The Career Suite

Helen G. Sneed
Hello and thank you for joining me inside the Career Suite. It's episode number three and it's really hard to believe. However, we have another goal getter and I'm so excited to introduce you to Heather Flaherty. She's the founder of Align 360 HR, which is really pretty awesome because yes, you have two HR people in episode number three. So please audience everyone, join me in welcoming Heather to the Career Suite.
Heather Flaherty
Hello everyone! Hi Helen, how are you?
Helen G. Sneed
Hi, I'm fabulous. Thanks for joining me today. I really do appreciate it. I do know being on a podcast has its own little bit of anxiety, but think of it like, you know, you're in front of a bunch of CEOs.
Heather Flaherty
Thanks for having me. Yeah, no stress there at all.
Helen G. Sneed
Alright, so let's jump right in. I really want people to know what was your, let's say, motivating factor to create Align 360 HR?
Heather Flaherty
Yeah, thank you. I'm honored to be here first of all. I think this is great and it's really the motivation behind starting Align 360 HR was my love, my undiscovered love at first for process improvement. I love efficiency. I love creating streamlined processes for companies to really achieve their goals and growth. A lot of companies are stagnant and they don't know why and they're struggling to grow and so finding that process improvements putting them in place in HR and operations was kind of why I started a line to get that holistic approach with operations at HR.
Helen G. Sneed
That's awesome because you know what I'm hearing? I'm hearing the title of today's episode, right? How to tap into HR and increase your profits. I'm hearing the title, so I love it. So that's a perfect segue into what you do and why you do it. So that's awesome. Tell me a little bit about, without giving away all your secrets, what might be a process that you've used? Yeah, steps perhaps in helping a business improve their operations.
Heather Flaherty (02:26)
Yeah, so normally I start with a discovery where we do a deep dive and really go over their workflows and their processes in place. And I find that a lot of companies, especially CEOs and C-Suites that have been kind of disconnected from their workflow really can't walk me through that. And so that's where you kind of start seeing the bottlenecks, the pain points of companies and from there we kind of assess each one and determine why it's happening whether that be You know technology that needs to be put in place a redundancy For example high turnover for new hires. Which is I know a big issue first of all finding the employee, but then retaining them so that's where I start and we break down each and every workflow and process. And what we find is a lot of communication breaks and a lot of redundancies.
Helen G. Sneed
It's interesting because you haven't said anything that surprises me, but I'm from HR as well. However, do you find people in leadership or the C -suite or decision makers, are they surprised by what you find?

Heather Flaherty
A lot of them already know in the back of their head there's something there. They just can't get to that root cause. Yeah, a lot of it is they either don't know or they have an idea, but it's hard for them to focus on what seems like such a small problem, like culture. So I know culture is big in these days and it's trending, but when we talk about small to mid -sized businesses, you have business owners really as business operators. And they're not running their business as if they are the COO. what they do is they get so ingrained in it, they don't take a step back and go, I am the owner of this business and take a step back from feeling defensive when their culture doesn't seem right from the outside looking in.
Helen G. Sneed
Okay. Okay.
Heather Flaherty
And that's a big deal, because I understand that feeling. It's your baby, your company. But there's a lot of things that you really have to take a pause on as an owner and go, outside looking in, this is why these problems are occurring. So I actually have to work through that too, during that discovery and through the process alignment phase of my kickoff call.
Helen G. Sneed
Right.
Heather Flaherty
And so, yeah, it's almost like therapy for CEOs that I have to do. So yeah.

Helen G. Sneed
It's interesting the similarities, right? Your business can be different, the title can be different, the owner can be different, but we really often have some of the same issues, right?
Heather Flaherty
Yes.
Helen G. Sneed
Ahhh discovering and understanding what that root cause is and how to approach it. So that's why I was like, wait, I have to go back to root cause because I think it's easy for us to look at something and say, A is the reason, but A is a reaction to the actual reason, which is B and B exists probably because people are changing technology changes, expectations change. So even if you had that same root cause five years ago it's different today. And again, I don't want you to give away any of your trade secrets as you're doing your discovery. I think I want people to understand that HR can help people not only improve the human capital, but they can actually help them improve the cash flow.

Heather Flaherty
Yes, yes. And that's a great point because really my process is empowering these companies to align their organizational goals with the people and the process, which is really the key to driving profits. Using those to and really investing and focusing on people and process will always drive profits to a measurable point in business. And I think that that is such a important thing for business owners to really understand because a lot, as you know, a lot of business owners don't always see the value in HR. But HR is, and that's why a Line 360 HR is what it is. It's a full circle. HR touches every single point, department, person in an organization so you really have to be involved in every single facet of a company as an HR person. and really what led me into the operational side as well is having that, as a, in HR 14 years, five of which I had to, I was an HR consultant, so I had to learn very quickly about 60 to 75 clients, their workflow, their process.
And that meant operationally too. And so learning that, I quickly learned how much I love and my passion for efficiency. And so with the operations, I think a lot of businesses, I would love for them to know that HR and operations are so tightly intertwined that you really could have an HR operations person on site, whether it be an internal person, a consultant,
Helen G. Sneed
Right.

Heather Flaherty
But really understanding having somebody that knows both ends, which if you have an HR person who's really good, they're going to know it operations. I mean, I think you can agree with that. It's just kind of, it just so goes hand in hand. So that's really. No, go ahead.

Helen G. Sneed
Yes. Yes. It's interesting as you were talking, I'm sorry. As you were talking, I could hear, you know, HR Business Partner. So titles may be different, but I think having business owners, leaders, decision-makers consider HR a business partner, I think that's a little bit of what I hear you say without putting words in your mouth.
Heather Flaherty
Yes, yes, yes. And I think that it's been a while now that we've heard in the HR industry, especially coming from SHRM, how the HR internal person needs to be sitting at the table with the leaders. And I think that that's now, to your point of that title, that's now something that's not even under the table anymore. It's on the table. The business partner is in the HR person. You have to have somebody that really
Helen G. Sneed
Yes.
Heather Flaherty
I mean, truly we know everything that's going on in the company. you, mean, back in the day it used be the receptionist who you'd go to. It would be like, she knows everything. But now HR people do because you have to be involved in everything. We hear everything, we know everything. And it's not a deserve as a table, seat at the table. It's a earned, it's a must be a seat at the table for an HR person.
Helen G. Sneed (10:09)
All right. Tell me something that excites you. I know you've been talking about process and all this is great information, especially if we're listening to another goal-getter or we have a goal-getter listening to us that is thinking, you know, how can I incorporate and how can I afford HR and why is HR important? So you've touched on a lot of great points.
What is something that you feel good about? You know, once you've delivered your services and you're nearing the end of your contract with the business, give us something that's really made you feel good. Because I know as you mentioned a long time ago, was HR, you know, the police within the organization. And luckily, we're getting away from that. But I'm sure you've got some feel good stories to share with us as well.

Heather Flaherty
Yes, great question. I had a very great client who really cared about HR and their operational efficiency. And they had a very toxic culture, but really great people. So it was just odd going into that situation. So I conducted roundtables with all the employees.
And of course, as you know, going into a company and doing roundtables and getting all employees involved and really trying to understand what the problem is, you know that the client is agreed to make changes. Because if you do that and you don't do anything, the feedback and all that coming back to us, it only gets worse. So this client was really on board, obviously coming to me as a consultant, wanted to make that change. And it became very apparent that
Heather Flaherty
And unfortunately this does happen, but one of the partners was harassing beyond the, you know, here and there the person feels like they're, you know, being bullied or whatever. It was hostile work environment. And I found that out during round tables. And so I reported this and it was a tricky situation to report to the leaders. But they decided to take action. They terminated that partner. It was an equity partner.

Helen G. Sneed
Okay. Great. Okay.
Heather Flaherty
They terminated that partner and handled all of the financial issues with that and then had a state of the union with their team. And it was about 30 to 40 employees at the time. And they said, we trust you. We heard you. We appreciate your feedback and know it was hard to come out and speak against a partner. that just really, mean, seeing the faces on their employees like in disbelief, but also like relief.
Helen G. Sneed
Wow, okay.
Heather Flaherty
was so, because I was there, they asked me to be there. It was so, I don't know, gratifying. And it was such a satisfying thing, all the hard work that they had to do to release that pain. Yeah, it made me really, really happy that there are people out there that actually want to make things better.

Helen G. Sneed
That's it. Yes, yes. And it's interesting, right? I'm sure emotionally you had some ups and downs, you know, a little apprehensive, like, what's what's going to happen when I do share this information? Will they do anything? And it is on some level similar to training, right? Where a business will sign up for training and there are points within the training that could be reinforced later and they're not right. And so the the training really didn't last much beyond the session itself. So congratulations to you for having the capacity, the ability, the wherewithal, and the care, right? You have to care to do what you do.
Heather Flaherty
Great. Yeah.
Yes, yeah, it's definitely a, and I always say this, HR, you don't really walk into HR. A lot of times from what I hear, HR professionals say you fall into it. And like, I definitely fell into it. I really didn't go to school to be HR, but I saw when I was a young buck 14 years ago, 15 years ago, when I saw there was a gap in the employee relations and the employee advocate. That's where I was like, I can't help but be that person to bridge this gap. Because there's things that need to be told to the leaders and really no one liked to do that. And the other reason is I'm really nosy. So I like to know what's going on in a company. curious, I'm curious.
Helen G. Sneed
I'm nosy, that's awesome. Curiosity is good. Yes. Caring and curiosity, right? That's great. That's great. Is there anything I didn't ask that you'd like to share with everyone? And this isn't your contact information. I promise we'll get to that. But was there anything in particular about you or Align 360 HR that you want our audience to know before I tell them a little secret about 2025?
Heather Flaherty
Sure, yes, that's exciting. I'm sure they can't wait to get to that. But yes, I actually did want to just give a PSA, and I'm sure a lot of business owners are already aware of this, but two of the most common themes I'm seeing in challenges for business owners is managing remote workforces and trying to kind of retain top talent.
Heather Flaherty (16:18)
And I think, know recruiting top talent is very hard, but a lot of people focus on their recruiting and get distracted and not focus on that retaining top talent. So my advice for business owners having any of those challenges, especially retaining top talent, I'll focus on that, is to focus on the employee experience. Investing in onboarding, investing in whether that be professional development, talent management, really investing and looking into the benefits. French benefits are so helpful to retain talent. For example, if you can afford it, an educational allowance, a reimbursement program annually. Whether that's like $2,000 per employee, I've seen companies have it at $10,000 per employee but it keeps them invested in the company and it knows, it feels, they feel recognized by these programs. That's kind of one of the, you know, programs or initiatives that I would put in place if you're having those issues. But I would tell business owners, really those are your, if you want to focus on anything and I know those are challenges, I can help develop plans around those pain points. But yeah, that's what I'm saying today.

Helen G. Sneed
Right. Great, great. I think to help our audience understand why it would really be great for them to reach out to you is if you're a CEO, you're a decision maker, and you've acquired the talent and you want to retain the talent, then reach out to Heather and she can help you put together a plan or a program. She'll be, you know, aware of your budget because every business has a different budget, but professional development

Heather Flaherty
Right.
Helen G. Sneed
It would be one of the things that you would recommend. Is that fair to say, Heather?

Heather Flaherty
Yes, for retention program, one of the things that you could put in that.

Helen G. Sneed
Awesome, awesome, great. All right, so before we tell everyone how to get in touch with you, shall we tell them what we're working on together?

Heather Flaherty
Let's do it!

Helen G. Sneed
So I'll start or do you want to start? You know, either way.

Heather Flaherty
Yes, I'll let you do the honors. We're so excited. I'll let you do the honors.
Helen G. Sneed
We are thrilled. So Heather and I actually haven't known each other very long, but we felt as though we could collaborate and work together on a project that we think would combine people, process, so when you think of process, I want you to think of Heather, people, process, and where's the rest of it? See, I knew I needed you, Heather, for this. Where's my title? my title.

Heather Flaherty
It's profit! Yes.

Helen G. Sneed
Are your brand right people process and profit are your brands? Yes, so we're putting this workshop together Thankfully with the South Lake Chamber of Commerce they’ve been extremely kind and flexible with us. So our date that you can see Heather and I together working on people, process, and profit, all making up really your brand, will be Friday, February 28th. I will say 7:45am because those extra 15 minutes you'll be able to network and lasts until about 9:15am so we can get in all your questions. And it'll be in Clearmont, Clearmont, Florida.
Helen G. Sneed
But Heather, did I miss anything? What would you like to add? I know I kind of messed up the name a little bit.
Heather Flaherty
No, think you got it all. I think it's really important that business owners understand that their brand isn't, to your point, their marketing or their logo. It is the voice from their employees, the people that carry that out to the world. They are your brand too, and your clients as well. But they are your brand too, not just what you do on social media or on your website and things like
Helen G. Sneed
That's awesome, I love that. And that's the other thing too, we're gonna throw in a little bit about volunteers because this is relative to nonprofits as well. So anyone on your team they are, can we say Heather, your ambassadors, right? So your ambassadors even in the nonprofit world, it really does matter the talent that you choose to represent your brand, your organization.

Heather Flaherty
Yes, absolutely.

Helen G. Sneed
All right, Heather, tell our audience, I know they can find you on LinkedIn. You know I'm a big advocate for LinkedIn. So where can they find you and your business on LinkedIn and your website and your phone number? And then we'll be sure to add a special post at the end of the podcast as well. But I'd love for you to share that with everyone while we're together.

Heather Flaherty
Yes, absolutely. So you can find me at my website Align360HR.com. My LinkedIn is Heather Flaherty. My LinkedIn for Align360HR is simply just that. You plug that into the search and I'm on there. I am not yet on Instagram, but I am working on that. And then you can reach me at Info at Align360HR.com.

Helen G. Sneed
That's okay. That's wonderful. Thank you, Heather. I really appreciate your time today. And I think the audience could tell we are both excited about February 28th. And thanks again to the South Lake Chamber of Commerce for allowing us to put together a business accelerator program. Thank you, Heather. I know I am confident that you can help organizations, CEOs, and decision makers with their process and their HR as well and be a business
Heather Flaherty
Yes.
Helen G. Sneed
So thank you for joining me on episode number three. Is there anything you'd like to say as we, I guess, finalize, and close out the episode?

Heather Flaherty
Yes, well, I would like to thank you so much for inviting me on here. I'm excited. This is my first podcast. So you helped me through that threshold of being anxious, but I really appreciate it. You've been so gracious to me. So thank you.
Helen G. Sneed
Really my pleasure. It's new for me too, my pleasure. I enjoyed having you and hopefully you'll join us in season four and we can talk about all the new things you've done in the past year. All right, great. Thank you, Heather. Thank you everyone again for joining us inside The Career Suite and we are here for all the goal-getters out there. See you next time.
Heather Flaherty
Yes, I'd love to. Thank you.