HR Companies & HR Consultants in Springfield, IL

American Central Insurance Services is an Illinois insurance agency based in Springfield. It combines employee benefits brokerage with human resource consulting and benefits administration. For organizations comparing HR partners, the main appeal is having benefits design, compliance support and administrative services in one place, alongside commercial insurance coverage. The agency works with private employers, school districts, government bodies and individuals across the state.

The firm has operated since 1987 and describes its style as consultative. Its advisors take time to learn how a client's needs are shifting before they recommend a program. They try to balance cost control with solid protection and help with managing risk. As an independent agency, it places coverage with a range of carriers rather than a single insurer. That gives employers more options when they build or renew a benefits package.

HR and benefits services

The consulting work is meant to keep management teams informed about changes that affect their workforce. This includes employment conditions, new legislation and court decisions, and compliance obligations on both the benefits and property-casualty side. Services listed on the agency's website include:

• HR consulting for employers
• Employee benefits planning and brokerage
• Administration of flexible spending, HRA and HSA accounts
• COBRA administration
• ERISA support and ACA reporting and filing
• Wellness programs and resources for employees
• Medicare guidance through a dedicated specialist
• ISEBC services

On the product side, employers can get group health and group life insurance, 401(k) and retirement plans, and individual disability, life and long term care coverage for staff. The agency also writes commercial lines. That lets HR leaders address people-related risks with the same advisors who handle their benefits, including employment practices liability, workers' compensation, and directors and officers liability. Personal lines such as home and auto coverage are also available for individuals and families.

Team, locations and reach

President Jeremy Travelstead leads the agency. He is joined by Vice Presidents Dennis Lister and Andrew Novaria and by partner Stan Travelstead, who holds the CLU, ChFC and CPCU designations. The producer group includes Nathan Whiteman, who holds the REBC credential focused on employee benefits, along with several other producers and a Medicare specialist.

Headquarters is on Hedley Road in Springfield, with branch offices in Tuscola and Lincoln. The agency serves clients throughout Illinois, from central communities such as Decatur, Chatham, Jacksonville, Taylorville and Bloomington to Peoria, Kankakee, Galesburg, Macomb and the Chicago area.

What sets American Central apart from a stand-alone HR consultancy is that it handles benefits administration, compliance guidance and insurance placement within a single relationship. Employers that need help with COBRA, account-based plans or ACA filings, and that also need group coverage and liability protection, may find this model convenient. Organizations looking to outsource broader HR functions such as payroll or recruiting should confirm the scope directly, since the website focuses on benefits and insurance-related HR support.

HR Full Circle Consulting, LLC is a Springfield, Illinois talent optimization and human resources consultancy led by Kelly Gust. Although the firm considers Central Illinois its home base, it reports working with clients across the United States and in other countries. Its stated purpose is to apply workplace psychology to everyday management problems so that leaders recruit well, teams cooperate, and strong performers get the coaching they need.

Who they serve

The practice divides its offering by organization size. Small employers with roughly 2 to 200 staff can draw on practical small-business HR support, including policy development, essential HR training and help running performance reviews or engagement surveys. Larger or fast-growing companies above 200 employees are offered more strategic talent optimization work. Client comments on the site point to support with goal setting, recruiting searches and HR policy projects.

Services and tools

Much of the work is built on the Predictive Index (PI), a behavioral and job assessment platform, and the firm is listed by Predictive Index as a certified partner since 2019. Core service lines include:

• Talent optimization with PI for hiring, coaching and alignment
• Strategic planning and goal alignment
• Executive search for senior and specialized roles
• Leadership development for current and emerging managers
• Team development workshops
• Succession planning
• Performance management and employee engagement diagnostics
• HR function assessments and implementation support
• Customized training programs

Team development is delivered through a two-part High Performance series. The first session, Discovering Your Team Type, uses PI data and group exercises to examine how a team communicates, decides and handles disagreement. The second, Designing for Strategic Action, identifies where a team's natural style conflicts with business goals so stress and burnout risks can be addressed.

For organizations questioning their HR setup, the Evolve HR offering uses a proprietary review tool to examine the whole employee life cycle, from recruiting through separation, benchmark it against recommended practice and deliver a report with targeted recommendations, plus optional project help.

The training catalog is extensive and can be shaped for one person, a single team or a full organization. Topics span communication and influence, coaching and feedback, first-time and remote management, change leadership, interviewing and onboarding, termination conversations, legal issues for supervisors, sexual harassment prevention, customer service, time management and decision-making, along with several PI-based courses.

Approach and background

Engagements follow a three-step model: diagnose the client's goals and obstacles, design solutions matched to the actual problem, and deliver with change management support so projects take hold. A published case study describes helping a large insurance and financial services firm adopt PI assessments for sales hiring, which expanded its candidate pipeline and cut time-to-apply by 60 percent.

Kelly Gust holds a master's degree in industrial/organizational psychology and the SPHR credential according to the firm's Predictive Index partner profile, and the site notes she grew up in a family small business. The firm describes its values as collaboration, commitment, creativity, approachability, a focus on the future and ongoing professional learning.