Michelle Griffin on Fractional HR, Work-Life Balance, and the Future of Employee Management

Good afternoon. This is Catherine, your host with Beyond Business Podcast. Today, I am joined by doctor Michelle Griffin, CEO and founder of Griffin Resources, a fractional HR firm serving small and mid sized companies in The US and abroad. Michelle holds a PhD in industrial organizational psychology and is PHR and SHRM CP certified.

She's led teams through rapid growth, M and A, workforce planning and compliance, and she's passionate about building cultures that perform. We're digging into practical no fluff HR that actually drives revenue. Doctor Griffin, welcome so much. Thank you for being here with us today.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited for the conversation. So let's talk a little bit about your journey. What problems what problems do you help solve in your industry?

So my background was as an HR executive. And as I was getting like my higher education, I always like worked full time while going to school. And when I, was getting my doctorate, I was a director of HR. And I wanted to, at the time this was before COVID, it was, about 2018 that I started school.

2019, is when I kinda started to get into data collection and getting out of course, all of the coursework. And I wanted to be able to travel to do that. I ended up working with a company that's in Macedonia and Serbia, and I didn't think it was fair to, you know, do the, do that kind of work while I was still an executive. So I worked out a ninety day exit with my company and thought I would be an independent contractor just to provide, the high level HR knowledge that I had from working with larger businesses and work with small businesses to kind of just what I thought would be provide guidance and compliance for small businesses.

What actually happened were the business owners not wanting to touch HR anymore. And they said, well, I'll just give you an internal email address and you go do HR. So I thought that would be, just something I would do independently while I was kind of on the side while working on my degree, but it had such a high demand that within three months I had eight clients. And rather than turn away work, I just started hiring people.

So I had hired two full time employees to work with me. That was by January 2020. And then by COVID, the demand got even greater, especially with companies not knowing how to handle the leave of absence, people obviously getting sick. One of the clients that I had, was a medical company that did psychiatry and psychology in assisted living facilities.

So they were directly on the front lines of COVID. And, they had a lot of questions about how to manage those people, not being able to provide proper PPE for them during that time. And and how do we manage that? Every single person in that company got sick.

Multiple people were hospitalized, including the CEO himself. So we started to realize, you know, some people, some companies were still seeing HR as kind of a necessary evil of just I just want, you know, just I have to have HR or I'm going to be in trouble versus companies really starting to see if you have an HR partner with your company, you can, you know, actually strategize and learn to grow and manage your, your human capital a lot better. So that became the kind of the backbone of how I established the company and and how we decided to build it.

And now that the firm is much larger, we have, you know, a team of 40 people, about 80 clients now. So what we do for them greatly varies. I customize it based on what they need. I don't have packages.

I don't force them to do any kind of like HR audit or anything like that. We kind of just work with them on what keeps them up at night and what are some issues that they might be having. How can we help them with their business? And we kind of focus on, you know, HR, payroll, compliance, recruiting, turnover, you know, anything that really has to do with the operations of the people in the business.

And the business's size will vary too. We have clients that are like two, and we have clients that are 500, and we might be all of their HR. We might just be a piece of it. We might just be kind of acting consultants, or we might literally be part of the leadership team.

So we we work with them on whatever it is. Love that you took, you know, an opportunity at you where the from where you started and then you were able to pivot and you added people to that. And most business owners have that as a challenge where they don't realize like it's the people that are gonna help them grow. And so what benefits have you found as you've worked with companies that you are able to help them in?

Here's the so let me let me let me rephrase that. What I'm looking for is an answer. So what are the companies that you feel are best suited? Because a lot of times, you know, back in the prior prior to COVID, it wasn't as noticeable to have people who are working virtually.

And you took an opportunity during that time to be able to pivot and take that opportunity and make something out of it. And so I love that about that creative nature of seeking something that's like, boom, you know, we could we can grow this. How are you how do you explain to a company that's used to having an in person HR, but then that virtue having a virtual HR is something beneficial to them and why why would they choose that over having an in house? They may not choose having virtual HR over in person HR.

A lot of times it would need to be a combination of both if they have an in person, facility or location. They do pay us to travel if they need us in person. Most of the time, all of our work can be done remotely by answering emails and things like that. We have had companies that have like an open door policy, and they wanted people to be able to kinda just come in and and have someone to talk to.

And so if we are able to accommodate that, we will. If it does work out that it's a client we can do that with, most of the time this was honestly a bizarre transition that I noticed, and I don't really know. Maybe we were lucky, and maybe it was the environment. In 2023, when companies really started to go back into the office and remote was becoming, you know, not as common or a requirement, we were starting to see that companies would go back to being in person and keep us remote.

There's a lot of clients we've had for many years, and they would, you know, still communicate with us. We will have, you know, teams or Zoom meetings with people that are in an office, and we work with them. You know, we will handle employment relation issues. So we'll conduct investigations.

We will, you know, kind of be a part of the meeting virtually either by witness or by, you know, conducting the meeting and people are there in person and we're virtual. Why they allowed that or how they tolerated that, I don't really know. It was just something I think it's also that they don't have to have the overhead of HR because we're a vendor. So they pay us, you know, without having to have employment taxes and the liability of, you know, things that can come with HR.

That liability kind of tends to fall to us to help them manage. And so I think there are certain areas of the company where they they don't necessarily need a full time HR person, or even payroll or other parts that we help with. It's so fractional. It might only be three or five hours a week.

It's not even a part time job. So for them, it's beneficial enough to pay for really high quality talent that has ten, fifteen years of experience. And, you know, so it's obviously more from an hourly rate perspective than hiring a direct person, but they still get all of the benefits because, you know, there's there's at the time, there weren't a lot of competitors. I do have some competitors now.

There's a lot of independent, HR consultants that are out there now that weren't really, you know, five, six years ago. But the model that I was able to keep with flexibility and not having retainers, I have some clients that, you know, literally pay less than a thousand dollars a month, just to have us on call and maybe process their payroll or just, you know, some smaller parts of the business Because I work in more volume based and my team members, their job is made up of helping seven or eight clients.

They still have a normal either part time or full time job, whatever they're looking for. So it's not like they, you know, we're not a consultant that needs to have volume in their day to day lives for them to have a job. So that's why I think I was able to get away with not having retainers versus the the clients that need that. So I think because of the flexibility and the business benefits that they get out of it, it's it's still really popular, and it's still really helpful.

We've even had clients start to come back from that era from 2021, 2022. We've actually resigned three clients that we had from that timeline. And again, they're in person, and they're hiring us remotely. So I I don't know if I can actually answer why it works.

I just know that it's it's something that's attractive to them and it's really worked out. Now who would be your ideal client for what you do and how you serve them? They don't all have a lot of things in common. Most of the time it's, private owners.

We do have some that are under private equity. We do have some that are government entity and some that are nonprofits. But the majority of them are smaller businesses under twenty, twenty five employees that are, you know, small business owners, and the owner is typically wearing a lot of hats. It might be a little bit bigger if there's 50 to 75 people.

HR might be with the CFO or COO. They also really shouldn't be doing the day to day of HR. It's just not where it's a good use of their time either. I've also seen it where the CFO is still processing payroll.

They might have it on a controller. So we'll partner with them to kind of just take some of the smaller, you know, day to day, a few things that are just a few hours off their plate so that they can run the business and grow the business appropriately. So those are some of the things that we've noticed as the, you know, the type of companies and the industries vary as well. We have so many people that we have experts in varying industries and or we've clients that are willing to work with us through a learning curve to learn some, you know, specific nuances about them or their technology.

So we've got everything from blue collar to white collar, you know, everything from, you know, manufacturing to law firms. Now, why would someone choose to work on your team as an employee working and doing this remote as well? So I did some soul searching with my team right around year two. And I kinda took the idea of what a company that we would recommend do, to really identify your culture and your strengths and what makes you a good place to work.

And we started asking them, why are you here? And what keeps you here? And, and then really started to say, you know, what could make it better for you and things like that. And what we learned was that they really liked the flexibility.

It works well for a lot of working moms and students. And sometimes we've had both that they were working mom and a student, military spouses as well. It does varies also. So we do a lot of part time work with people that want a work life balance.

We do have, obviously, hours that we have to manage with our clients to have meetings during the day with them. So they usually have their own freedom and flexibility to schedule time with their clients that works in their schedule. And then if they're doing computer work, they can do that at any other time during the day. So I don't, as a company, have set business hours.

It's flexible to them. We have team members that don't wanna work more than fifteen or twenty hours a week. And then we have some that want full time. So we try to, you know, work with them to get their schedule as full as possible.

And then others, if they're limited to their availability, will, you know, be respectful of that as well. And I I do have one, working mom that, I don't think she's ever worked a Friday. She's been with me for four years. And she she has like she's got one child that is sort of still in like daycare timing.

I think he might be three or four. He was really she when she was he was like a baby baby when she started. My maybe only a few months old. And so he's been with me the whole time.

And there's a couple other working mothers where they're the same kind of thing. They've been with me about three years now, and their kids are about three years So it works. We've been able to work with people to make sure that they have really good whatever their work life balance is for them. And I even started giving part time people benefits that you usually only see in the full time space.

So they do get paid time off. They accrue it based on their hours worked. We do match the four zero one ks to part time people. They get a floating holiday.

The only thing they don't get is benefits. They do have to work. We consider full time to qualify for benefits over twenty five hours. So, you know, they still don't have to make it to thirty or thirty five even qualify for benefits.

So we try to give a lot of flexibility for for that to attract those kinds of people that we find to be, you know, they don't want to gap in their employment. They, you know, they want interactions with adults. So it's really important to them to still have, you know, a job, bring in some income for their family, but have the flexibility to to be there for their family. I think that became a big priority, especially out of COVID, and people have kept those priorities that we've noticed.

Right. What would you say is the difference between someone who would need a fractional HR versus a full time HR? A lot of times it's just doesn't make sense to have a full time person until you get closer to almost a 100 employees. Anything under that, it really is a part time job unless you have a lot of employment questions and issues and things like that.

So most of the time managing HR can be done as a part time or fractional space. It's also pretty inconsistent. So there's times where it really is, you know, five hours a week that we really see on average, you know, twenty hours a month, maybe less. And then we'll see needing more time when there's an implementation or there's open enrollment or some kind of investigation needed.

So there will be times when we're working with clients and they, you know, we have a normal routine that may only be ten hours a month. And then all of a sudden they need us for twenty or thirty hours a month. And then we go back down. So things that are seasonal, we do have a few schools that obviously they drop down to having not very much during summertime.

We have a couple CPA firms. They also are pretty seasonal. So when they have, you know, different payroll situations, tax situations, uptick in overtime and things like that, we'll start to see them, you know, having different issues and things like that. So when it comes to different types of onboardings and off boardings and things like that, it is a really good time to, you know, just be able to ebb and flow and not have to worry about HR being part of the team that is onboarded and off boarded and fluctuating with the seasons and things like that too.

What would you say is one of the biggest compliance mistakes that you've that you see? Multi state. A lot of times since companies did go remote, they got into the idea that they could just hire the best person from anywhere in The United States or even globally. And there's a lot of tax compliance that happens with that, but there's also a lot of employment law and there's just regulatory compliance for even notices that you are required to give out, trainings that are required.

Every state has varying different laws and regulations from just making sure you're providing required time off, that you've applied for the right tax and tax zones, different not only states have different areas of that, but jurisdictions and cities and zip codes can vary as well. And not all payroll systems are designed to catch those requirements. Some obviously will and obviously PEOs, which is a professional employer organization. Essentially, that is a company that will take on all of the liability of payroll.

And you you technically co own your employees with this organization. They actually get like payroll and benefits and everything through the PEO and the company has the ability to hire and fire and manage them. But the payroll portion and the compliance behind that is all on the PEO to manage. We do have several clients that have that technology and compliance set up and then we help them kind of mediate between them and the services that they're getting and make sure that they're doing all the right things to to give the information to the PEO and stay compliant.

So we work well with PEOs. We don't compete with them. But those are some of the biggest things is when companies just decide to start hiring people in different states and then they treat people differently in those states, which can be an issue and or they treat people the same, which can also be an issue. So it's kind of like you win some, you lose some and you really have to carefully manage that and make sure that you are actually doing what is written down in your your usually it's a handbook, but some kind of regulation to hold the company, in compliant and accountable.

It really saves the company. It's really designed more for protecting the company than protecting employees and helps the company manage things properly. But those are the biggest problems we see as companies just expanding and then not knowing what to do once they get there. Wow.

That there's a lot more to think about when you're thinking about different states and different compliances. Well, how do you how do you use the AI in to help you in your HR? So there's a lot of tools out there that we will use to help us manage designing certain language for policies and things of that nature, but we also still work with law firms on our side to check our work and check-in with them to make sure that we're providing the right service and scope and leading companies in the right direction.

So we will make sure that we're not, you know, kind of just going off into using AI on our own. And so we keep attorneys on retainer. We have multiple attorneys and law firms on retainer for that. Keeping because it's all a lot of that liability is on us.

So we definitely make sure for that. But there's a few things that we've been working on as a company and we've been working to build our own AI. And one of the things we have been testing and building to help manage all of our clients information is building a library or a knowledge base of just our clients information and housing it and restricting it to ourselves. It's not open to the public.

We actually have multiple companies and one of them is a tech development company. And so we do have the privilege to kind of like take some of our knowledge and space and kind of play with this. So this is a little left field that has nothing to do with the HR company. But what we are trying to build is we get a lot of questions from our, let's say, an employee to a team member that says, do I have this holiday off?

What's our next, you know, payday? And of course, they've got, you know, eight clients that they're managing. They don't have that information directly memorized. And so they could go on to our chat with our AI and, you know, basically say this company, what is the holidays or what's the pay schedule?

And the AI would know that information. We are having the same problem with AI that a lot people of are having is that it lies or just makes up information. So we wanted it to always, like, kinda show receipts for what it is giving. So if it is the list of holidays, they're, you know, pointing to the handbook, we want to make sure it's the latest version of the handbook.

And they tell us what page number and everything that they found it on. And then if it's a pay schedule, there should be a pay calendar that is the current calendar and things like that. So we are kind of working to build that out so that our people can have a quick reference and not have to sit there and spend time and money for the clients to go research that. Another thing that we are working on is building an AI that knows all of our team members backgrounds and expertise.

And that way we kind of don't forget what people may be good at or what they want to focus on for their career path. And so that way, we take on a new client and they say that, you know, they wanted, you know, they need someone to work in this area, this is the type of payroll technology that they have, and our managers don't have to just memorize everything about everybody. We can kind of ask the AI who on the team should, you know, would be good in this area. And they can kind of give us answers on who and why and the type of projects they've worked on.

So those are some of the things we've worked on with AI to try to improve our own operations. And then obviously we, you know, use, I would say ChatGPT. We use quite a bit of AI tools out there just to help with, you know, company, you know, building whatever it is they need us to help them with like Canva and things like that too, and building AI photos and putting things together for materials that they may need. So I would say typical things that normal people are seeing, but the other ones are the fun ones that we've been building on our own.

Now, doctor Griffin, if there were one thing that you'd wanna standardize in every company, what would that be? Like across the board, you say, this would be what I would suggest. Wow. I would say it's really hard to standardize something across all companies.

However, the one thing that because everything is unique to a company that they they definitely need to standardize having a handbook and it's a hand handbook that is current and that they use it And that they they actually abide by the rules that they put in it. If every company did that, they would probably not have so many problems. And they would, it like I said, a handbook is really designed to help a company. And so if someone is doing something they're not supposed to and you want to reprimand them for that, you can point to the rules and regulations and say, you're in trouble and here is why.

You can also put your culture and your core values in your handbook. So if someone is not living up to your core values, you can also reprimand them for that. And you can let somebody go for not fitting in your culture and not living up to your your core values. And you can do that by saying, here is our very well known core values, and you're not living up to these expectations.

And so that way, if someone is just kind of being a jerk, but not really creating a hostile work environment, you can kind of be like, that's not acceptable either. And you can really hold people accountable and control your culture a lot better when you can standardize and if everyone did that I think they would be a lot better off. Now do you find that a lot of business owners don't keep those handbooks updated? No they don't at all.

Most of the time, they may be many, many, many years old. I have a friend that owns a restaurant and as kind of a I I needed to train someone new and I was like, hey, as a favor to you, like, we'll we'll do we'll update your handbook. And, of course, I had no idea how old it was. It was ten years old.

And I was like, do you even have the same rules that you did ten years ago? Like, there's nothing valid in there at all. And they still had everyone sign off to say that they had received the handbook. And I'm like, but does that help you?

Yeah. Most of the time, they're extremely outdated or they don't have one at all. And then that really gets them into trouble because they really don't have any accountability to themselves or or the comp you know, or the employees and and that kind of thing. The other thing that's really good that people should do is I don't you don't have to do like formal career pathing, but I think it's really important that managers know what the career ambitions of their team members are.

I don't think they should ever be surprised if they sit down for the annual one time conversation to say, here's, you know, how you did for the whole year. Here's what I think your next goals should be. And the person's like, well, I wanna be a manager. And they're like, well, we don't have space for you here for that.

And, you know, those kinds of things where it's like, well, if they know their career ambitions and they can align a person's career with the company's growth goal grow growth goals, then they can align them together. And that's something that I was pretty passionate about is, you know, if someone is happy where they are and they don't wanna change their job, you should know that too. But I would very often see employers or managers be surprised by a company, you know, not aligning them and then the person leaving.

And they're like, well, you you know, or they and they only talk about it once a year. It's like that's not often enough. So managers should really know what's going on in their team members' lives and and what might change and what might change in their priorities, family planning, you know, different things like that for their goals and be able to accommodate that. And they'll be able to keep, you know, I think longevity.

We've seen a lot of turnover with the newest millennial or generations that are coming up. You know, the the Gen Zs and Gen Alphas, they have a lot more turnover than millennials and boomers ever had. So they're really not, you know, listening and keeping up with what they want in their jobs and their career. Now, how has, psychology benefited you with what you're doing in HR?

So IO psychology specifically is the research degree of human capital in the workspace. And my specific research was on communication using technology. So I was able to kind of look into what makes people feel comfortable communicating by technology. If something is, you know, obviously being recorded, if it's on a video chat or if it's a phone call or in person and and what kind of sensitive, know, company information are they sharing and why or why not?

What are they waiting to to share if if they feel like it's not a safe space? Do they prefer in person, group meetings versus team meetings and and things like that? So, my I conducted a lot of that research in, 2021 through '22 and published in '23. And so I was kind of in the forefront of people starting to use technology quite a bit.

And, I was able to kind of start to figure out what makes people comfortable and, you know, I'd be keeping your turning your camera on, being camera ready and things like that. So we are able to help our companies and clients out quite a bit when it comes to creating policies or standards of code of conducts around a virtual space, in a way that actually improves their culture and their team development and things like that. From a psychology perspective, a lot of it has to do with assessments, which we use to help make sure that we've got the right people in the right seats.

We use it a lot for recruiting. So we'll help companies do job matches to create a, you know, some kind of scientific measurement can aid in the process. It's obviously not completely foolproof, but it does give more validity to the hiring process than if you don't. So we, you know, the team members have all been trained on a lot of that, and then I usually can step in if something gets a little too complicated or weird.

But most of the time, the team has all been trained to do all that. Awesome. Now what would be some maybe just some some tips that you could leave our audience with? Depends on who's listening.

For entrepreneurs, definitely, know your team and don't wear so many hats. Know when to take those hats off and which ones you should and shouldn't be wearing as your company grows. If you hold too many things too close for too long, you are gonna the company is going to be stagnant and you're not gonna be able to grow if that's your goal. There are certain milestones that are really important to shift.

Typically in revenue, that's if you're going to get from 500,000 to a million, 1 to 3,000,000, 3 to 5 and pretty much every ten years after that. What it took to get there, it cannot get you to the next step. You do have to reorganize. You do have to restructure.

A lot of times that either means in people, technology, AI, or all of the above, you have to automate, you have to streamline, you have to figure out how to do usually more with less people. So or with the same amount of people. So a lot of automation can help with that and making sure that you're using technology to the best of of your team members abilities. And upskilling people is really important.

Training people to grow with the company and giving them the skills that they need to excel in the company. So all of that is really important for someone to be an entrepreneur that's working on building the business versus working in the business. And usually that's when, you know, we come in as like that extra HR support so that we can help the leadership team kind of grow and scale without having to, you know, be extra overhead and and make sure that the technology is being used pro you know, properly and things like that.

The but definitely making sure you, you know, work on specific areas of the business that makes sense and you can trust in other people to to do some of the things you need to delegate and get off of your plate. For, you know, team members, I would definitely say make sure that you are communicating with your your your manager, your employer, advocating for yourself, your career, your work life balance, what's important to you. I would much rather speak to a team member about their life changes, their goals, anything that might be disrupting them rather than them leave and have to try to replace them.

I've done that multiple times with team members, you know, put people on extended leave of absence and things like that depending on what might be going on in their life and giving them a chance to come back. Obviously, we we rehire all the time, but if we don't have to completely off board and just kind of suspend some things while they go through whatever it is they need to we've done it for either, you know, if it's a sabbatical of some kind, essentially, if you will. Most of time you don't hear of that until they're much bigger.

If someone has taken care of a family member or their own health issue or they're having a baby or whatever it might be. You know, I'd much rather know what's going on and be able to help than and shift your career. I have one team member that shifted from doing HR to doing payroll because she needed to get taken off the phones because of, you know, her baby being younger. And so she could focus more on computer work.

She loved analytics. And so we kind of shifted her job completely and taught her payroll, and now she's now she loves it. So it's things like that where it's if you companies don't want necessarily for you to leave if you're a good employee. You know, just saying I give up, I don't wanna deal with this and leaving.

It looks obviously like a lot of turnover, and you don't get a lot of experience and growth as a person if that really is your career path. So those are probably my depending on who's listening, those are my asks, I guess, or advice for for really, you know, having a really good strong career path or company. So how do you keep a balance with between work and home? Because you have multiple things at the same time that you manage.

Many may argue that I don't, I guess. So I, my passion is traveling, and I would I'm not waiting for retirement to to, I guess, live like I'm retired. And we do have a lot of fleet freedom and ability to travel, especially on, like, points and things like that from one of the businesses that we do have that generates, you know, credit card points and things like that. So my husband and I travel internationally usually once a month.

So we're gone like half of the time, every two for pretty much two weeks a month, we're gone. And I work remote. I don't take time off. So I will I might reduce my work time to maybe four to six hours rather than if I'm home, I might work ten hours, eight or ten hours.

So there's probably a little bit of give and take depending on where I am and what kind of time zone I'm working from. But I tend to try to work on Central Eastern time regardless of the time zone I'm currently in. But I I do get to travel quite often and see the world with my husband and with family members and friends that will travel with us. And then, you know, we just take our time to, you know, be in a different city so that we can go out and explore and see new, you know, new places and just go out to dinner or walk around the town and things like that.

So we try to stay in the location long enough to get to know the culture and the people and see where we wanna go back to and try to go to new places. I've been to 35 countries so far, and I didn't have a passport until after I got married. What? We we definitely go around quite often.

That is amazing. That's awesome. So if you, if let's say our audience just says, you know what, I would love to get in touch with Doctor. Griffin.

How would they find you? How would they, you know, seek you out? The easiest way is the website, which is, griffinresources.com.

We do have, direct contact information on there. There's also a chat feature that goes directly to our person. It goes to our sales associate. And then she gets in touch with me right away if it's something in my realm.

But yeah, we're pretty easy to get ahold of. Okay, great. Well, Doctor. Griffin, I would want to thank you so much for giving us these tidbits today and just giving so much value to our audience.

We're just really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for having me. I hope, some people took away a little bit here and there and it was pretty relevant. So I It was very much.

The opportunity. Lots of great information and I'm sure that it's gonna be a value for sure for our audience. So I just thank you so much again. And for everyone else, this is Catherine, your host with the Beyond Business Podcast.

Excited to have you here with Doctor. Griffin today. So thank you.