Maintaining proper HR compliance in today”™s ever-shifting landscape can be a challenge for even the largest employers, which usually have fully trained, full-time staff.
So where does that leave small and midsize businesses without the wherewithal to maintain a regular HR department? One Fairfield entrepreneur believes she has the answer.
Culpeo HR, a fully customizable HR solutions firm, was launched May 11 by industry veteran Leslie McIntyre-Tavella.
“With Covid especially, there have been so many new laws, rules and regulations that seem to be coming up weekly,” she said from her Fairfield office. “To some degree you used to be able to work to adjust your practices over time to make sure you”™re in compliance, but those problems have now been exacerbated.”
With so many employees still working from home full time or splitting their duties between their home and the workplace, as well as the ongoing uncertainty over what the future will look like, McIntyre-Tavella said that Culpeo ”” a portmanteau of “culture” and “people” ”” can react quickly with its “on-demand” HR platform.
“The services we offer are very, very broad,” she said. “That way we can ensure that we have the solution that the client is looking for.”
Those services include a free HR appraisal and review, “where clients answer a set of questions and then we show them where they are in terms of compliance,” she said. While some clients will end up merely having to make a few tweaks, “we also have what we call ”˜the cautious zone”™ and ”˜the hot zone,”™ which means they have issues that they have to address as soon as possible.”
Culpeo will also provide support on an as-needed or temporary basis or can help create employee handbooks, HR appraisal procedures, as well as create an entire HR plan, remotely or in-person, she said.
McIntyre-Tavella”™s background includes over 30 years in the staffing and advisement sector, working with midsize corporations, private businesses and nonprofits, most recently as founder and president of The McIntyre Group. After roughly 31 years at its helm, she sold it for an undisclosed price to TalentLaunch, a nationwide network of independently operated staffing and recruitment firms, in 2016.
“I helped them with the transition and then I thought it was time to sit back and learn where the industry was heading,” she said. “I was still talking with C-level executives and participating on different online forums and started to see where companies were not moving fast enough to get the right people in the right seats.”
With Culpeo, she believes she has a solution that takes into account both the client”™s side and the HR consultant”™s side to create a realistic, efficient solution.
“There are so many issues companies face today,” McIntyre-Tavella said. “Besides sales, inventory and making sure your employees and customers are happy, in comes Covid with a whole new set of issues. I know there are days when their heads are just reeling.”
As the pandemic appears to be waning, she said, “There are so many companies talking about bringing everyone back to the workplace and how to do that safely. But it”™s kind of a situation where everybody is waiting for someone else to do it first ”” ”˜Then we”™ll see how it goes,”™” she laughed.
“Some people who have been executives for a long time have that ”˜old school”™ mentality, where they”™ve already brought everyone back to work,” she continued. “A lot of companies are doing a split schedule, where the employees take turns working from home and in the office. And young people mostly want to go back, because they miss the culture and their coworkers.”
With a full-on social media blitz planned to promote Culpeo ”” not to mention her own reputation ”” McIntyre-Tavella said she anticipates the company will get even more buzz when her book “20 Essential Lessons for Achieving Entrepreneurial Greatness from a Self-Made Multi-Millionaire” arrives in August.
And while Fairfield County and Connecticut will be the initial target areas for Culpeo, she said she fully expects to build the business nationwide very quickly.
In the meantime, she said, “The most important thing right now is for small businesses to take the time to look at their HR practices.”
