Customer story: Mindstream Media

Achieving Efficiencies in Consolidating Three Handbooks into One

Mergers, acquisitions and consolidations represent a lot of work for HR, especially when taking place across multiple state lines. As a result, Clevenger's top priority for Mindstream Media post-relaunch was to work together as a team and ensure they presented themselves internally as one organization. With a newly formed company that now had several handbooks, Clevenger was faced with the need to review, update and consolidate all internal policy into one handbook to provide consistent direction for Mindstream Media managers and employees.

Through past experience, Clevenger knew that this process could be tedious, time-consuming, and fraught with the potential of overlooking key compliance issues.

"We really had to make sure we understood the states we were working in, from both a payroll and employment law standpoint," says Clevenger. Those states vary widely from California and Wisconsin, with their well-known idiosyncrasies, to New York, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Iowa.

Mindstream Media's major handbook overhaul benefitted from significant insights, examples and language found within XpertHR's suite of HR tools and resources. Having ready-made and compliant handbook language at her fingertips saved significant time and boosted her confidence that the new handbook was comprehensive and up to date. XpertHR's Employment Law Guide, Employee Handbooks and Policies and Procedures tools all provided easy-to-access and ready-to-download resources, documents, templates and language that could easily be incorporated without the need to create content from scratch.

Clevenger estimates that at least 80 hours were saved updating their handbook thanks to XpertHR's easy-to-use platform.

Creating Consistency in Termination Procedures

One of the often unfortunate realities of a merger is the need to address staffing redundancies. In addition, new policies, procedures and processes for addressing employee discipline, up to and including termination, are required to ensure consistency, compliance and shared understanding for all supervisors and managers.

Clevenger's team was also faced with the challenge of finding a way to help managers make critical termination decisions in a consistent and compliant manner that could be easily replicated across the company. That's when she turned to XpertHR's interactive workflow tool—Interactive Flowcharts—to guide her HR team and managers through the decision-making process of whether to terminate an employee and the critical steps to follow. Of course, terminations aren't limited solely to merger or acquisition scenarios.

Hoping to ensure that supervisors and managers had the information they needed to handle these situations appropriately, Clevenger was delighted to find that XpertHR's Training tool offered a ready-made solution for educating supervisors and managers on how to handle termination situations that may emerge in the future.

"XpertHR's Interactive Flowcharts and Training tools have helped us ensure both consistency and compliance across locations and departments in our approach."

Driving Down the Costs of Compliance

Moving beyond the organizational changes she was facing, Clevenger was also acutely aware that staying up to date on laws and regulations, especially across many states, would be complex and time consuming, and sees XpertHR as an essential partner in this endeavor. In addition, by feeling confident that she and her team are well informed on employment law developments that affect her organization, Clevenger can direct her attention to more strategic issues such as positioning Mindstream Media as an employer of choice and ensuring her HR department's initiatives have an appropriate and positive impact on the bottom line.

Savings in both time and money have been significant for Mindstream Media's HR team. Before gaining access to XpertHR's tools, if an HR-related issue had emerged, Clevenger would either have to seek legal counsel or research the issue herself.

"Generally, our attorneys could take a few days—even a week—just to get an answer to a question, which also could cost upwards of a few thousand dollars per topic." Even searching on her own, she says, required wading through various websites for multiple states—a process that was often labor-intensive and confusing.

"With XpertHR, I can do the research in 15 minutes, have an answer to my question, and even language that I can use to create an email or update a policy. What's more, I pay one price for XpertHR and my staff and I are able to tap into the information many times."

According to Clevenger, having instant access to reliable information has saved her and her team time, money, frustration and delay.

"We especially like getting the HR and Compliance Alerts—they are terrific because we can make sure we're staying compliant on a daily basis."

"Overall, I can't speak positively enough about the efficiency of XpertHR's tools!"