Uncomplicating HR: Making Workplace Compliance Accessible with Mindy Flanigan

Intro  

Welcome to another edition of inspired stories where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes, how they’ve overcome adversity, and explore current challenges they’re facing.

Anthony Codispoti (10:54.491)
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Cotaspodi and today’s guest is Mindy Flanagan. Mindy is the founder and chief inspiration officer at Inspiring HR. They are HR done differently. They uncomplicate human resources and empower small businesses. They help you run your small business better by taking the guesswork

out of HR policies and procedures. Working with Inspiring HR, you’ll get a dedicated HR consultant, personalized solutions, prompt responses to your questions, and no complex jargon or unnecessary legalese. You can find them online at inspiringhr.com. Interesting to note, the first 45 minutes are always free with them. So if you have a burning HR question, contact them at inspiringhr.com to get a free opinion.

They also have a rather interesting and industry unique response guarantee where if you call them by 3 p.m., you will get a call back before the end of the same day. And we’re also gonna get to hear about both of her radio shows. But before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line.

One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our proprietary programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency.com. Now back to our guest today, Mindy Flanagan, founder of Inspiring HR. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Mindy Flanigan (12:43.372)
Thank you very much. Inspiring HR, inspired stories. I was super excited about this. Yep.

Anthony Codispoti (12:48.157)
A marriage made in heaven. So what first got you interested in the human resources field? How did you find your way to this?

Mindy Flanigan (12:55.572)
It was I had just aced tax accounting at the end of my sophomore year and I did I was invited to take part in an internship with a grocery company in Syracuse, New York and That internship was in the employee relations department My dad was in I don’t even remember what it was called then we call it the IT department now I guess it was the computer department back then

he got me into something like that. Anyway, my dad was the kind of guy that he could, they’d call him at 3 a.m. to say something was down and he could cite code off the top of his head, which was just fascinating to me. Anyway, he got me an internship and he was the computer person for everything payroll. So because of his influence in the payroll department,

Anthony Codispoti (13:25.831)
I think back then sometimes they were under VOTEK, but I’m not sure.

Mindy Flanigan (13:46.604)
payroll said employee relations needs an intern for the summer and he got me in there. Anyway, I loved it mostly because I had my first taste of a director of what was personnel and employee relations. That’s how long ago it was. Who kind of… Because we don’t call HR personnel anymore. Yeah, yeah. HR, I don’t, I got to look up when personnel went away and HR became a real deal. Probably when the Society for Human Resource Management started to grow.

Anthony Codispoti (14:00.829)
And why do you point that out? That’s just a different vernacular now. Okay. Gotcha.

Mindy Flanigan (14:15.0)
But anyway, this director of the department really took me under his wing. I’m not sure why his name was John Pierce. I’m forever grateful. And he saw something in me and invited me to store openings and taught me how to interview associates. And I don’t know. There was just something that worked. So I went back to college at the beginning of my junior year and I said to my mentor, Wanda Spruill, my accounting mentor.

I’m changing my major to HR, which then was personnel and labor relations. And she said, are you crazy? You just ace tax accounting. Here’s what you should do. Get the four-year degree in accounting and then get your master’s in personnel and labor relations. And I said, you misunderstand. I have no intention of going to extra college. So I switched my major and graduated with the personnel and labor relations degree, that accounting.

background though, I had no idea it would serve me well in the future, in my future years. And then I got a payroll job and realized I didn’t know anything. So I got a payroll job, which is if you want to be any good at your job, you learn wage and hour laws pretty quick. And it happened to be with an entity that eventually put me out into a HR consulting field role and everything just kind of grew from there.

Anthony Codispoti (15:24.777)
specifically about payroll.

Anthony Codispoti (15:43.609)
ask you because I just had a conversation recently with somebody who mentioned some complications with FLSA and like over time

Mindy Flanigan (15:54.036)
mean, the law that’s been around since 1938 and no one understands it still.

Anthony Codispoti (15:58.505)
Okay, enlighten us. What’s going on with FLSA that has so many companies? Okay.

Mindy Flanigan (16:03.34)
Well, lots. You want to talk future? You want to talk right now? Or you want to talk 1938 to right now? Pick one. Right now.

Anthony Codispoti (16:10.001)
Right now, because I’m hearing a lot of concerns about bonuses and overtime and like, what’s going on there? Break it down for the lay person.

Mindy Flanigan (16:15.928)
yeah. Yeah.

Mindy Flanigan (16:19.926)
Well, what’s going on with bonuses and overtime has always been misunderstood. So let’s just put that to aside for one second. The biggest area of confusion right now for the Fair Labor Standards Act is what is the minimum salary actually going to be on January 1st that qualifies someone to be exempt from overtime? And remember, for all your listeners,

I say everyone’s been getting this wrong since 1938 because since 1938, still to this day, there are tons and tons and tons of business owners and leaders who believe that if you make somebody’s salary, that’s it. They’re exempt from overtime. That is not correct. Salary is only one of multiple boxes you have to check off to be exempt from overtime. There’s a duties test.

Anthony Codispoti (17:02.953)
Okay.

Mindy Flanigan (17:11.832)
And this is where we get into layered, complicated federal government regulations, all well intended, but I’ll be honest, they suck. But you have to pull up the Fair Labor Standards fact sheets to understand by position, not by person, who does or who does not qualify to be exempt from overtime. So this minimum salary, it went up as of July 1st, and it’s supposed to go up again to somewhere in the neighborhood of 55 to $56,000 on January 1st.

but we’re embarking on an election. I don’t know if you knew that. And we’ve got federal judges over the last few months somewhere in the arena of debate everything out that says they’re not, wait a minute, we’re not so sure the Department of Labor even has the power to set a minimum salary, which is a really interesting position to take since they’ve been doing it since 1938.

Anthony Codispoti (17:46.513)
Here we are, what, just six days away from the election.

Mindy Flanigan (18:07.704)
So anyway, the new amount, I think in July 1st, without me toggling over to look it up, I apologize, was somewhere in the neighborhood of $48,000 minimum to be exempt from overtime. And then you have to pass a duties test. That bump from 48 to 55 or 56,000 January 1, that’s pretty significant for a lot of small businesses that may have employees’ right. They already had to bump people up before July 1.

So another bump come January 1, everyone’s wondering, I already got two calls this morning about what’s going to happen on January 1. And I’m like, if I knew that, I would play the Powerball. So I don’t know. Just keep an eye on it. That’s the major confusion right now. Like, what’s next with the Fair Labor Standards Act? Now, getting back to exempt versus non-exempt, here’s where people get confused.

Anthony Codispoti (18:35.719)
Hmm

Mindy Flanigan (19:01.074)
If you are, if you talk about overtime, you mentioned bonuses and overtime, correct? Okay. Take that example that I just raised where paying a salary does not automatically mean you’re exempt from overtime, right? You can pay a salary to a non-exempt employee, but you still have to track their hours.

Anthony Codispoti (19:05.779)
Mm-hmm.

Mindy Flanigan (19:23.828)
And when they work more than 40 hours in a standard seven day period, you have to break that salary down to an hourly rate and pay them time and a half. So there’s wage payment obligations, there’s record keeping obligations, and this is what gets spelled out in all these Fair Labor Standards Act fact sheets that you can find at dol.gov. They’re terribly painful to read, but I would much rather look over these fact sheets and scan through what my obligations are.

than read the legalese that came out of the federal government that is far more detailed and complex than what these fact sheets will basically guide you on. And there’s a fact sheet for the Fair Labor Standards Act. There’s fact sheets for complying with OSHA laws. There’s fact sheets with complying with the Family Medical Leave Act. And a lot of our clients don’t even want to read those. But we use that as a tool to give them the basics of what applies to them and the specific thing they’re asking about.

Anthony Codispoti (20:18.173)
Yeah. Well, that was a fun little tangent to go off on. Get a little bit super nerdy there for a moment.

Mindy Flanigan (20:23.62)
I didn’t even talk about discretionary versus non-discretionary bonuses. We’ll save that for another time. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (20:28.667)
Okay. Well, but I think it’s fun to do that because it really helps to highlight the depth of your expertise. You just rattling off things that most employers, have no idea about. So if there were a question of why do I need HR help? Like, you know, I’ve got a payroll person in house. Well, here you go. There are all kinds of potential things that you may be exposed to that you have no idea about. so

Mindy Flanigan (20:35.192)
Thank you.

Mindy Flanigan (20:51.65)
Well, what I advocate for for small businesses is we’d love to have your business, but I also don’t want you wasting your money. If the Fair Labor Standards Act and compliance is really your only worry right now, and you do have an in-house payroll person, whether you’re outsourcing some of that payroll tax liabilities to a small or large entity and they’re giving you the software you need to process payroll and have access to direct deposit.

You might have Fair Labor Standards Act compliance expertise with that payroll company, I certainly would ask. Or you may have hired an internal payroll person that has their CPP, that’s a certified payroll professional. If you’re a certified payroll professional, in order to pass that test, you’re supposed to know this stuff. Now, does everybody apply it correctly? I don’t know, but you should have reasonable confidence that if you’ve hired a payroll professional in-house and they’re CPP certified,

Anthony Codispoti (21:31.209)
Okay.

Anthony Codispoti (21:37.865)
Okay.

Mindy Flanigan (21:47.082)
they for the most part should know how to navigate the basics of Fair Labor Standards at compliance and how to set people up correctly in the HRAS system to reflect complying with those standards.

Anthony Codispoti (21:58.825)
And if you’re not sure, as we mentioned in the intro, you’ve got a free 45 minute evaluation that you’ll do for somebody new. So inspiringhr.com.

Mindy Flanigan (22:01.624)
Okay? Yeah.

Yeah, when we say we support small businesses, we mean it all the way down to, we might be a right fit for you. You might not be ready for us, but we take seriously being good stewards of your dollars. Small business owners have thin margins. We want to make sure that when you sign up with our services, it’s a win-win and we can add value. And sometimes that means saying, yeah, you more need us in a year. If Fair Labor Standards Act in this instance is all you worry about, I’d leverage your current.

Anthony Codispoti (22:20.253)
Yeah.

Mindy Flanigan (22:33.89)
payroll person a little bit more on that compliance matter and have them call us direct if they have questions.

Anthony Codispoti (22:35.643)
Okay, fair enough. Yeah, so Mindy, what was, you kind of gave us a little bit of intro into what got you into the HR field to begin with. What inspired you to start inspiring HR to start your own company providing these services? All right, let’s hear about that.

Mindy Flanigan (22:52.96)
Having a baby.

Well, I got married late because I really love to work. I really do. I love to work. I love to lead. Never thought I’d love entrepreneurship quite this much. Although there are days it is certainly quite taxing, learning QuickBooks, for instance. Yeah, I never thought when I started inspiring HR at some point I would be pulling my hair out over QuickBooks something or other at 1030 at night. So I…

Anthony Codispoti (23:24.073)
It’s supposed to make our lives easier.

Mindy Flanigan (23:26.645)
I was really,

I was really worried after I had my baby prematurely. I’ve told this story on a couple other podcasts, but it really is true. Every once in a while you have these epiphany moments in your life where you decide to pivot in the moment and it was the right call. So I had a very difficult pregnancy. We were not going to have any others. It was that difficult. And I did what type A people do. And I’m HR. I should know better. I was working during FMLA.

I’m out on FMLA and I’m still working, not full time, but you know, the computer sits there and you’re home. So I parked myself in front of my desk in probably like week eight out of 12 of FMLA. And my little baby propped up with a blanket in her little swing next to my desk, cause she was still so tiny, was swinging away there sound asleep.

And halfway through my work, I looked at the computer and I looked at her and I shivered and I thought, I can’t go back to work. This kid will never know me if I go back to work. Because I just, I will, I have to create, had, I was motivated to create an opportunity for myself where I called the shots with boundaries and I’m not great at it. But when another company calls the shots with boundaries and they know I’m type A and I’ll get it done, there’s just too much risk of.

what should be a 45 hour a week turns into a 65 hour a week job. It’s a bad mix for me in corporate America. mean, I’m sure they loved it for a period of time because I gave my heart and soul and anything they needed. But when your family needs you at a certain juncture in your life, you just, you have to say, can I make that sacrifice anymore? And in that instance, I just couldn’t. So my husband came home and put his stuff down on the table and I walked into the kitchen and he said, I’m not going back to work. And he said,

Mindy Flanigan (25:22.654)
Okay, and I did this stay at home thing for about 18 months, but during that 18 months I was figuring out what’s next and what’s next became Inspiring HR when we relocated to Richmond in May of 2006 and I launched Inspiring HR in July of 2007.

Anthony Codispoti (25:40.487)
And so you were home for 18 months. Was your intent at the beginning of that 18 months to truly never go back to work or just not go back into corporate and you were trying to figure out how to do your own thing or did, yeah.

Mindy Flanigan (25:51.542)
The latter, yeah. It was a really reflective 18 months. And I learned during that time that I really love to work. I really do. It gives me a great sense of self. And I think what I realized in all of that is not just the work, I really love leadership. I love leading people. I love leading other HR professionals to be better than they think they can be. And part of when I started inspiring HR was…

gratitude for the fact that I felt like I had a well-rounded grasp of general business practices and also highly skilled at HR. And I believe to be credible at the table in my profession, you have to have a general understanding of business climate, business functions, and be skilled at HR if you really want an effective, credible seat at the strategy table.

Anthony Codispoti (26:45.096)
Mm-hmm.

Mindy Flanigan (26:45.666)
Anyway, that’s who I hire, the people that are motivated to be great business professionals with a high level of HR skill. Because I think that adds the most value and is the best ambassador for our profession going forward.

Anthony Codispoti (27:01.481)
I want to go back to those 18 months at home. My wife went through something similar. We had our first kid, she decided to stay home for a bit. And then she realized how much she missed her job. you know, she got a lot of education, she put a lot of time into becoming really good at what she does. She missed the people that she worked with. And she had this this nagging guilt, call it mom guilt, where it’s like,

Why am I drawn to go back to work? Why don’t I want to be here full time with my kids? She really struggled with that. Okay, you experienced the same thing. That’s what I was gonna.

Mindy Flanigan (27:35.242)
It’s so real. Same. And for all of that guilt and reflecting, which often meant I was out on a long walk with the stroller trying to get some fresh air, figuring out what’s next. It’s that horrible dilemma of you’re looking at your baby and you know you did the right thing, but there’s a very loud bell of something’s missing. And then you lay the guilt on top of that of not providing monetarily for your family.

And you look, you always look at these kids and the first thing you think is how are we paying for college? And it’s like, they’re nine months old. Why are you even thinking about that? Because that’s what proactive planners do. How are we paying for, you know, even back then I was like thinking like, how are we funding retirement? Like, how are we, how are we, how are we? So, you know, there are all these pulls, but yeah, that was very real, but it made me reflect on really what did I miss the most?

And I went through an exercise for about a month on those days where I was feeling real pain. What did I miss the most? And it sort of helped me discern and make a choice on which way am I going here? Am I going back to work in some capacity with an employer or am I going to do it myself? And the things that resonated for me the most, the two things I missed the most was relationship building with clients and leading others.

And both of those spoke in favor of starting my own consulting practice.

Anthony Codispoti (28:59.282)
in.

Anthony Codispoti (29:06.577)
And so what were the first steps? How did you get the first client? What did you do right out of the gate?

Mindy Flanigan (29:13.282)
it’s at went to networking events. So I mentioned the gift of a well-rounded business background. So my pay that payroll job I mentioned earlier was in the PEO industry. You’re a benefits person. I’m sure you’re familiar with the PEO industry. Are you? Professional employer organization used to be employee leasing back in the 1980s. It’s been an interesting ride.

Anthony Codispoti (29:28.691)
But explain it please for our listeners.

Mindy Flanigan (29:39.872)
And in industry, have not been able to extricate myself from even today because one of our largest clients is a PEO where we are the HR department for their companies. That’s not the totality of our business, but it is part of how we work. PEO is in essence a one stop shop for payroll, payroll, tax minute management, benefits, risk management, work comp and HR.

So, and every PEO is different in terms of how they define and staff HR support services. I have a strong opinion on what adds value and what doesn’t, which is why we don’t work with a lot of PEOs. There are certain PEOs that have decided to invest in a real HR consultant experience with our standards for their client community. But for those who aren’t familiar with PEO, it’s had its…

problems over the years, but where I see a really good match for the companies that are thinking about a PEO is these distributed workforces that have become a reality since COVID. You have to really be discerning on is this PEO really offering what we need for what they’re going to charge us and that I would say look carefully at that sales process to be sure.

But when you sign a service agreement with the PEO, you are granting them the right to be the source of the wage, the EOR, the employer of record. And in that service agreement, there is language that says, in this relationship, what the PEO is responsible for and what you are responsible for. And in the simplest form, PEO is responsible for…

a multitude of things as the sponsoring employee, including where states allow it, your employees go under their state unemployment tax account. And they’re supposed to be the savings by the pooling of employees under a single account. But that’s all been parsed apart with regulations as of late. But there’s always that definition of worksite control because the PEO generally is not going to tell you who to hire, who to fire.

Mindy Flanigan (31:48.184)
And they do expect you to comply with labor laws as an element of good business practices and risk mitigation. But then it begs the question, do they have the services in place to help you comply with your compliance obligations? And what are they offering you in terms of what is helping you attract and keep the right talent for what your business needs present and going forward?

So it’s a really interesting, if you like a one-stop shop for multiple things you want to outsource, PEOs can add a tremendous value, but you’ve got to put a very close discerning eye on what exactly is a PEO.

Anthony Codispoti (32:27.729)
What are the things to look out for? Like you said, people go into it thinking they’re going to save money on workers comp. Is that okay?

Mindy Flanigan (32:33.366)
Yeah, that’s not always the case any longer. That was the case years ago.

Anthony Codispoti (32:38.759)
What’s changed that makes that not the case for most people?

Mindy Flanigan (32:41.688)
It really depends on the PEO because if you think about it, the PEOs that have a mediocre director of risk management that might not have the influence and the buying power when they go to the table with any of these carriers to get a plan set up. I don’t know, it depends. Who’s got the relationships to make sure you can actually put a good master work comp policy together?

And then you have to look at what states you’re operating in, because there’s some states that will not recognize the PEO’s work comp policy. Ohio and the state of Washington are two. They’re considered monopolistic. So if you’re a company that has presence in Washington or Ohio and you’re working with a PEO, you might not have heard during the sales process that you can’t go under the PEO. The PEO cannot be.

Anthony Codispoti (33:14.845)
Mm.

Mindy Flanigan (33:33.75)
the employer of record for state unemployment and work comp in those two states, you’re still going to have to have your own accounts. So it begs the question, is there something you can sign that allows the PEO to act as an authorized agent for you, but you’re still going to have to have your own accounts. In the states that recognize the PEO, you can actually close your state unemployment account or continue to file that I have zero employees because those employees are under the PEO’s federal ID number, not yours when you engage in a traditional PEO relationship.

Anthony Codispoti (34:04.233)
So you mentioned that maybe if you’re a company with a distributed workforce that a PEO could make sense, would that be because there’s so many different tax rates for different jurisdictions and different laws and they’re hard for the average employer to keep up with?

Mindy Flanigan (34:16.682)
It’s a pain. Yeah, it’s just a pain. Yeah. It’s just the multiple state unemployment accounts in itself. It’s just, it’s a pain. Yeah. So, and hopefully they would, they would get you some savings. The other mistake I see is we go into the PEO and then we decide we don’t like them and we’re going to break up with them. You break up with the, and that’s fine. I get it. The PEO may have not satisfied your service expectations, but be very careful about when you break up with the PEO.

Because you and the executive team being mad at the PEO, when you break up with them, what kind of shrapnel is falling down to your accounting and controller team, right? You unravel from PEO in the middle of the year. You’ve now just created an instance where your employees are going to get two W-2s at the end of the year. And all of that state unemployment, if you have a distributed workforce and all 10 state unemployment accounts were being managed by the PEO and now they’re not your employer of record anymore.

Anthony Codispoti (34:55.571)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (35:04.233)
Okay.

Mindy Flanigan (35:14.146)
You got an accounting team that’s going to have to reopen and recreate all 10 accounts going forward. It’s not something I would do quickly without planning it.

Anthony Codispoti (35:23.049)
So if you want to transition in or out of a PEO, the right move is to do it January 1, start of the year.

Mindy Flanigan (35:28.941)
Yeah, there’s tremendous, I’ve seen tremendous value for people who want to plan ahead to work with independent PEO brokers that help you make an informed choice on who really does meet your needs. And there’s also consultants out there that help you plan ahead for breaking up with your PEO because you’ve decided you’re just going to bring it all in house, which I don’t totally understand because I know how to run payroll and I would never do payroll internally. There’s too much personal fiduciary risk and task.

risk with that. For a small amount of money, you should at least be outsourcing payroll to somebody who assumes the payroll tax management liability and risk for you. So this was a really long way for me to get to my point of what about, I think you asked me what about the consulting part or how did I know consulting, you asked how did I know consulting was right for me and I told you I got really good, well-rounded business skills in the PEO industry because I got to be around salespeople.

for a period of time when I was out in the field and partnering with salespeople to close deals and listen to pain points with small business owners and then be the field HR consultant that became their account manager. I loved all that relationship building. I really did. And there were times that these salespeople asked me to go to their BNI meeting for them. And that’s where I learned how to network early on. This is well long before I thought I would start a business of my own, but

Anthony Codispoti (36:26.995)
Yeah.

Mindy Flanigan (36:55.67)
I wasn’t uncomfortable doing the networking and I did that for, 2007, first client probably came six months later, but it was a slow go and this business was part-time for me. I wanted the business to grow as my daughter grew. It outpaced her, which I’m incredibly grateful for, mostly because my connections in the PEO industry meant we got to start working with a PEO as early as 2009.

But for as many of those PEO clients that we work with, have just as many now non-PEO clients that elect our monthly service plans, which is really our primary offering.

Anthony Codispoti (37:34.451)
Let’s talk about those monthly service plans. see them listed here on your website. Tell me how these plans work and the value that the clients are receiving.

Mindy Flanigan (37:42.616)
We call people back. Now I’m kidding. I’m kind of kidding. Not really. It’s funny to me that that’s a competitive advantage, but I mean, I can say even personally, I have been trying to find a trim carpenter for my new townhouse for at least six months. And I finally reached out to somebody from somebody that somebody referred me and I said he emailed me back same day after I filled out the contact us form and I was shocked.

Anthony Codispoti (37:44.637)
Hahaha

That’s novel.

Mindy Flanigan (38:10.806)
And he actually said, I’ll see you on Friday at 930. And yes, all of our business over the last 12 months has merely been because people said their contractors aren’t calling them back. That’s it. That’s their whole client base. So I don’t know what’s going on with not calling people back, but that’s not really the total value of our service plans. What I’m most proud of speaks to what I learned in the PEO industry and still rings true today. As much as we love technology,

Small business owners or those they delegate to that are in real pain and need something solved, they don’t want to call the call center and they don’t want to deal with the chat bot. They actually want to talk to a live human that cares about the relationship being built between the two of them. We are a customized service-based business where we want to be as easy to work with as possible. And that means a dedicated HR consultant that you have access to that becomes

very much a champion of your success and the success of the company you’re working with. That’s, I mean, I can go over all the nice bells and whistles in the service plans and they’re priced differently, you know, based on the complexity of your operations. You know, the more states you operate in, the more complicated you are. The nice thing that we do outside of the relationship building is we eliminate that burden of what newsletters am I subscribing to, to make a decent attempt to understand.

what labor law compliance obligations my business faces and when they change because state labor laws change all the time now and we alleviate that burden and instead of saying here read this newsletter and figure out what applies to you we actually do that for you we say hey this labor law is coming this is how it affects you and here’s what we are going to do for you

Anthony Codispoti (39:43.177)
Yeah.

Mindy Flanigan (40:01.324)
But make sure your HR infrastructure stays current with this change. And it normally means updating their employee handbook. At no cost, we include that in our service plan. So we charge to create the employee handbook. But if it needs to be updated because a labor law has changed, we do that at no cost. That’s considered document maintenance as a part of this monthly service plan fee that you pay us.

Anthony Codispoti (40:24.967)
You know, as a small business owner, I could see one of these packages almost serving like a sleeping pill for me, like helps me sleep at night. Like there’s so much going on. Like when I was talking to a client the other day about FLSA, I’d never heard of that before. And the, the, the lawsuits that are happening around, you know, bonuses and overtime. And it’s like, my gosh. I had no idea that these rat nests that exists sort of behind the scenes when I’m trying to do the right thing.

Mindy Flanigan (40:32.556)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (40:54.663)
And so having somebody like you behind the scenes, you’re keeping an eye on all that.

Mindy Flanigan (41:00.728)
But we also don’t know what we don’t know, which is why routine Q &A is also included in those monthly plans. Why? Because if you’re calling a dedicated HR consultant who certified in HR, if you’ve got an HR basics question, like, do I do this? Do I not do this? What is this law requiring of me?

You know, that’s stuff we can answer for you off the top of our head. And we want you to call us because we want to build that relationship. We want to be a credible support partner for you because we don’t want you, feeling like you’re on the clock every time you call your attorney. That’s not us. And B, please don’t search Google or chat GPT for answers to this stuff. You’re not necessarily going to get the right answer. And particularly if you’re asking a wage and hour question, chat GPT might give you the right answer based on federal law.

Anthony Codispoti (41:33.353)
Mm.

Mindy Flanigan (41:51.916)
But if you’re operating in any what we call tier three or tier four states that are highly regulated, Colorado, Washington, California, New York, CHAT GPT is not going to give you the right, so far as we’ve tested, state labor law compliance answer. And when state labor laws are more generous or more restrictive than federal law, state law, and then sometimes local law prevails. And I’m telling you, as much as I love AI too,

It’s not, don’t rely on it as it’s giving you the perfect answer. It is a tool to a path to the answer, but I make sure you’re getting a credible answer as a basis for whatever decision you’re going to make.

Anthony Codispoti (42:33.257)
Well, and as I look at your plans here on your website, like the price very reasonably, you know, I mean, the lowest tier plan, you’re looking at a signup fee of $150, a monthly fee of 119. Now, they’re higher tier plans that have more services, more complexities involved in them. But you know, at a base like that, like I liken it to a sleeping pill, and that’s a rather inexpensive way to help you sleep at night. And then people who are in these plans, then they have

Mindy Flanigan (42:48.536)
Mm-hmm.

Mindy Flanigan (42:57.41)
Alright.

Anthony Codispoti (43:01.209)
access to you for the more customized needs that they have, right?

Mindy Flanigan (43:05.164)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, what’s nice to be on that 119 plan, which is just our basic plan, you know, less than 25 employees, one state not named California or New York. Sorry. Those are the tier four states, folks. I can’t help it. Talk to the legislators in those states. The reason those states are more expensive is on the averages, if an HR consultant is having to stay on top of labor law changes in those states four times a year, at least.

that we have to invest labor cost and do paying attention to what’s the latest and greatest coming out of those legislatures. And how often do we need to tell those clients in those states and how often do things need to be updated? So they’re very fluid states. But if you’re not in those states and you’re only in one state, less than 25 employees, you’re not all that complicated, but you probably don’t have a lot of HR right now and you haven’t totally discerned what the path is to building up an HR infrastructure.

that sustains you as you scale. Because at some point you may have plans to be 50, 75 employees. I promise you it is much easier to create the HR infrastructure when you’re small and growing than it is to say clean up this mess when it’s 50 to 75 employees. So that’s where a lot of our clients in that lower plan find value is they will budget with us over two, three, four year period of time.

Anthony Codispoti (44:16.243)
Mm-hmm.

Mindy Flanigan (44:27.128)
for us to lead those projects that become a positive deposit into their maturing HR infrastructure. Handbooks, job descriptions, hiring checklists, offboarding checklists, maybe some frontline HR basics training for leaders. Because at some point when you grow, you need leaders to not know HR granularly, but you need them to understand it enough to know where the red flags are and ask for help. So we help connect all those dots with some.

HR infrastructure that they will start to depend on, which ultimately makes them more effective leader.

Anthony Codispoti (45:00.711)
Mindy, what would you say is the most common issue that you see when onboarding a new client? Like, yep, this is what we see with most of our folks. We gotta go in and clean this up right away.

Mindy Flanigan (45:11.672)
You know, everyone’s just, everyone rolls their eyes at the handbook and yeah, I get it’s a bummer too. It doesn’t have to be. They normally come to us with a handbook that says we put a lot of time and effort into this handbook. And by the way, it was expensive. And we look at it and we’re like, okay, it’s out of date. And who would read this? It’s full of legalese, right? It looks intimidating. It is a bear to read. Why?

Anthony Codispoti (45:31.869)
Yeah.

Mindy Flanigan (45:40.888)
Because somewhere in the neighborhood of their general practice attorney, I’m sure well-meaning, saw a $2,500 to $3,000 opportunity to give them a handbook. And it just sits up on the shelf. It checked the box that they had a handbook. No one reads it. No one understands it. It became outdated. Yet you bring it to the table to say, is this current? And the idea of us saying,

this can’t be saved, start over is painful to them. They wrote a big check for that and put a lot of thought in that being created. But that we, for us to actually fix what’s outdated, nine times out of 10 ends up being more expensive than just starting from scratch with our legally vetted template. And I say our legally vetted template because we deal with reasonable employment law attorneys around here.

Anthony Codispoti (46:10.409)
Mm.

Mindy Flanigan (46:34.56)
where we say we want to simplify this anti-harassment policy down to the way a normal person would read it and understand what is and is not acceptable behavior in the workplace and where they report these concerns. And that’s it. Like, get all this legal ease out of here. It is not necessary. We just want to make sure employees feel welcomed, understand your culture and your brand.

understand generally what’s expected of them and if it’s not in the handbook where they can find information related to whatever question they have when they open the handbook up. I don’t know why all this legalese and looking like it reads like a contract and intimidating stuff needs to be in there.

Anthony Codispoti (47:16.617)
That sounds like a lot of people are just creating the handbook to check the legal box, make sure we’re taken care of.

Mindy Flanigan (47:20.492)
Yeah, but it’s really not a legal document. That’s the thing. The minute you put employment at will in there, as you should, there’s no guarantees. The only guarantees you’re given to employees are probably for the high level employees you’ve hired that sit on the leadership team and they’re under a non-compete or a very hefty CNDA or non-solicitation agreement with equity. That’s where you start talking about a

contractual obligations. A handbook is not a contractual obligation. In fact, the state of South Carolina requires that you put a disclosure on the cover page of the handbook that says this is not an employment contract. I mean, that’s how wrong this is gone in some instances.

Anthony Codispoti (48:04.169)
And so you see the employee handbook as something the employee should actually be able to use in reference.

Mindy Flanigan (48:07.576)
the communication tool that we love to create to be on brand for any of our clients. No two handbooks we create really look the same. There may be content that’s similar, but if you give us your logo and your color schemes and your vision and your mission and your values and we get a sense of who you are, we find these to be highly customizable documents that we really want the frontline leaders, when you bring on a brand new employee that hopes they make made the right choice.

We want to move them from hope to believe to know they made the right choice. And when they hope they made the right choice is in this probably those first 30 days of employment, particularly in week one, they’re really nervous, right? What impression are you giving them when you hand them a document you have no confidence in and hate, but say here, sign here versus a happy smile on the face that says here’s our employee handbook.

It’ll tell you all about who we are. We talked a lot about it during our interview, but we’re really excited you’ve joined us. You can be a come apart or a vision and our mission and values, which you’ll find in this handbook, but it’ll answer any other questions you have about our policies, our practices, what to expect, what we expect of you. Go ahead and read through it. I’d be happy to point out some highlights if that would be helpful. And then once you don’t have any other questions, sign the acknowledgement and return it to me.

It’s not hard, but you have to actually be proud of what you’re handing to these new employees, and a lot of people are not. And that makes me sad, because you’ve spent money on something that you’re not keeping current, and you don’t really feel like it’s an actual part of your HR infrastructure that is something to be proud of, to hand to new employees.

Anthony Codispoti (49:52.457)
As we’re talking here towards the end of 2024, what would be the approximate price range that a company might spend with you to create an employee handbook?

Mindy Flanigan (50:02.392)
It depends on whether or not you need state addendum. So if you’re a distributed workforce that has an employee presence in complicated states, you’re probably looking at, I’d probably say $1,500. But for our bottom service plan clients, one state, less than 25 employees with a template fee, if we can keep it down to two or three drafts before we get to the finish line, you’re probably talking

$800 bucks, maybe $800, maybe $1,000. You know what gets fluid in all of this is we have some companies that surprise us during the handbook process. We have a single point of contact we provide service to. But they took the employee handbook draft, and they invited their entire leader team to review it and ask questions. And the draft process becomes a back and forth crash course in HR, which is fine.

Anthony Codispoti (50:54.279)
Yeah.

Mindy Flanigan (50:59.884)
But the more drafts we have to go through and the more meetings to get to the finish line, the more expensive it becomes. However, we’ve had some clients say, totally worth it because we actually checked the box on training and the handbook at the same time. So some people pay more through that process because they get a lot of great Q &A and education through the customization process.

Anthony Codispoti (51:11.485)
Okay.

Anthony Codispoti (51:15.751)
Two birds, one stone.

Anthony Codispoti (51:23.047)
Mindy, are there any geographies where you can’t provide your HR services?

Mindy Flanigan (51:27.884)
Well, we’re not on site. So if you feel like you need, and I’m glad you brought this up because I want to be clear. We consider ourselves HR support partners. We are not the three day a week in office fractional generalists. And you and I could probably have an entire separate conversation about why I would be very careful about that. And you can ask me about it if you’d like. So we’re not on site. We can provide on site services if we have a footprint in those geographic areas for which we have an HR consultant working.

Anthony Codispoti (51:31.315)
Okay.

Mindy Flanigan (52:00.254)
We’re all US. You start talking about me about Canada or you hired employees in the Philippines. Sorry, can’t help you with that. We hesitate to really provide consultation for companies that have a presence in Hawaii, believe it or not. Because California and New York are complicated, but Hawaii’s got some unique requirements like

I don’t know if you, might know this better than I, believe health insurance mandatory, even if you have as few as 25 employees on payroll. Yeah, that’s, that’s one. there’s, why is, you know, it’s an, it’s an island unto itself or multiple islands, so to speak. So, but yeah, we’re, we, the other thing that we’ve done that I love in my desire to simplify, which is one of our core values. And we’ve talked about this already.

Anthony Codispoti (52:35.737)
I hadn’t heard that. Interesting.

Anthony Codispoti (52:45.523)
So what’s the…

Mindy Flanigan (52:56.184)
I actually think some HR people could make a fortune if they just sat on the state legislature floors and once a law was passed, the legislator turned to an HR person and said, here, take all this legalese and put it in regular sentences, right? Because then we’d have a chance of people actually understanding how to comply with labor laws. But that’s in essence what we do is we have created this proprietary state labor law tracker.

Anthony Codispoti (53:11.593)
You

Mindy Flanigan (53:23.222)
And I say proprietary because it’s become a key part of how we really add value. We have put together this, in essence, easy to navigate through on our own database where we took the labor law for all the states that we operate in, all the states for which we have a client presence is. And that’s all 50 of them at this point, except now 49, not Hawaii. And you can go through this dropdown that says,

California, like 80 lines. Okay, now I’ll filter for Alabama, it’s like five. But we can easily toggle across through our plain English definition of what these obligations are from state to state, which is how we’ve come up with this tier system to price out which service plan makes the most sense for you based on how complex your distributed workforce might be.

Anthony Codispoti (54:18.003)
So what’s the concern about fractional on-site HR?

Mindy Flanigan (54:23.129)
Anthony Codispoti (54:26.875)
Just give me two or three.

Mindy Flanigan (54:29.076)
It sort of layers into my concern with HR in general at companies. How are you using them? I worry in my profession that we are still trying to overcome not just that HR was the police or the Terminator in the room. That was bad enough baggage to get rid of. The next thing I am worried about and continue to worry about is HR people either on payroll or in a fractional capacity.

undermining the leader to employee relationship. HR is not a psychologist chair. It is not for just this open door. Everybody comes in and complains all the time and then HR just magically fixes it, right? HR should be bridging together reasonable people to solve their workplace challenges. That’s part of our responsibility. And I worry with fractional.

In order to justify your existence, it’s much easier to just sit there in the psychology chair and tell employees, care and I’ll fix this for you. And they’re not playing the long game. And the long game is HR is not there to do the leader’s job for them. HR is there to be a conduit for good working relationships between employees and leaders when there’s a breakdown.

We are certainly paying attention to infrastructure and labor law compliance, but to be a true long game strategist and brand ambassador, we have got to get people out of undermining the leader to employee relationship. And part of the leaders are to blame on this. They’re in so much pain with confusion and have so much on their plate. There comes a time where somebody decided 12 direct reports was a good idea.

Anthony Codispoti (55:53.257)
you

Mindy Flanigan (56:19.712)
with no leadership training whatsoever and the leader gets inundated and just said HR fix this, fix this, fix this person, make it go away. And that’s not setting anybody up for success either. If you’re gonna be a leader, you’re going to build a good collaborative working relationships with your direct reports. And if you’ve committed to that, the last thing you need is HR undermining that.

So that’s where I worry with fractional HR generalists that if you’re there to justify your existence for three days a week, just please make sure you’re acting in the best interest of the long game for the company and certainly creating that HR infrastructure if they don’t have one. But please don’t become the psychologist chair that becomes this place where everybody just complains and then you solve and you fix.

Anthony Codispoti (57:09.906)
Hmm.

Mindy Flanigan (57:16.244)
and the leaders don’t stay on the same page with you and all of a sudden we have unintended fractures in our culture. It worries me a great deal.

Anthony Codispoti (57:24.418)
Maybe in a couple minutes, I want to get to your radio shows because I think that’d be something fun to talk about. But a couple more questions before we get there. I specifically want to ask.

Mindy Flanigan (57:27.448)
Okay.

Mindy Flanigan (57:31.766)
Well, has that been, let me ask you question. Has that been ever something that you’ve worried about or experienced around HR people, the undermining of the leader to employee relationship? that anything you’ve ever seen? Or do you hear the eye rolls from business leaders that say, HR, everybody just goes to complain there, whatever, it’s like the complaint hotline over there.

Anthony Codispoti (57:43.383)
Anthony Codispoti (57:51.719)
You know, most of my businesses have been on the smaller side, 20 employees or less, lots of distributed workforces. And so.

Mindy Flanigan (58:01.098)
And so who was the HR person? The office admin catch-all something or other or the business owner?

Anthony Codispoti (58:04.489)
A little bit of me and a little bit of whoever was sort of like in the COO role. We didn’t have like a specific HR person or department. Yeah.

Mindy Flanigan (58:14.2)
yeah. Yeah, makes sense. Yeah. That’s all our point of contact is with a lot of our clients is an office admin catchall, the controller, the porcelain, because the controller was told run payroll and all of a sudden they’re supposed to be skilled at HR or the CEO or the VP of ops. That’s typically our points of contact usually are our clients. Yeah. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (58:24.137)
Mm.

Anthony Codispoti (58:36.529)
Okay, similar. So I want to talk about your callback guarantee, because this seems unrealistic to me. Like we were talking about this, you know, before we went live with with the interview, and you and I are both people that we return calls, right? We don’t understand people who don’t. That really bugs us. But explain to me your callback guarantee because this is next level.

Mindy Flanigan (59:01.122)
So most of what I have done at Inspiring HR, I kind of used my own experiences and my own desires for how I would want to be treated and applied them to our service infrastructure. And Jennifer Archer on my team has done a great job as taking over as our services managers and making sure that these preferences and best practices just became part of our culture and our standard. And the guarantee was born out of that. So when we say you have a dedicated

HR consultant who you can depend on and build a relationship with at the heart of building a relationship is dependability and credibility and We said, okay. Well if our clients are calling with a question or concern How do we know it’s not like a real pain point for them that they’d rather not take home with them that night or at least feel like there’s a path to resolving it So we came up with how do we make?

Anthony Codispoti (59:48.179)
Thank

Mindy Flanigan (59:53.76)
It’s about how you feel. I can talk about labor law compliance until I’m blue in the face. No one’s really going to hear it and comprehend it unless it’s also alleviating a pain point, a fear, an area of confusion, something. So a lot of that has to do with the relationship and the communication delivery. So at the heart of that is, HR consultant follows our guarantee. So if you are a client of one of our HR consultants.

and you call before 3 PM with a question, a request, an inquiry, your HR consultant or if they’re out of office, they’re back up for the day, we’ll get back to you same business day. It won’t necessarily be solved, but they’ll get back to you. So you know you were heard and someone’s working on it or maybe we can solve it real quick. It depends. But we always want that when I call them or email them, they’re going to get back to me.

Anthony Codispoti (01:00:36.89)
You’ll at least get to talk to somebody. Yeah.

Mindy Flanigan (01:00:48.546)
because that’s the way we would want to be treated as consumers and that’s what we deliver to our clients. It seems like a really basic thing to me, but we are in an era where people are just getting lost in technology and not keeping track of incoming inquiries and that’s sad to me. It really is sad to me. I if we’ve got companies that trust us and spend money with us, the least we can do is return their calls and emails. I don’t really see this as something that’s hard.

Anthony Codispoti (01:01:16.435)
Well, it…

Mindy Flanigan (01:01:16.672)
And if after 3 p.m., no later than 10 a.m. next business day. So that for HR consultants basically means before they leave their desk at the end of the day, have I honored my guarantee for half 15 minutes, 30 minutes a day? Have I honored the guarantee with all the inquiries that came in? And if I didn’t, I’ve got this blocked off period at the end of the day to get back to people.

And then again, first thing the next morning for anything that may have trickled in after 3 p.m. That’s part of how they start all their days. Who do I need to get back to before 10 a.m.? And that’s just a basis of how we work.

Anthony Codispoti (01:01:47.539)
Well, I’m going to go back to the sleeping pill. that, that’s going to help the business owner or, whoever your point of contact is sleep better at night. Cause if they’ve just had an issue come up, they don’t know what’s going on. They don’t know how to deal with it. They don’t know what the ramifications are. They need to talk to the expert. If they’ve got to wait a few days to hear back from their consultant, this is just going to fester and whatever the situation is could explode, become bigger. so knowing that I’ve got that quick access.

Mindy Flanigan (01:01:57.153)
Yeah.

Mindy Flanigan (01:02:15.094)
Which actually takes you back, that’s right. And it also takes you back to what I love about leading this company, the most remote work works for us, not for everybody, but remote work works for us. Cause I’ve hired high, part of our team is skilled, autonomous, independent HR consultants who can manage their own schedule and time.

I gotta be honest with you, there are some times I’ve had to honor the guarantee myself, and it’s from the Target parking lot, because I may have started the day really early with an interview or something, and at the end of the day, someone’s called at 2.45. Well, I may have already left my desk, because we actually work in a highly flexible environment. This is why these positions are really appealing to…

not just people that want to work remotely, but they want to be treated like adults, right? They want to be able to balance work and what their personal life requires of them. And flexibility will do that, which means remote work works. Your cell phone works. You got a signal. Get back to people before you go into Target and take care of your shopping at the end of the day. So.

Anthony Codispoti (01:03:26.781)
Minnie, let’s talk about your radio shows now. Tell me why. Tell me what they’re about, where people can find them, what you talk about.

Mindy Flanigan (01:03:29.247)
I love my radio shows.

Mindy Flanigan (01:03:34.552)
I think you can only hear them in Richmond, unfortunately, but they do get video clipped out on LinkedIn through Mike King. So this is the Mike King Business Radio Show. It’s on our local ESPN radio station. So this does not, I am not on ESPN. I wish I was, but I’m not. But some of the midsize markets, as I understand it, Richmond being one of them, has a local ESPN radio station that does not start airing from the mothership until 7 a.m.

So some of these stations have dead air from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. So Mike King actually records throughout the week all of these sessions with business leaders and he created this Mike King biz radio slot and all of these interviews that he produces airs at various slots throughout the week. So my weekly interview with him airs on Tuesdays, normally sometime between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. And I’ve been doing that for over a year.

But I am now also going to be airing on Fridays because Inspiring HR became a title sponsor for the VCU Women’s Basketball Coaches Show that aired with Mike King. So we created Mike and Mindy and we talked to Coach Old Boyle, the VCU Women’s Head Basketball Coach, once a week. And then that collaborative interview that puts a spotlight on VCU Women’s Basketball.

Anthony Codispoti (01:04:43.657)
Okay.

Mindy Flanigan (01:05:00.896)
my getting an opportunity to talk to the coach about the parallels between workplace and sports teams. Super fun, that airs on Fridays, I think between six and six thirty. We just start. Weekly show. Yep, through the basketball season. So I really want them to get into the big dance so I can keep talking to the coach all the way through March.

Anthony Codispoti (01:05:10.343)
and this will be a weekly show as well.

Anthony Codispoti (01:05:20.529)
And so the show is only happening during season, not during off season. Okay.

Mindy Flanigan (01:05:24.514)
Correct. Yep. Yep. Yep. And then I’ll just go back to my regular Tuesdays. Yep.

Anthony Codispoti (01:05:28.987)
And what does the VCU Women’s Program look like this year? What are the predictions?

Mindy Flanigan (01:05:34.136)
You know, good question. The only thing so far I’ve picked on the coach about is she doesn’t have a Wikipedia page, but apparently we share New York roots, which I suppose explains why we get along so well. She’s got a really diverse team. In fact, I’ve got the roster right there behind me. you can’t see it. Well, I you kind of can. See that sort of blurred black and yellow thing on my whiteboard back there? That’s the roster. Very diverse team. I think there’s…

Anthony Codispoti (01:05:51.473)
Okay.

Anthony Codispoti (01:06:00.103)
Thank

Mindy Flanigan (01:06:02.616)
six or seven different countries on that roster of players that have joined VCU women’s basketball this year. She’s been, I’ve got my notes on that team success somewhere from when I last chatted with her. The other thing was we’re most looking forward to this year is getting, there’s a lot of momentum with women’s basketball in general right now and VCU women’s, or VCU men have gotten a lot of attention, particularly since the shock of smart era.

We’d like the women to get an equal amount of attention. So I’m enjoying being participatory in the business community and getting more and more people to fill the seats at what we call the stew, which is the Siegel Center at VCU. I think they’re going to be good. They’ve got a putting a lot of effort into making sure that their home game against Temple on November the 15th is well attended. So I’m really looking forward to that. But I’ll be honest, I’ve

I’ve lived here since 2006 and I’ve only been to one men’s VCU game because my blood is orange. I’m from Syracuse, New York, but I do love just college basketball in general. So this was a layup for me, so to speak, when Mike asked if I wanted to be the title.

Anthony Codispoti (01:07:10.641)
Okay.

Anthony Codispoti (01:07:18.32)
I mean, as you mentioned, yeah, women’s basketball has got a lot of momentum behind it right now. You’ve got Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese and, you know, going from college to the pros and sort of continuing that friendly rivalry and.

Mindy Flanigan (01:07:29.197)
New York Liberty just won the championship for the WNBA and yeah, just, it’s, I don’t watch women’s, I will probably watch women’s basketball college more because of this title sponsorship, but come March madness time, I will equally watch the men and women.

I don’t even work the first two days of the tournament and everybody knows it. Yeah. I am very serious about March Madness. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (01:07:55.837)
that is one of the most fun time of years in sports is the big dance for both men and women. Mindy, I’ve just got one more question for you, but before I ask it, I wanna do two things. For those listening today, if you liked the content, please hit the like, share, subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. I also wanna let people know the best way to get in touch with you, Mindy, what would that be?

Mindy Flanigan (01:08:16.276)
InspiringHR.com, there’s two places that you can reach out to us. The Contact Us form, and yes, that is an email that goes to myself or Valerie Juarez, who helps me field these inquiries. So we’ll get right back to you if you submit information on our Contact Us form. You can also go on our services page and schedule a more robust introductory call. That’s where we ask you some questions about how many employees on payroll and are you internally?

handling HR, outsourcing it, all those things like that that would qualify your inquiry for a more serious call. Or just go old school. Our main number’s right on the top of our website, 804-715-1920. Connect with me on LinkedIn if you want to wade into the pool a little bit and see what we’re all about or follow the inspiring HR LinkedIn page. All good ways to understand who we are and to reach out to us.

Anthony Codispoti (01:09:08.393)
That’s great. So last question for you, Mindy. What do you see the big changes coming to your field in the next few years? How do you see things unfolding?

Mindy Flanigan (01:09:18.776)
I would like to believe we continue on with a path of not DEI. There’s nothing wrong with DEI, by the way. I just think the rebrand of what it is and getting away from once and for all over-correcting will sit on the plates of HR professionals now. And the reason it will.

and going forward is we still, we were already migrating towards less and less labor available to fill seats before COVID hit. And we went from, and when I first started in HR, it was always employer choice. Recruiting was all about, they’re lucky if they get the job. Do everything you can to knock them out of the box.

Anthony Codispoti (01:10:08.585)
Mm.

Mindy Flanigan (01:10:12.918)
We don’t think that way anymore in our cultures for a variety of reasons, but one of them is we need labor. So we have turned from an employer choice market to an employee choice market. And I don’t see that going away anytime soon. And when it’s an employee choice market, HR people have to get more serious about your inclusion practices, how you’re creating work-life balance.

what HR strategy is in place to get the right people in the right seats. This takes a really a higher level of HR skill and strategy with business climate acumen than we have historically seen. But I’m super excited about all of it because we’ve got this younger generation of workers and I have no patience for complaining about the younger generation of workers. This whole argument that they don’t work as hard as I used to work.

is so tiresome. It’s not comparing apples to apples. I find this younger generation that’s about to enter the workforce to be caring and bright and inventive. And I think it’s going to be a whole new brand of leadership. And it begs the question, how will people in my profession align with that and make sure they support these leaders with inclusive policies, great place to work cultures, nice perks and benefits, because it’s not all about the money anymore.

Anthony Codispoti (01:11:28.669)
Mmm.

Mindy Flanigan (01:11:39.308)
People are looking for a total experience when they join the workforce. And we need not only their skill, we need their engagement and their productivity. So it’s, you know, what’s the right strategy and the right recipe ultimately to get the right people in the right seats to keep moving the company forward. so that’s where I see HR headed in the next.

Anthony Codispoti (01:12:01.833)
So do you disagree with the narrative that exists out there that younger people, just, don’t want to work.

Mindy Flanigan (01:12:09.556)
Every generation complains about the younger generation. It’s just tired. It’s just tired. And where I have issue, right. Right. Right.

Anthony Codispoti (01:12:15.463)
My grandparents said it about my parents. My parents said it about me. Now my generation is saying it about, and so it’s just what old people do.

Mindy Flanigan (01:12:24.012)
Well, that’s the, you know what, that’s the easy thing to say. I actually have had conversations with people who said no one wants to work anymore. And I’m like, where are you getting that? No one wants to work 40 hours anymore. And I said, you know what I say? You’re right. One know why? If you thought they were working 40 hours, most people were working 40 hours in the first place. You’re nuts. Yeah. And the thing is,

I’ve had this argument now with remote work and flexible work versus in office. If you really believe just because you anchor them to a desk, they’re working, good for you. What are you measuring in terms of outcome? But besides that, if you really think about it, what’s unfair in all of this? What I faced and what I had available to me to make my life easy when I was age 30 is not the same for 30 year olds now. It is just not.

Anthony Codispoti (01:13:17.161)
Hmm.

Mindy Flanigan (01:13:18.456)
Take just healthcare right up your alley. Navigating your own healthcare and the healthcare of the people that depend on you, kids or parents, is 20 million times more difficult and time consuming than it was 30 years ago. And guess what? A lot of times you can only take care of that during work hours. So yes, the conditions, that’s why I have difficulty with this. The conditions are not the same as 30 years ago, right?

Anthony Codispoti (01:13:31.625)
Mm.

Anthony Codispoti (01:13:39.081)
Mm.

Mindy Flanigan (01:13:48.45)
People had more help 30 years ago navigating healthcare and navigating things in your personal life. A lot of this stuff isn’t as easy as it was 30 years ago. So I just, before you just label everybody is not wanting to work, you’ve got to really figure out what are their life circumstances that they are facing to juggle all of this that are very different from what you faced 30 years ago. Fair?

Anthony Codispoti (01:14:14.365)
Fair, great insight. Mindy, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Mindy Flanigan (01:14:20.472)
Thank you for having me. I had so much fun. I hope I get to come back and do another one.

Anthony Codispoti (01:14:24.347)
I would love that. We’ve got so much content we didn’t get to. So stay tuned, folks. We will have her back for another episode some point down the road. But for now, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.