EP227: Laura Tolhoek - What You Need To Know About Human Resources In 2021

Michael Palmer: As much as I love and know what to do about HR policies and protocols and programs, starting your own business, it's a different beast. And as much as people try to warn you of that, you really don't know it till you're, you're in it. You're listening to The Successful Bookkeeper with your host, Michael Palmer. Listen each week as inspiring guests share their secrets of success. To help you increase your confidence, work smarter, and build a business you love. This episode of The Successful Bookkeeper is brought to you by purebookkeeping.com, the proven system to grow your bookkeeping business. Welcome back to The Successful Bookkeeper Podcast. I am your host, Michael Palmer, and today's show is going to be a very informative one. Our guest is the owner of Essential HR and has worked with some of the biggest players in the restaurant, food service, and retail worlds as an integral member of the HR team. Laura Tolhook, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm, I'm really excited to be here today. It's great to have you, and What a perfect time to be having a conversation about human resources and people and with everything that's going on in this world. And I'm really looking forward to that conversation. But before we get to that, Laura, please tell us a little bit about you and your career journey leading up to this point.

Laura Tolhoek: Yeah, absolutely. So, as you mentioned, I'm the owner of Essential HR, and we have a team of HR rock stars who help small businesses attract retain the best talent. Now, we think of small business as under 50, so a lot of our clients are actually between 5 to 20 people. So when we think small business, we actually think, you know, those local businesses and, and local teams that, you know, are small businesses. Because I know sometimes people refer to small business as 100 plus, but we love to give HR support in a hands-on and practical way to these individuals, these owners, these managers, to make sure that they have somebody to rely on and a partner when things come up to to be able to support them. Oh, fantastic, fantastic. And, you know, you, um, you've been doing this a while. What got you into this business?

So I grew up in a family who owned a small business, and I went through university, and I knew I wanted to be in business somehow. And I thought, you know, I love people, so why not HR? And little did I know, loving people and HR is actually— can be two conflicting things