HR Companies & HR Consultants in Lexington, KY

Overview

CMI Consulting is a firm based in Lexington, Kentucky. It works with employers on leadership, workplace culture and putting business strategy into practice. The company has more than a quarter century of experience. It works with organizations whose plans stall because their talent, leaders and culture are not aligned. Its focus is on how people and teams work, not on routine HR administration. That makes it a good fit for buyers looking for organizational development and leadership consulting.

The firm is now an affiliate of BIG Solutions. Through this partnership, CMI clients can get a wider range of help beyond leadership and people strategy. This includes benefits for staff, risk management and insurance, compliance and HR assistance, retirement and wealth offerings, and other workforce solutions. The goal is to cut down on the number of separate vendors a company has to manage and to link decisions across departments.

Services

CMI offers several related consulting services:

• Leadership development programs that build managers' confidence and decision-making skills
• Strategic and business planning with structured follow-up after the plan is finished
• Training workshops and team-building sessions on communication and problem-solving
• Culture analysis based on employee input and work to align the leadership team
• One-on-one coaching and formal mentoring programs
• Organizational effectiveness reviews, including assessments and process improvement
• Sales development that pairs coaching and targeted training with better sales processes

How They Work

The company's main point is that most strategies fail when they are put into action, not when they are designed. For that reason, CMI stays involved after the first engagement. It holds regular check-ins, provides ongoing coaching, tracks performance and gathers feedback to help leaders and teams stay on course. The firm says it avoids generic, one-size packages. It shapes its work around each client's current situation and changes its approach as conditions change.

Assessments and data are also part of its method. The firm uses what it learns from assessments to build strategies that put employees first. It treats culture as something to build on purpose. It helps clients define their core values, improve internal communication and make their workplace match their public brand. Its culture work also looks at employee well-being and a sense of community.

Who They Serve

CMI's materials are aimed at business owners and leadership teams who want more engaged and accountable staff. These clients also need help turning goals into measurable results. The site does not name specific industries. Its services suit organizations that are developing high-potential employees, preparing new leaders, improving collaboration or building up a sales team.

Among HR consultants, CMI is notable for two things. It combines leadership and culture consulting with long-term accountability support. Through its BIG Solutions affiliation, it also offers access to benefits and compliance resources within a single partnership.

Foundations Human Resources Consulting is a Lexington, Kentucky consultancy that helps employers build stronger working relationships between managers and staff. The firm is a subsidiary of Fisher Phillips, a national law firm devoted to labor and employment matters. That ownership lets the consultants bring in attorneys when a client needs legal training or counsel alongside practical HR work. Companies that run lean operations, especially manufacturers, will find that the firm's methods are built around teamwork, flexibility, cooperation and ongoing improvement.

Background and Team

Carol Sampson and Stephanie Prewitt launched the firm in 2016 and both serve as Executive Directors. Sampson spent more than three decades in HR roles at General Motors, Ford and Toyota, where she became known as the automaker's internal authority on labor matters and employee relations.

Prewitt is an attorney who served for close to twenty years as Toyota's Assistant General Counsel for labor and employment. At Foundations she handles compliance training, oversees workplace investigations, writes policies and employee handbooks, and advises clients on difficult personnel situations. Together, the consultants report more than 175 years of combined experience at a major global automaker.

Senior Consultant Jan Czochara has over 25 years in HR, mostly with Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America. Her background covers organizational development, team member relations, policy writing, communications, strategic planning and supplier support. She holds a biochemistry degree from the University of Illinois and completed graduate business coursework focused on HR at Michigan State University.

Senior Consultant Karen Combs also spent more than 25 years with the same Toyota organization in plant and regional roles. She concentrates on coaching front-line supervisors and on engagement, recognition programs, issue resolution and leadership development. She is a University of Kentucky journalism graduate. Business and Operations Manager Allison Catron manages billing and client support.

Services

• HR assessments, either targeted to one area or covering the whole function
• Training and development programs, including custom curricula
• Design of systems and programs that support trust and respect at work
• On-site support that works alongside a client's own HR staff
• Special projects across all areas of human resources
• Legal training and services delivered with Fisher Phillips

Each assessment is tailored to the client. Options include reviews of HR structure and staffing, corporate culture, employee morale, and readiness for unwanted union organizing. The union-readiness review combines a site walk-through, staff interviews and a look at the surrounding community. The firm also evaluates employee relations tracking systems and offers a customizable 360-degree review of leaders, which can lead into succession planning.

Training is the core of the offering. The Foundations of Leadership Series is a four-module program built on servant leadership and aimed at reducing turnover. Managers take the full series, and a shorter three-part version is available for nonexempt team leads. Other courses cover engaging millennial workers, supervisors' duties under federal labor law, regular labor law updates, root-cause problem solving and an introduction to lean manufacturing tools. Individual and team executive coaching is also available.

What Distinguishes the Firm

Buyers comparing HR consultants should note this team's direct experience inside large lean manufacturing plants and its access to employment attorneys through its parent firm. The consultants also offer on-site support aimed at identifying employee concerns early. The founder describes the firm's approach as careful about both cost and compliance.

Overview

Hawkins HR Consulting, LLC is a firm in Lexington, Kentucky that does both recruiting and human resources advisory work. The company marked fifteen years in business in 2025. It shapes each engagement around the client instead of selling a fixed package. Its clients come from many different industries. Most are based in the Bluegrass Region, and the firm also works for organizations in neighboring states.

A typical client is a business owner, an office manager or an in-house HR professional. When human resources is not someone's main job, keeping up with employment rules and handling staff problems can take many hours and feel overwhelming. The firm steps in to share that load. Experienced HR managers also use the consultancy when they want an outside second look at a situation, neutral feedback, or extra help with more strategic work.

HR consulting services

On the advisory side, Hawkins HR Consulting takes on anything from a single focused task to larger projects with several parts. Its consulting work covers:

• Employee relations support
• Leadership coaching
• Climate (employee) surveys
• Workplace investigations
• Training
• Policy development
• HR compliance and best-practice audits
• Improvements to HR systems

Consulting is available across Central Kentucky, including Lexington, and also in Louisville, Northern Kentucky and the Bowling Green area.

Recruiting and talent acquisition

The firm also runs a talent acquisition practice for employers with open positions. Its stated goal is to find candidates who have strong abilities and also fit well with the hiring company's culture, rather than judging on qualifications alone. The website has a separate section for job seekers, which covers the candidate side of its recruiting work. The company sums up its focus as recruiting and coaching that give clients an edge over competitors.

Background and approach

The team has more than three decades of HR generalist and leadership experience across a wide range of industries. Its members have worked inside fast-moving global organizations themselves. The firm says this helps them understand how little time clients have to spare.

It presents itself as an involved partner that shares responsibility for results, not a distant vendor that hands over advice and leaves. Its main promise is peace of mind and taking important but time-consuming HR tasks off a client's workload.

For Kentucky employers comparing HR providers, Hawkins HR Consulting may suit organizations without their own HR department that need reliable outside guidance. It may also suit companies with HR staff that want a sounding board, help with an investigation or audit, or support finding hires who fit well. The website also has staff bios and client reviews for buyers who want to learn more about the team before reaching out.

HR Assistance, LLC operates as a human resources consultancy from Lexington, Kentucky, run by owner-operator Gary Barksdale. The firm works mainly with small employers that need professional HR support but have not yet reached the point of staffing an internal department, and it also takes on overflow and improvement projects for established HR teams that are stretched thin. Its stated service area reaches across central Kentucky, including Paris, Winchester, Richmond, Danville and Somerset, as well as Louisville.

Outsourced HR for smaller employers

The core offering is outsourced HR that can be arranged either as a full-function arrangement or for a single, defined need. The firm presents this as a way for a growing company to get expertise without adding headcount, noting that a dedicated in-house generalist typically becomes sensible somewhere near the 40-employee mark. Areas covered under this arrangement include:

• Strategic management and workforce planning, including recruiting and selection
• Employee and manager training and development
• Total rewards, meaning pay and benefits
• Policy writing and employee relations
• Risk management and employment law compliance

Investigations, mediation and change management

Beyond routine administration, the consultancy handles sensitive matters. It conducts impartial workplace investigations into allegations such as sexual misconduct, harassment or bullying, ethical lapses, discrimination based on sex, race, religion, disability or age, disability accommodation disputes and family and medical leave problems.

Its method runs from helping the client decide whether an inquiry is warranted, through planning, interviews, evidence collection and evaluation, to recommended actions, a written report and follow-up support.

For interpersonal disputes it acts as an outside neutral mediator using a transformative approach, with voluntary sessions capped at two hours and most cases wrapping up within two or three meetings; this applies to conflicts between peers, between supervisors and staff, or among managers, and can support disciplinary matters tied to behavior.

The firm also guides organizational change through a four-part framework: reducing resistance, engaging staff, rolling out change in stages and communicating it clearly. Typical work includes shaping a change vision, reviewing structure, job descriptions and pay and performance systems for alignment, forming and training change teams, and building feedback channels so new practices take root in the culture.

Background and ways to engage

Mr. Barksdale holds an MBA along with SPHR and SHRM-SCP credentials and brings more than four decades of HR experience, much of it at director level or above, across sectors such as education, healthcare, manufacturing and consulting.

He has additional training in investigative techniques, mediation, change management and the design of fixed and variable compensation plans, and he has taught as adjunct faculty at Eastern Kentucky University, covering public-sector HR and SHRM certification preparation.

Clients can buy a single hour of expert HR help or a monthly HR expert subscription through the firm's online shop, and a free HR basics e-book is offered on the site. Weekday office hours apply, with appointments outside those hours available on request.