The HR Connection Podcast with Sabrina Baker

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

What does under-resourced HR actually cost? Sabrina and Marie break down the math and walk through every support option available to small business HR.

Finding reliable HR tech reviews for small businesses is nearly impossible — most resources are built for enterprise, and the comparison sites are either outdated or pay-to-play. In this episode, Acacia's Payroll and Operations Manager Penelope walks us through the HR Tech Guide she's been building specifically for small employers: what she's testing, how she's scoring it, and what she's already finding that might surprise you.