The HR Connection Podcast with Sabrina…

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The Policy Gaps That Gets Small Businesses Sued

Episode 35

Wednesday, June 10, 2026 • Duration 29:07

Episode Summary

Most small businesses don't get into legal trouble because they lacked a policy. They get into trouble because they had one and didn't follow it. In this episode, Sabrina breaks down the gap between what handbooks say and what leaders actually do and why that gap is where most small-business employment risk lives.

This episode pairs with The Policy Nobody Talks About Until You Need It (leave of absence) and the HR Connection documentation episode. If you haven't listened to those, they are referenced here for good reason.

What You'll Learn

The difference between the compliance question and the lawsuit question and why small businesses consistently confuse the two.
Why inconsistent policy application, not intent, is what creates legal exposure.
The five policy areas where the gap between written policy and actual practice shows up most often in small businesses.
Why the handbook is rarely the problem — and why rewriting it usually isn't the solution.
How to conduct a practice audit instead of a paperwork audit.

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What No One Tells You About Being the Only HR Voice in the Room

Episode 34

Wednesday, June 3, 2026 • Duration 24:05

What No One Tells You About Being the Only HR Voice in the Room

If you've ever taken a solo HR role, or you're considering one, this episode is the conversation nobody has with you before you start. Sabrina breaks down four hard truths that come with being the only HR voice in a small business, drawing on 15 years of embedded HR work with employers under 500 employees.

In this episode:

Truth #1: You can be completely right and completely ignored.

Truth #2: The bias against HR exists before you open your mouth.

Truth #3: The loneliness is structural, not circumstantial.

Truth #4: The impact is real, and it hits differently in a small business.

Referenced in this episode: In the Trenches with Caitlin Sampson

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In the Trenches - Caitlin Sampson

Episode 33

Wednesday, May 27, 2026 • Duration 22:28

In the Trenches with Caitlin Sampson

Caitlin Sampson, HR Director at Trivector, a service-disabled veteran-owned small business in Huntsville, Alabama, joins Marie for the second installment of In the Trenches. As a longtime HR department of one, SHRM chapter president, adjunct professor, and mother of two, Caitlin knows firsthand what it means to operate at full capacity with no margin for error.

She unpacks the perfectionist trap common to solo HR practitioners, why employee relations is simultaneously the hardest and most rewarding part of the job, and how digging deeper into a complaint almost always reveals more than the surface issue.

Her standout moment: a blue-collar, single dad called her when his son was sent home from school with a suicide note. She didn't hand him an EAP card. She made the calls, worked her network, and had a mental health appointment booked with insurance already processed before she called him back.

That's small business HR, no handbook, no backup, just judgment and relationships built over time.

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Paying People Right When You Don't Have a Comp Team

Episode 32

Wednesday, May 20, 2026 • Duration 32:59

Compensation problems in small businesses don't announce themselves. They build quietly, starting with offer-time decisions that made sense at the time and were never revisited, until pay gaps have compounded long enough that someone finds out and tells everyone.

This episode is for HR practitioners who need to do comp work without a dedicated team, a purpose-built tool, or a large budget. Sabrina and Marie walk through where to find reliable free market data, when it actually makes sense to pay for a comp tool, how to run a basic equity review with nothing more than a spreadsheet, and how to bring a pay gap to leadership in a way that moves them to act.

One distinction that shapes everything else in this episode: there is a difference between historical inequity and current inequity, and they require different responses on different timelines. And once you have documented that a gap exists, inaction is no longer neutral. It is a decision, and a liability.

A note for longtime listeners: this is Marie's second-to-last episode. After the next episode, The HR Connection will continue in a solo format with Sabrina.

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The Policy Nobody Talks About Until They Need It

Episode 31

Wednesday, May 13, 2026 • Duration 22:24

Most leave policies were written once and never revisited. The result: legal exposure, manager improvisation, and employees navigating a crisis without clear guidance.

In this episode, Sabrina and Marie break down why leave of absence is the HR area most likely to catch small employers off guard — and what to do about it.

What's covered:

The three-layer compliance problem: federal law, state law, and informal practice
The most common policy gaps (multi-state coverage, intermittent leave, and process documentation)
What a defensible leave process actually looks like from request to return
The manager's only job when an employee requests leave: direct them to HR
Three things to audit before the end of the week

Key point: If you have employees in California, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, or New Jersey, and your policy doesn't address those state requirements, you have a gap. Check where your employees work — not where your business is incorporated.

HR Connection is produced for HR professionals and business owners managing people in organizations with 1–500 employees.

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Performance Management That Doesn't Make Everyone Hate You

Episode 30

Tuesday, May 5, 2026 • Duration 23:54

This episode of the HR Connection addresses the breakdown of performance management in small businesses and the cost of avoidance. Many organizations fall into two patterns: leaders who avoid difficult conversations entirely or leaders who escalate too aggressively. Both create risk, damage culture, and lead to reactive decision-making instead of structured management.

Sabrina Baker and Marie Rolston outline a practical framework designed for real use—not compliance. The focus is on early, clear, and consistent communication so employees are not blindsided by feedback months after issues begin. The four-step structure—coaching conversation, counseling memo, written warning, and separation—emphasizes progression and opportunity for course correction at each stage.

The episode also reinforces that process alone is insufficient. Manager capability is the failure point. Without training, managers default to avoidance or emotional reactions. HR’s role is to coach managers before conversations happen, ensuring they are factual, specific, and grounded in clear expectations.

Resources mentioned:

Counseling memo template
Performance coaching conversation guide
Conversation starter library

All resources available at Acacia HR Solutions’ website.

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In the Trenches: Ivette Mills

Episode 29

Wednesday, April 29, 2026 • Duration 25:29

HR isn't a spectator sport, and neither is this series.

In the Trenches is a monthly feature on the HR Connection where co-host Marie Rolston sits down with HR practitioners working inside organizations with 1 to 500 employees. No consultants, no theorists, just the people actually doing the work.

In our debut episode, Marie speaks with Ivette Mills, HR Director at 4Cs of Sonoma County, a nonprofit serving families across Sonoma County. Ivette shares what it was like to join a 200-person organization as its sole HR professional, how she built a case for headcount in a budget-constrained environment, and the career moment that reframed how she approaches advocacy.

Whether you're a department of one or leading a small team, this series is built to remind you that your experience; the complexity, the invisible load, and the wins, is shared.

In this episode:

Building an HR team inside a nonprofit
Managing a handbook revision and performance process overhaul simultaneously
The advice that changed how Ivette shows up in leadership conversations

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Hiring Without a Recruiting Team

Episode 28

Wednesday, April 22, 2026 • Duration 31:15

Recruiting in a small business rarely lives in a neat, dedicated function. More often, it gets layered on top of an already full HR workload. In this episode, Sabrina and Marie break down what that actually looks like in practice—and how to make it manageable.

The conversation focuses on how to approach recruiting when time, resources, and structure are limited. Instead of trying to build a perfect process, this episode walks through how to prioritize what matters, simplify where possible, and create just enough structure to keep things moving.

In this episode, we cover:

The “two jobs” problem and why recruiting often feels like a second full-time role
Why recruiting starts to feel broken (and what’s actually causing it)
A practical triage framework for managing open roles
What “minimum viable” recruiting infrastructure looks like in a small business
Where recruiting tends to break down as companies grow
How to push back on leadership when expectations don’t match capacity

Resources mentioned:

Templates and tools are available at: acaciahrsolutions.com
You can find our previous episode on recruiting by browsing the podcast feed

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The Handbook Nobody Reads — And How to Fix That

Episode 27

Wednesday, April 15, 2026 • Duration 30:06

Most employee handbooks fail for three reasons: wrong tone, no real training on how to use them, and outdated information employees already learned not to trust.

A handbook that sounds like legal boilerplate will be ignored regardless of how complete it is. A handbook is infrastructure for consistency.

When it works, managers stop improvising, employees stop getting conflicting answers, and HR stops fielding the same questions repeatedly.

Acacia's handbook review template and table of contents can be found at www.acaciahrsolutions.com.

For California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Massachusetts employers, annual review is a minimum given how frequently employment law changes.

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The HR Audit Framework Small Business Practitioners Actually Need

Episode 26

Wednesday, April 8, 2026 • Duration 30:34

If your most popular episode told you what intentional HR looks like, this one tells you how to actually build it. Sabrina and Marie get tactical with the HR audit process Acacia uses with every new client, no matter what the client thinks they have in place.

In this episode, they walk through the three-pillar audit framework (compliance, infrastructure, and strategy), explain why the order of those pillars isn't arbitrary, and share the exact three questions that drive every audit they run. They also talk through how to build a risk map before you build a to-do list, why sequencing matters more than speed, and how to communicate your findings to leadership in a way that actually gets you the runway to fix things right.

Whether you're a solo practitioner trying to figure out where to put your hands first, or someone who walked into a role and quickly realized what you inherited wasn't what you were sold, this episode is your starting point.

The HR audit checklist Sabrina and Marie reference, the actual document they use with clients, is available on the Acacia website and linked in the show notes.

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The HR Connection Podcast with Sabrina Baker – Details, episodes & analysis

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The HR Connection Podcast with Sabrina Baker – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Other3

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Similar podcasts and content

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Other3