ask in every HR audit

2:00 The finale — 14 episodes of cradle-to-grave HR

3:20 The coursework, the book, and the free HR audit

7:04 Right tool, right stage — why HR tech fails

7:40 Audit what you already have before you buy anything

8:15 The 5 core functions of an HR payroll system

13:30 What lives outside the core system

14:50 Why most small businesses run 3–6 disconnected tools

16:00 The contract audit — modules you’re paying for and not using

17:00 Implementation is like a gym membership

19:30 Stage 1 — under 10 employees

23:00 Stage 2 — 10 to 30 employees

27:30 Benefits enrollment — make your broker bring it to the table

29:30 Stage 3 — 30 to 100+ employees and the service problem

32:40 A quick word on PEOs

34:50 SOPs — the infrastructure behind the infrastructure

37:30 The 5 SOPs every small business needs

41:45 Key person risk

42:30 Where to go from here

46:20 Your business is worth the work

Resources Mentioned

The HR Easy Button (book): find it on Amazon

HR Foundations (course, $49): saltandlightadvisors.com/hrfoundations

HR Operating System (course, $69): saltandlightadvisors.com/hroperatingsystem

Strategic HR coursework — live August 2026: saltandlightadvisors.com/resources

Free Mini HR Audit: saltandlightadvisors.com/hraudit — 10 minutes, gives you a score, and it’s the only place on the internet you can book directly onto Kerri’s calendar

Companion blog post: The HR Tech Audit — What You Actually Need at Every Stage of Growth: saltandlightadvisors.com/blog

Past episode — Is a PEO the Right Choice for Your Business?: https://youtu.be/7rArDKXHF98

Gusto (partner discount): https://gusto.com/r/kerri2784750b

Rippling — Kerri is a Rippling partner. There’s no public link; reach out and she’ll connect you: saltandlightadvisors.com/contact

Episodes in the HR Systems Series

EP 121: The 13 HR Systems Every Small Business Needs — Start Here

EP 122: How to Build a Small Business Hiring Process

EP 123: Onboarding — The 30/60/90 Plan That Actually Works

EP 124: The Employee Handbook

EP 125: Salary Doesn’t Motivate — Compensation

EP 126: How to Handle Employee Discipline

EP 127: The 5 Root Causes of Underperformance

EP 128: Small Business Benefits

EP 129: The HR Metrics Every Small Business Needs

EP 130: Workforce Planning for Small Business

EP 131: Leadership Development

EP 132: Culture & Engagement

EP 133: HR Systems & Tech (you’re here — series finale)

Your Action Item

This week, pull the contract for every people-related tool you pay for and answer four questions per tool: What does it do? What does it cost? Who’s actually using it? Are we using it for what we bought it for? Don’t shop for anything new until you’ve done that. Then pick the single scariest gap on the list — and if that gap is “only one person knows how to run payroll,” fix it this month. Document the process, train a second person, and stop being one resignation away from a crisis.

GET THE MONDAY EMAIL

If this episode resonated, you’ll like the Monday morning email. Every Monday at 5:28am, Kerri sends one practical idea for leaders who want to do this work better — including the conversations behind episodes like this one.

1,000+ leaders. 50%+ open rate. https://saltandlight.myflodesk.com/saltandlightadvisors

Full Transcript

The first question I ask in every HR audit

In every single HR audit I do with a client, one of the first questions I ask is, tell me about your HR payroll software. And if there’s a pause, I say — or if you don’t have one, that’s fine. How do you pay payroll?

And that is what we are getting into today. We’re talking tech, infrastructure, and systems. This is a good one. And if you are a micro-employer, this is for you too. This is for businesses of all sizes. I know so many times we’re focused on the small to mid-sized businesses, but everybody — if you have one employee, you need to pay them somehow, right?

I’ve actually got a friend who owns a restaurant that is still paying her employees by paper checks. She is writing paper checks. It’s 2026 when I’m recording this. If you’re still writing paper checks, no shame, but let’s save some time in your life and some sanity, and also just get you up to the times. We’ve got to make this electronic, folks.

So we’re going to get into it today, and I’ll break it down between employer sizes, because there are some variants. We’re going to talk about what systems I recommend. We’re going to go through how to do an audit on what you actually have. We’re going to talk about what I mean by comprehensive systems. We’re going to talk about SOPs — standard operating procedures — and workflows, and what you need at each stage. We’re going to get into it today. So stay tuned if you are ready for some HR tech talk.

The finale

Welcome back to another episode of Don’t Waste the Chaos. I’m your host, Kerri Roberts, and you’re joining me for the finale of the HR foundations series I’ve been laying out.

I said it was going to be 13 episodes. This is actually episode 14, if you’re counting. And I know you’re not — nobody’s paying attention to that, so it doesn’t matter. But I decided to do 14 episodes on this HR foundation, and this is the 14th.

Before I say anything else: if you have heard more than one of these episodes and you are not subscribed to my channel, go subscribe right now — YouTube, Spotify, Apple, wherever you’re catching this episode. I would love it so much. And leave me a review. Let me know how this has been going, if it’s been helpful.

We have run the gamut of what I call cradle-to-grave HR — whether that’s appropriate or not, that’s what I call it. We’ve gone through your responsibilities as an employer. We’ve gone through hiring. We’ve gone through onboarding, HR law, the handbook. That was all the foundational pieces.

Then we got into the operating pieces — leave management, performance management, compensation, and discipline. That was the operations bucket.

Then we moved into strategy, which is what we’re in right now. We’ve hopped into benefits and metrics, workforce planning, leadership, culture, and now HR systems and tech. That is the strategic HR piece.

The coursework, the book, and the free HR audit

And if you haven’t been tracking, I’ve put coursework together on all of these. Each of these episodes is somewhere between 20 and 40 minutes. I’ve got coursework where I teach on the specific topic — a deep dive, about an hour — and I also give you three to four downloadable tools and resources per topic.

So when I said HR Foundations, those first four topics we went through — employer responsibility, hiring, onboarding, and then HR law and handbook — that’s four topics. I call them modules inside of one course. Each one of those has three to four downloadable tools, resources, templates, scripts — things that you can apply today in your business. You’re going to want to pick that up.

And I’ve made this super affordable because I want everyone to have HR foundations in their business regardless of their budget. That HR Foundations course, only 49 bucks. The HR Operating System course, only 69 bucks. And the strategic HR coursework will be up on the website in August — I’m recording this in July of 2026, so August of 2026 that will be live, because I’m adding this content into it.

All of the coursework is at saltandlightadvisors.com/resources. That’s also where you can find information about my book — or you can get my book on Amazon, just type in The HR Easy Button and it’ll take you to the first one that’s already been published. I’ve got a three-part series. This one’s the foundations one, so it lines up with the foundations coursework. The operating system one is in editing right now, so that should go live later this year in 2026. And then the strategy-focused one — hopefully I get it edited and published in 2027, and I’m excited about that.

All of this was created — the HR in a Box system, which is the three different pieces of coursework, the 14 pieces of content, the books, the series on my podcast — all to help small to mid-sized business owners who don’t have an HR foundation. I talk to people every day who don’t know what HR actually is. And everything I just rattled off — all the content and the coursework — that’s HR. It is how you hire, how you onboard, how you pay, how you manage leave, what the laws are, what the policy is, how you manage performance, disciplinary action, what your culture looks like, training and development, what tech you use. This is HR. This is what HR looks like.

So if you want to figure out what your foundation is looking like — whether it needs a little attention, maybe you’re in a risky spot, or you’re in a solid place — you can get a free HR audit at saltandlightadvisors.com/hraudit. This is my mini audit, it’s free up on my website, it’ll take you about 10 minutes to complete, and then it’ll spit you out a score to let you know exactly where you’re sitting, in my opinion, when it comes to your human resources foundation.

And at the end of that, if you want to reach out and schedule a 30-minute meeting with me, it’s the only place on the internet where you can click on a button and get onto my calendar. I guard my calendar with my life. That is the only spot. If you do my HR audit and you can see that there’s something that needs to be done, you can click a button and literally get placed onto my calendar. Do not abuse that, if you are a crazy person listening to this, okay? But if you want some HR help, I’m excited to meet with you.

Just had one of those calls a couple of days ago, and I felt so grateful. She said, I read your weekly email and it was talking about managers not applying policies consistently, and that’s what I want to talk to you about. And I was like — I love that you reached out. So use that: saltandlightadvisors.com/hraudit.

Right tool, right stage — why HR tech fails

So let’s get into this today. Let’s start talking some tech. I want to talk about the right tools at the right stage of your business.

Because if we have the wrong tools, then we’re just going to be frustrated, we’re not going to utilize them, and they’re not going to be worth what we pay for them. If we have a tool but we’re in the wrong stage of the business — it’s premature, or it’s too small for us — or we have the tools but we aren’t actually utilizing them, there are a number of ways that the wheels fall off when it comes to our HR tech and our HR systems.

Audit what you already have before you buy anything

So the first thing that I want to do is an audit on your current system. Before you buy anything new.

If you have multiple systems going on right now, I can tell you personally, I’m going to recommend that you streamline. Think about how many things you’re logging into. You don’t want to do that to your employees. We don’t want to add another system and then expect them to use it. It’s essentially like we’ve given them a job, and we’re paying them, and then we’ve made being an employee here another part-time job on top of the regular tasks they have to do.

Our goal in human resources and operations is to make things as easy as possible for an employee to work with us and for us. That’s the goal. And if you didn’t know that was the goal — well, you are welcome for that little bit of information. But we don’t want to make it hard to work here. We don’t want to make it hard to work here.

We want to look at what you’re actually using, and what you’re not.

The 5 core functions of an HR payroll system

There are five core functions — it goes beyond this, but there are five core functions that an HR payroll system should actually cover that’s going to be helpful to you if you are not a super large business.

First and foremost — and I am not a payroll or accounting person — the very first thing we want to take care of is payroll processing. Period. None of these systems really work at all if they don’t process your payroll accurately and effectively. Part of the reason it might not be accurate is because you didn’t set it up correctly, or the system didn’t set it up correctly, or whatever. So that could be a problem. But payroll has got to be accurate. It’s got to be timely. It’s got to be trustworthy. If we’re not doing that correctly, then our employees are losing trust with us, and then they’re not going to show up their very best to do their job. So payroll processing needs to be accurate, it needs to be on time, and it needs to be compliant with state and federal laws. That’s number one.

The second thing is that it serves as an employee record. So many of you listening — and I know this to be a fact, because so many of my clients have employee records all over the ding-dang place, and not locked. This thing is in this office, and this thing is over here. Don’t worry, nobody’s ever going to look. Okay — there are laws around this. There are actual laws around records retention when it comes to HR documentation. And if you’re an employee listening to this, don’t use it against your employer, because you could probably get them in some major trouble. I’m just saying this needs to be locked down.

Employee records: a secure storage of your personnel files, your I-9 (which verifies that they’re legal to work in the United States), their tax documents, their performance documents. And then if you have employee benefits, including medical, those are also employee records — but stored separately, because we don’t keep medical documentation in with the employee file. Inside of the employee file there are a number of other things we should have: of course their direct deposit information, their emergency contact information. Employee records is the number two core function I think an HR payroll software should serve.

The third — time and attendance. This one’s so important, and it feeds right into your payroll. Maybe it should have been tied for number one. Tracking hours, tracking overtime. And then this is the one that everyone skips out on, and I don’t know why. If you’re a small to mid-sized business, get this in your system: PTO balances. Your paid time off, your vacation bank, your sick bank, whatever you’ve got — that should be tracked in your HR payroll system. And if it’s not, and you’re doing this manually, goodness sakes alive, stop doing that.

There are a number of reasons why — go back to my leave management episode if you want to get into it. It’s for accountability, it’s for utilization, it’s for if they leave: are we paying them out or not, and is the time we’re paying them out accurate? How do we know, if it’s in Stephanie’s spreadsheet that she only updates on the third Thursday of — no. It’s not accurate. You need it in your HR payroll system.

Fourth is benefits administration. The initial enrollment when they get hired, and then during open enrollment — any changes, and then carrier connections. You have to be a certain size employer to have carrier connections, API feeds with carriers. So sometimes it goes directly to your broker, sometimes you just have to download it from there. But benefits enrollment is huge. I’ll talk to you a little bit more later in the episode about some things you should be doing with your benefits broker to maximize that relationship. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t always have to be in your HR payroll system. So don’t buy the module until you hear what I’m going to say toward the end.

And then the fifth thing is HR workflows. When I’m saying HR workflows, I’m talking about applicant tracking — your recruitment workflow. Your onboarding workflow when they come on board. Your offboarding workflow when they leave. Document routing, meaning performance reviews — where they go, when and where. Or leave — where that goes, who has the approval, all of that approval process. All those HR workflows should be set up and working in your HR payroll system as well.

That’s skimming the surface, but those are the typical modules. You can get way deeper — reward and recognition, performance management, all of these things. But those are the baseline things I want your system to be doing: payroll processing, time and attendance, employee records, benefits administration (maybe, if you need it), and then your HR workflows. That is an HR payroll system.

You might have that in five different systems right now. I’d encourage you to streamline. But that’s what the core functions of HR tech should cover.

What lives outside the core system

Now, outside of that: I like to see e-signatures somewhere. Maybe it’s in your HR payroll system, maybe you’re using DocuSign, maybe you’re using something else — but e-signatures should be captured somewhere.

Communication and culture — that should be somewhere. How are you communicating? Are you using Teams or Slack? Are you in email culture? Do you post on your intranet? Are you using your HR payroll technology for that?

We need to talk about scheduling. If you’ve got shift workers — let’s say you have a restaurant and you’re listening to this, or a coffee shop, or a distribution location, whatever it is — sometimes there’s separate shift software. Depending on if you’re a construction company or whatever that is. Restaurants use Toast. So think about how that integrates with your HR payroll technology. Don’t buy an HR payroll technology that does not integrate with your shift technology, because then you’re going to have manual entry. We want these to speak together if at all possible.

And then let’s think about the way this interacts with applicant tracking. Are you using Indeed? LinkedIn? How does that talk to your HR payroll software? Does it talk? Can it talk? Is there an API? What does that look like?

All of these things come into play. I want to know it all. I want to understand it all.

Why most small businesses run 3–6 disconnected tools

Most small businesses have this spread across three to six tools. That’s the problem. The data’s not talking to each other. We’ve got manual re-keying. There are a lot of errors that I see going on. Nobody owns the whole system. Somebody might own this piece, or this piece, or this piece — but really, people are just using it, and nobody’s really owning it, being the super user of it. So things are falling through the cracks. We’re not really getting what we pay for. There’s no single source of truth for employee data. It’s all over the place.

That is a problem. And it’s a problem that’s solvable.

I’m actually getting ready to do an HR audit with a pest control company here in a couple of weeks, and I’m so excited to get in — because in our very first intake call, I was just asking some rudimentary questions, and he was like, yeah, we use this for this, and this for this, and this for this. And I just wanted to say: give it all to me. We’re going to put it all together. This is going to be a pain in the butt for you with 25 employees.

The contract audit — modules you’re paying for and not using

So that’s what we’re getting into. The audit question for every tool you’re currently using — even if you’re using three to six tools, whatever it looks like:

What does the tool do? What does the tool cost? Who is currently utilizing it? And are you actually using it for what you bought it for? Does it have other things in it that you are paying for that you aren’t using?

Do an audit. Pull out that contract and do an audit. What are we paying for again? How often are you paying? Because you know they’re going to increase your prices every six to twelve months — for stuff you’re not even using.

And for your HR payroll platform specifically: what modules are you paying for? Which ones are active? Which ones are sitting dormant?

I have seen clients — when I get in and look at their HR payroll system, I’m like, first of all, you’re paying for this, this, this, this, and this, and we didn’t even get it set up. And they get frustrated. They’re frustrated with their tech company. I am too. It’s a racket. I’ve got opinions all day long on these tech companies and their lack of service and support, by and large. There are some that do it better than others, and I’ll tell you who I think that is.

Implementation is like a gym membership

But usually they’re mad, and I’ll say — here’s what I bet happened. They assigned somebody to you with implementation and they said, hey, do you have performance reviews you want us to load in? And you said, no, but I’ll get them to you.

They’re not going to hound you. It’s kind of like the gym. The gym sells you a membership, and then if you don’t show up the next month, the gym’s not like, we missed you. It’s not like Sunday school when I was growing up, when you missed Sunday school and they’d send you that postcard that said S-N-D-A-Y — there’s one thing missing, and that’s you. Did you ever get those? I grew up Southern Baptist. If I missed a day, I was getting that postcard at home.

It’s not like church. It’s like the gym. They don’t care if you use it. They just care if you pay your bill.

And so you need to be the one auditing it. Get on top of it during that implementation.

What I end up doing with clients over and over and over again is serving as the intermediary during your implementation. Now, here’s what I know: you are not going to call me and say, I want to pay you consulting fees so you can help me implement this technology. You’re just not going to do that, because you’re going to assume the technology company should have people there who should implement it with and for you. And I would say — I agree with you. I fully agree with you. That should be taken care of.

But here’s what happens. Do you have these certain things set up in your handbook? No, we don’t. Okay, well, you need to make some decisions on these things — let’s say bereavement leave — and then we can set up the different leave categories for you. Okay, yes, we will do that. And you forget. And then you just keep moving forward.

Let’s get your benefits set up in here. Okay, yeah, I just need to call my broker, because I don’t know a hundred percent of all what we have. Okay, well, let us know. And you forget to call your broker. And then they don’t get right back to you. And then you forget to follow up.

And so that’s the problem. And then you’ve paid for this for six months, a year, five years. And then I come along and say, what modules do you have? And you say, I don’t know, we only have payroll and time and attendance. And I ask you to send me your bill — because I always ask for that, because I’ve got to be honest, I just don’t believe you. And then I get your bill, I get your contract, I see what you’re actually paying for, and then I say, hey, you’re actually paying for this.

Or there are sometimes where you are only paying for the bare minimum, and I let you know it might be time to add these additional modules — but let’s set them up correctly together so you’ll actually use them.

I had a client, we set up the ability to track PTO, and then they’re only doing it for hourly workers. Come on now. Let’s do it for everybody. Salary needs to be in there too. Let’s freaking go.

So you need to audit what you currently have.

Stage 1 — under 10 employees

So let’s talk about what you actually need at each stage of the game of your organization.

If you are in what I would call stage one — you’ve got under 10 employees. This is going to be piecemeal. I know it is, and that’s totally fine. It is for my business too. I’m small, I’m under 10. So I’ve got a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

Here’s what it looks like for me. I’ve got QuickBooks, and that’s where I’m paying employees and contractors. And then I keep everything else inside of Microsoft Outlook — so I’ve got Teams, therefore OneDrive, so I keep all of my documents inside of that. Time is tracked inside of QuickBooks Online. I get my employees set up, and it’s rudimentary, but they do their paperwork onboarding through QuickBooks Online.

I have so many clients who have QuickBooks Online and they’re not having their employees fill out their tax paperwork on there. Goodness sakes, have them do it there. You can do I-9s right inside of QuickBooks Online as well. And then it’ll do state and federal reporting for you in a number of different ways. So use the tool that you have. So many times you’ve got tools that could make this easier for you.

I’ve got a client that has 60-some employees, and they still are using QuickBooks Online for payroll, and they’re doing tax paperwork manually and I-9s manually. First of all, QuickBooks Online ain’t it for an employer group of that size. And second of all — use what you’ve got, at least.

Some other options, if you’re not using QuickBooks Online for your accounting software and you haven’t tacked on payroll: by the way, I’m not saying it’s a great payroll company. It’s not. It’s an accounting system. But if you’ve got it as your accounting system, it’s an easy way to add payroll to it.

Gusto is solid. I’ve got a discount code for you if you want to use Gusto — I will try to put a link in the show notes so you can get some money off. Gusto is affordable. There are a number of different HR payroll softwares now that charge you per employee, per month, at much lower fees, and they bundle. So Gusto is a decent option there.

For your records, if you’ve got under 10 employees, keep it in Google Drive — just make sure it’s secure — or keep it in OneDrive like what I’ve got. But have it in a place where it’s cloud-based. Don’t have it on your desktop. If your computer dies, that’s where all your stuff is at. So make sure it’s on the cloud, make sure it’s password protected and safe, and make sure that if you’ve got it inside of an organizational setup, only the correct people have access to it, because it’s sensitive data.

Time tracking — I would use QuickBooks Online or Gusto if you’ve got those systems. Or of course there’s Homebase, there’s ClockShark for field teams. There’s Toast, like I mentioned. There’s Buildertrend. There are a ton of them out there, and depending on the industry you’re in, everybody wants to sell you a special one. Sometimes that makes sense, sometimes it doesn’t.

And then when it comes to employee benefits — if you have benefits and you’ve got under 10 employees, first of all, kudos. And I want to look at that to make sure you’re not paying out the nose and we’re doing some unique things. You’re probably doing electronic enrollments through Adobe PDFs. Try not to have people do it on paper. Ask your broker if there’s something you can do to make it more streamlined and electronic, because it shouldn’t be totally archaic. And some of these systems, like Gusto for example, you can do benefits enrollment right there inside of that. QuickBooks Online has some options.

So make sure you’re looking at what you’ve got. Make it as simple as possible. And if it’s a little bit more of a cost and you’re thinking, I don’t want to pay that because I only hire people once a month — I’m telling you, for those processes that you don’t repeat very often, sometimes paying for it helps, because it makes sure you get it done. It gives you that checklist item. Hi, this is outstanding. It’s pinging your employee: this is outstanding. So keep that in mind. It might be worth it.

Stage 2 — 10 to 30 employees

So let’s look at stage two. This would be like 10 to 30 employees. Now you’re getting a little bit bigger. This is where pieced-together systems really start to cost you. When you’ve got over 10 employees, this is where I start to say — let’s not do it without an HR payroll system anymore. Let’s start to streamline some of these things.

One of the companies I would recommend, and I have a partnership with this one as well, is Rippling. That might be a good option. Gusto is another great option here too — again, get that code from me. BambooHR, I haven’t used it, but I hear good things. Same with HiBob. Do your research.

There are a lot of these systems that get white-labeled, by the way. It’s kind of like GoHighLevel for marketing — GHL markets themselves to marketers so they can white-label it and resell it. I’m not saying it’s an MLM pyramid scheme, but I’m saying that is their business model, the white-label model. And so many companies do this now.

isolved is one — I would say it’s comprehensive, there’s a lot to it, but a bunch of payroll companies specifically, and PEO companies, are white-labeling it. isolved is kind of clunky. It’s not my favorite. I’ll help you with it — I’m helping a client with it right now — but it’s not my favorite, I’ve got to be honest, for a number of different reasons. Just not the most intuitive. It’s not an Apple, okay? It’s not beautiful. But they’re getting better. And it’s all about the partnership and who’s bringing it to the table for you, because you don’t go straight to isolved for that. So you need to be thinking about that.

One of the things I want to mention about Rippling — shout out to Rippling. Like I said, I’m a Rippling partner, and the reason for that is I am a stickler, and I will rip so many of these companies to shreds. I would happily let you know which ones I wouldn’t recommend, but you’ve probably noticed there are a number of names I haven’t said. Rippling puts together HR and IT pretty well, in a way that a lot of HR payroll technology companies don’t do. So it’s something to think about. For small businesses, I think that’s pretty helpful. Again, if you want to get some money off, holler at me on Rippling.

Performance management. When you get above 10, up to 30, you need to start doing electronic performance reviews. We don’t really need to be doing these manually anymore. But don’t go out and get a separate system. 15Five, Lattice — they all want to sell you a separate system. Some of these systems have integrations with some of those. Just think it through. I don’t want you logging into something different for every single thing. Even if it’s cool. Even if you were at a conference and somebody sold you on it.

I’m going to tell you: it’s the ease of it. HR — let it be easy. HR operations need to be streamlined. So many times HR people get all excited about all of these systems, and then they make it hard to manage, and then no one’s going to use it, and then you’re bummed, because you are a cost center just like everybody else, because you added tech that is not being utilized. So think it through when you are adding new systems.

Benefits enrollment — make your broker bring it to the table

Benefits admin, for sure. Now you’re required by law — you’re getting above 25 employees, you’ve got to have baseline medical insurance for your employees. So now we need to have an enrollment software. A lot of times you can add this as a module. But this is where I’m going to tell you something.

You are working with a benefits broker who gets paid a lot of money. They might not tell you that, but they’re getting paid off of you — especially if you’re not only doing medical but now you’re doing ancillary, dental, vision, these other coverages through them. That’s where they really start to make money.

And I’m not trying to do an exposé on insurance, but I mean, here we are. And if you’re wondering how I know — I was a chief operating officer inside of a private insurance agency. And then I was a VP of operations. I’ve been a chief marketing officer, all inside of insurance. So I know how the sausage is made.

You need to ask these folks: do you have a partnership with a benefits enrollment software? Do you have a partnership with HR enrollment technology, HR payroll technology? Can I get some discounts? They can hook you up a lot of times. Your insurance carrier — it’s not even your broker that’s going to have to pay for that. Your insurance carrier is going to give you some credits toward it usually, but your broker is going to act like they’re doing it for you and going to bat with your carrier for you. But they can get that paid for a lot of times, or very deeply discounted. So don’t you be buying it by yourself.

And they want you to use their system. Hey, let me tell you — when I’m talking about white-labeling, Employee Navigator is infamous for this. Employee Navigator is a benefits enrollment software. They can also do a little bit of vacation tracking and a few other things, but it’s not a good primary HR payroll tool. However, if you don’t have an HR payroll tool, it’s a better option than nothing — especially if your benefits broker is going to get it for you cheap or free.

I partner with a benefits broker. I’ve got opinions on a lot of them. I’ve worked with a ton of them over the years. I’ve got one benefits broker that I really, really trust in the marketplace, and they focus on small to mid-sized businesses. And I have a personal relationship with them because I am playing intermediary between my client and them, to make sure that they get what they need. And they bring Employee Navigator to the table for a minuscule price. I’m talking under two grand a year. It’s such an affordable option. A lot of you are paying that per month. I’m talking under two grand a year. So let me bring that to the table for you if that’s something you’re wanting to look at.

But 10 to 30 employees — that’s what we’re looking at. It’s time to stop piecing it all together.

Stage 3 — 30 to 100+ employees and the service problem

Now we’re getting to 30 to 100-plus. You likely need a more robust HRIS — HR information system, HR technology, whatever you want to call it.

And I like UKG for this. I know that so many people are like, Kronos — they’re thinking about the old-school time clock. But UKG has some really innovative products out there. Here is the reason why I like UKG Ready: because I have a partner that I work with who does it all for you. Does all of the setup for you. Has a dedicated person for you — not a freaking help desk, not a 1-800 number.

So many of these companies are going to get you sent to no-man’s-land when you are a small to mid-sized business. You’re just not a big enough account for them. That’s just the brass tacks.

I know that you’ve heard of all of these — the Ultimate softwares and the ADPs and Paycor and Paylocity and Paychex. There are so many of them, and they buy each other. They’re just like every other industry out there. They’re cannibalizing each other, they’re getting bigger and bigger and bigger, they keep buying these other softwares and folding them in. They’ve got access to all of these things. They’ve got partnerships with SHRM. I get it.

The account is going to get sold. The service is going to be pretty good from the very beginning, because they get money off of sales. They don’t necessarily get money off of retention — especially the sales staff. And so you’re going to get dropped off of the bus. I hate it. It’s such a frustrator to me. I have relationships with a number of those big players. I have a more local person that I reach out to, and I will go ham on it. But even that person doesn’t really care as much, because they didn’t sell the account. They’ll work with me because they want me to refer them more business, but it’s tough. These big players are tough to work with, I’m telling you.

So if you’re looking at some of the bigger players, you have to get a really good service and support team. It’s not about the sales. It’s about service and support. ADP Workforce Now, Paycom, Paylocity — all of those. It’s going to be good at the beginning. All of these softwares are pretty good. People will say, well, my software is pretty good. They’re all pretty good. They’re all pretty much offering the same thing, different packaging.

It is service and support, for me. That’s why I like working with that UKG Ready company — because the owner is literally a buddy of mine. And not like a bro from way back. I met him when he was at UKG. I implemented him in my organization. And then we started referring clients to them. Back when I was in insurance, we referred a ton of clients to them. And we held them to the fire. If our clients weren’t happy with it, we developed a deep relationship — that started years and years ago — and I’ve partnered with them ever since. I still have the owner’s cell phone number in my phone, because he’ll answer my call. Because he knows. I’ve held him to it before: service and support has to be there, or we’re moving to somebody else.

And I am the exact person that can help you move somewhere else. It’s hard for you. It’s hard for your staff. Integrating and implementing any new tech is complicated. So I drive that train. I steer that ship. And I do it all the time. I get clients moved from one to the other because they’re like, this isn’t going well for us. And I’m like — let’s leave them then. Let’s move on if you’re not getting what you want.

A quick word on PEOs

While I’m talking about HR tech, I want to mention PEOs real quick.

A PEO, if you don’t know, is a professional employer organization. I have an old episode called Is a PEO the Right Choice for Your Business? I’ve actually got three episodes where I address PEOs, but one specifically is exactly that. Go to my YouTube page, or Spotify, or Apple, and type in Is a PEO the right choice for your business? That episode will pop up. Read the transcript, listen to the episode, whatever you want to do. That will help you think it through.

You need to be thinking it through. It’s a co-employer model. I am not anti-PEO — but I am anti-you-not-understanding-what-it-is and then signing up for it, because then it’s hard to get out of.

It’s a co-employer model. They handle payroll, they handle benefits, they handle compliance. Ooh, now it’s starting to sound good. Just to let you know: it’s less control. And a lot of you small business owners started your business because you wanted more control than corporate. There are ongoing costs, and you need to understand the co-employment relationship.

I’m not going to go deep into it on this episode. Go to that other episode and listen to it. It’s right for some businesses, not for all. It’s worth evaluating if you’re 10 to 50 employees. And it can give you access to some more large-employer-type benefits rates, which is sometimes why you go to it — or because you’re afraid about compliance, or because you don’t want to run payroll internally. There are a lot of selling points to it.

It’s thick, okay? You’re in bed together. It’s deep. You are a co-employer now. You’re not the only employer of your employees. So do your research. Call me. If you want me to vet it with you, call me. Shoot me an email — saltandlightadvisors.com/contact — and say, I’m thinking about this, can you help me walk through it? I’ll charge you for the consult call and we’ll walk through it. I mean, I’d say we probably need to get in a relationship together, because there are some things you need to think through. But I’ll have that conversation with you, because I want to help.

SOPs — the infrastructure behind the infrastructure

Okay, let’s get into standard operating procedures and workflows. The infrastructure behind the infrastructure, essentially.

Technology is only as good as the processes behind it.

So if you’re setting up, let’s say, an applicant tracking system, but you don’t have a good workflow — okay, here’s what our interview process looks like. We get the resume in. We review it for minimum qualifications. What are the minimum qualifications? Do you have clear job descriptions for those? If you don’t, then you can’t screen for minimum qualifications in the system. And now all of a sudden the system isn’t as great of a system — because you didn’t have infrastructure behind it.

What do you do if they advance to the next step in the process? Do they get a questionnaire? Do they get scheduled for a phone interview? Do they get scheduled for a panel interview? What’s the process? What’s the time in between? If they move on to a questionnaire and they don’t hit minimum qualifications on that — what’s the declination email look like, or do you call them? If they move on to a phone interview and they don’t move past that — what’s the declination email look like, or do you call them? If they move on to a panel interview and you don’t move them past that — what’s the declination email look like?

What’s your process? If you don’t have a process, and then the words behind it, the system’s not going to be very good. The tech’s not going to be able to work very well. So you have to have systems for this.

I’ve seen companies with best-in-class HRIS platforms running chaotic HR ops — because nobody documented how to use the tool, when to use the tool, who owns what, what the process actually is. And the system can’t fix that for you.

What does your performance management look like? Well, I don’t know. Well — if you don’t have good process documented already, then having a technology that could run your junky process isn’t going to go very well, right? Do you use a three-point scale, a five-point scale, a 10-point scale? Do they do a self-evaluation? Does the manager just do the evaluation? After the evaluation, does it go straight to the employee, or does the manager sit on it, or does the employee get it and then they meet with the manager and then there’s a sign-off? Is there a place for comments? Is there a 60-day review as well? Do you have a probationary period?

All of this stuff has to be answered when you’re setting up your system. The system’s not going to solve all the problems if you don’t have processes in place.

The 5 SOPs every small business needs

So there are five standard operating procedures that every small business needs to have documented. Period. With or without HR technology.

First is a new hire workflow. From offer accepted to day one — what does that look like? What gets sent, by whom, in what order, in what system? This should be a checklist. If you don’t have onboarding in your HR payroll technology, it should be a checklist you’ve got somewhere. Put it in an Excel doc and pass that baby around. Put it in a Google Doc so different people can touch it at different times. You need a checklist for that.

Same thing for the applicant tracking piece. Do you know legally you have to keep that data for seven years? So you should be tracking: when you posted the role, when you got their resume — and keep their resume, by the way. Don’t write comments on it, because that’s discoverable if you have some kind of termination or discrimination suit. When did you get their resume? When did you respond to the resume? When did you check for minimum qualifications? When did they get disqualified, if they did — and for what reason? And if they didn’t, when did they move on to the next step in the process, and the next step, and the next step?

Because if you’re going to do time-to-hire — which you need to do time-to-hire, meaning how long does it take you to get an offer accepted and then a person in seat — you need to have that data to know if your recruitment process is going well. Checklist, folks. You need to have that checklist.

Number two: offboarding workflow. From notice given to final paycheck. A checklist for every step of the process, every system access to revoke, every document that needs to be collected. Checklist for this.

Number three: what’s your payroll process? Who runs it? When? When does it get checked? What is the error correction process? If you only have one person who knows how to run payroll in your system — poop your pants. Somebody else needs to know how to do that. That’s scary. If that person leaves or gets fired — first of all, could they be embezzling anything from you? I don’t know. You know what I’m saying?

Two people need to know how to run that. And I don’t mean two people are running it — but it needs to be documented. That person who’s running it: standard operating procedure. And if that rubs that person the wrong way, they’re holding you hostage. That needs to be documented so they can go have surgery and not have to worry, or go on vacation and not have to worry.

Number four: leave request process. This is where I see the most discrimination claims come in, you guys — because it’s just not a standardized process. It’s not that hard. How it’s submitted, how it’s approved, how it’s tracked, how it’s reflected in payroll. You need to have all of that documented.

And then five: personnel file management. I mentioned some of the things you should have in the personnel file — what goes in it, where it’s stored, who has access, and then the retention schedule, meaning when are you going to make sure those files are up to date?

If I were you, I’d have it in an HR payroll system. And then once a year, have a date where you send out an email to your employee population — or put it in your newsletter, company intranet, or by carrier pigeon — telling them to go in and take a look at their emergency contacts, their beneficiaries for their 401(k) if you have one, make sure their address is up to date. Certifications, if you’re tracking those — have them go in and do that.

So those are the five standard operating procedures that every small business — I don’t care if you have three employees — needs to have documented.

Okay. So we’ve gone over your tech audit. We’ve gone over what you actually need at each stage. We’ve gone over standard operating procedures and workflows.

When it comes to SOP format, it doesn’t really matter. Use AI for that. You could put it in a Google Doc. You can put it in Notion. You can put it in Asana. You can put it in OneDrive. It doesn’t have to be fancy. So many people want to make it too fancy, and then it’s a process they’re not going to keep up with — just like an HR payroll technology.

Make it work for you. It needs to be written down or documented. It needs to be findable. It needs to be followed. And it needs to be updated when the process changes. That’s what you need for a standard operating procedure. And if you don’t have one, open up AI and start talking to it: Here’s how I do this process. Ask me any questions that you need to be asking. Tell me where the holes are. And I want this process documented. That’s a great way to start out with your SOPs.

Key person risk

The key person risk — I’ve talked about this. I’ve talked about succession planning and a number of different things during the workforce planning episode as well.

If only one person knows how to do certain things, this is a key person risk. This is the number one reason why you need to be documenting your HR payroll processes. Not a single point of failure. Just don’t let it happen. Just make that standard practice in your organization.

Where to go from here

Couple other things I wanted to mention, if you need help going through any of this.

You can reach out to me, always. Or: take the transcript from this episode, throw it into AI, and say — from what you know about my business, if you use AI that way. Or if you don’t, say: I am in this industry, operating in this state. Here’s what this HR person said. I need to make sure that I have these things nailed down for my business. Will you help me dig through it? And it will. It hasn’t been doing HR for 20 years, so it can’t apply everything directly to your business — but it’ll help you walk through it, and that’s a really great starting place.

And that’s one of the reasons why I did this 14-part series that I called a 13-part series. If you haven’t listened to every episode in this series and you’re a small to mid-sized business owner or leader, go back and listen to all of them. This built your HR foundation — or at least it’s telling you how to do it.

And if you go back and you listen and say, gosh dang, that was a lot, I need it — but Kerri, can you do it for me? Yeah. I can help you with it. Give me a call: saltandlightadvisors.com/contact, and we’ll get that set up.

We’ve got the foundation, we’ve got the operational pieces, we’ve got the strategic pieces. Foundation has to be built first. Operations is where you end up living and spending all your time. And then strategy is where we go when we’re ready to grow and scale and really become mature. The HR infrastructure — tech, systems — this lands in the strategic bucket.

You don’t have to have all of these systems perfect. But you need to know that they exist. You need to know if they exist in your business or not, and be working on them.

There are, ironically, 12 months in a year. I have done 14 of these episodes. Just go back and do one a month and focus on it. Put it on your calendar. You can knock this out. You can build the foundation in your business.

So where do you go from here? A couple of different things. You can pick up my book on Amazon — The HR Easy Button, type it into the search bar, or you can find it on my website. Or go take the coursework and get deeper into each of these. If you’ve listened and you need to go back and apply them — because just like everything else, we can find information everywhere, but we didn’t apply it in our own business — get my coursework and it’ll walk you through exactly what to do, and it’ll give you exercises. saltandlightadvisors.com/resources to find my coursework.

Or work with me directly. The first thing I’m going to do in your business is a full-blown HR audit. It’s going to be a month-long process, and it’s only going to take you, let’s say, a max of four hours in that month — because I’m going to do a couple of phone calls with you, and then I’m going to deliver that information to you. I’m going to give you a report, I’m going to give you recommendations afterward, and then a roadmap of where you can go. So I’m going to do an HR audit for you if you want to work together. You can email hi@saltandlightadvisors.com if you want to bypass my contact page.

Your business is worth the work

I started this series because I talk to businesses and business owners every day who are managing people without a roadmap. And they’re really great attorneys, or they’re really great physicians, or they’re really great construction folks, or they’re really great nonprofit directors — but they don’t know the business side. And that’s where I’m coming in.

They’re good people. They care deeply. They’re working incredibly hard. They’re doing their best with what they have. This is what I’m seeing all the time.

My hope is that this series helps give you the map. It did give you the map, if you listened to all of it. Because you can’t navigate somewhere if you’ve never been there before. Right? That’s what we use our Google Maps for, our Apple Maps, whatever — your Samsung maps. That’s what we use the map for. So this was the map.

Your people deserve an employer that’s navigating with intention. And just because you don’t know better, that’s not a good enough excuse. Unfortunately, if you get a Department of Labor suit called on you, saying you just didn’t know isn’t going to be good enough — because as an employer, you need to know what your responsibilities are. You just do.

I actually have a checklist for that in the foundations course. saltandlightadvisors.com/resources, or saltandlightadvisors.com/hrfoundations if you want to run right to it. Go through my employer responsibility checklist and see: do you know what you’re responsible for? What is it that you’re actually responsible for? And then you need to act on it. You need to act on it.

This has been a really fun series for me to do. I’ve really, really enjoyed it, and I hope that you’ve enjoyed it too. I hope it’s given you a lot of insight and not a lot of heartburn. My hope is that it made things easier for you to understand where you’re at and what your gaps are — and then do your gap analysis and start tackling it.

Block off an hour a week. Block off an hour a month with your management team. Just block it off, and be really intentional with it.

If you need me, you know where to find me. And if you want me to come in and talk about HR to your management team — going over the basics of your handbook and your policies and how to be good managers — reach out to me on that too. I do that all of the time. I do a ton of speaking engagements, both within Missouri and nationally. So I’m happy to come in and do that. I know you don’t have the time to put that curriculum together, but it matters.

I would love it if you would share this series with somebody in your peer group, or somebody at your organization who could benefit from it. Reach out to me anytime. Don’t forget to leave a review and subscribe.

Friends, I know that HR can feel like chaos, especially if you don’t have a background in it. But your business is worth the work.

So don’t waste the chaos. Embrace it.

Until next time.

Resources To Keep Building

If you can’t answer “what modules are we actually paying for?” off the top of your head, take the free HR Audit and see where your people systems are leaking time, money, and compliance risk. → saltandlightadvisors.com/hraudit

🎯 Take the free HR Audit — Score your HR systems in 5 minutes and see exactly where your gaps are. 👉 saltandlightadvisors.com/hraudit

📚 Explore the HR coursework — Self-paced courses, tools, and resources to build your HR systems step by step. 👉 saltandlightadvisors.com/resources

✉️ Get the Monday Email — One practical idea for leaders, every Monday at 5:28am. 1,000+ leaders, 50%+ open rate. 👉 saltandlight.myflodesk.com/saltandlightadvisors

Need fractional HR support or want to talk through a specific challenge? 👉 saltandlightadvisors.com/contact